Sabine Hossenfelder

When you try to combine quantum physics with Einstein’s theories, you quickly run into some pretty serious problems. The biggest is that causality – the order in which events occur – becomes uncertain as the rest of quantum physics. A group of physicists have leveraged that uncertainty, and are now claiming that they can send messages to the past using quantum mechanics. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Let’s take a look.

1 day ago | [YT] | 334

Sabine Hossenfelder

Investors across the globe are putting record amounts of money into cold fusion technology, which promises to bring us nuclear fusion without the need to create miniature stars on Earth. But are these companies actually delivering, or is this just another speculative tech bubble? Let’s take a look.

4 days ago | [YT] | 296

Sabine Hossenfelder

In today's rant I complain that I now sound like every other YouTuber.

6 days ago | [YT] | 417

Sabine Hossenfelder

Life on Earth has a peculiar property – many biological molecules have a handedness, or a “chirality.” DNA twists one way and not the other, and all the rest of life must fit to this reality. In a new paper, researchers say they know why: It all comes down to physics! The answer could change our understanding of life across the universe. Let’s take a look.

1 week ago | [YT] | 475

Sabine Hossenfelder

A company claims to have developed a microchip that can extract "unlimited power" from the vacuum. I've had a look

1 week ago | [YT] | 481

Sabine Hossenfelder

In Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the time an object experiences depends on its acceleration. But time in quantum physics works more intuitively – it’s a universal parameter experienced by every object in the same way. In a new paper, physicists say they want to use a special type of clock to test that difference. Let’s take a look.

1 week ago | [YT] | 283

Sabine Hossenfelder

Generating electricity via nuclear fission is a great idea, at least in principle. But the risk of nuclear meltdowns causing mass destruction and long-lasting contamination isn’t appealing. Luckily, a crop of companies are looking to solve this problem by creating subcritical nuclear reactors, which generate power without ever making runaway nuclear reactions possible. Let’s take a look.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 388

Sabine Hossenfelder

Current AI technology seems to be making decent progress despite concerns about it slowing over time. But while AI is slowly becoming more “intelligent”, the industry is running into another problem: energy supply. Let’s take a look at why energy is quickly becoming a major problem for progress in AI.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 401

Sabine Hossenfelder

Physicists have been trying to reconcile the differences between Einstein’s theory of spacetime and our observations of quantum mechanics for almost a century. One way that they’ve attempted to do this involves theories that treat space as one-dimensional at very short distances. In a recent paper, physicists claim that they’ve solved a major problem that’s plagued these theories for decades. Does this finally solve the problem? Let’s take a look.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 287

Sabine Hossenfelder

A group of physicists claims that quantum physics is an unnecessary complication. I've had a look at the paper...

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 417