Related papers: The question "Are We Alone?" in different cultures
The ideas that we forge creatively as individuals and groups build on one another in a manner that is cumulative and adaptive, forming open-ended lineages across space and time. Thus, human culture is believed to evolve. The pervasiveness…
The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability extraterrestrial civilizations' existence and the lack of contact with such civilizations. In general, solutions to Fermi's paradox come down to either estimation…
Astrophysics gives evidence for the existence of Dark Matter and puts constraints on its nature. The Cold Dark Matter model has become "standard" cosmology combined with a cosmological constant. There are indications that "Cold" Dark Matter…
The full-blown multiverse hypothesis, chaosogenesis, is refuted on the grounds of the large scale and high precision of the already discovered laws of nature. A selection principle is required not only to explain the possibility of life and…
Inter-universal entanglement may even exist in a multiverse in which there is no common space-time among the universes. In particular, the entanglement between the expanding and contracting branches of the universe might have observable…
The cosmological constant problem represents an evident tension between our present description of gravity and particle physics. Many solutions have been proposed, but experimental tests are always difficult or impossible to perform and…
We provide a derivation of the Born Rule in the context of the Everett (Many-Worlds) approach to quantum mechanics. Our argument is based on the idea of self-locating uncertainty: in the period between the wave function branching via…
Machine learning models -- including large language models (LLMs) -- are often said to exhibit monoculture, where outputs agree strikingly often. But what does it actually mean for models to agree too much? We argue that this question is…
The transition from the quantum to the classical world is not yet understood. Here we take a new approach. Central to this is the understanding that measurement and actualization cannot occur except in some specific basis. But we have no…
A scientifically literate society is important for many different reasons, some of which include democratic and scientific topics. This study was performed in order to identify topics in astronomy and science in general that may not be well…
We study the cosmological implications of the one-loop terms in the string expansion. In particular, we find non-singular solutions which interpolate between a contracting universe and an expanding universe, and show that these solutions…
One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…
Cultures around the world organise stars into constellations, or asterisms, and these groupings are often considered to be arbitrary and culture-specific. Yet there are striking similarities in asterisms across cultures, and groupings such…
Characterizing atmospheres beyond the Solar System is an endeavor no longer confined to the realm of science fiction.
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…
Terrestrial and extraterrestrial theories of the origin of life are discussed in the light of latest observations. The available data suggest a dual mode of origin, some of the ingredients, including possibly sugars, were brought to earth…
In this talk we discuss the cosmic singularity. We motivate the need to correct general relativity in the study of singularities, and mention the kind of corrections provided by string theory. We review how string theory resolves time-like…
Observations in the optical, in X-rays, and gravitational lensing of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and large-scale structure are beginning to provide clues to the dark matter problem. I review the impact of these observations on some of…
Both empirical and theoretical objective science can only access relations, revealing nothing about the intrinsic nature of the entities "in relation". We typically refer to these entities as "matter", assuming their nature is irrelevant…
This paper questions the generally accepted assumption that one can make a random choice that is independent of the rest of the universe. We give a general description of any setup that could be conceived to generate random numbers. Based…