Related papers: At the Frontier of Knowledge
Physics has long lived with a schizophrenia that desires determinism for measured systems while demanding that experimenters decide what to measure on a whim. Intriguingly, such a free will assumption for experimenters has thwarted many…
The answer to the question in the title is: in search of new physics beyond the Standard Model, for which there are many motivations, including the likely instability of the electroweak vacuum, dark matter, the origin of matter, the masses…
I take a brief look at three frontiers of high-energy physics, illustrating how important parts of our current thinking evolved from earlier explorations at preceding frontiers.
After decades of uninterrupted progress and growth, information technology has so evolved that it can be said we are entering the age of autonomous machines, but there exist many roadblocks in the way of making this a reality. In this…
Attempts to quantize light in a manifestly Lorentz covariant manner fail because of the indefinite metric problem. Here an error in the interpretation is uncovered that is at the root of this problem.
We are at a stage in our evolution where we do not yet know if we will ever communicate with intelligent beings that have evolved on other planets, yet we are intelligent and curious enough to wonder about this. We find ourselves wondering…
In this work, we reveal a new type of impossibility discovered in our recent research which forbids comparing the closeness of multiple unknown quantum states with any non-trivial threshold in a perfect or an unambiguous way. This…
Complex structures can only form in a universe that allows for bound states. While this is clearly observed in three-dimensions, added degrees of freedom in a higher-dimensional space preclude the immediate assumption that binding…
Recent work by Faizal et al. (2025) claims that G\"odelian undecidability of non-algorithmic truths in our universe imply the impossibility of a formal, algorithmic simulation of the universe. This paper clarifies the distinction between…
Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…
It has for ages been a rather constant feature of thinking in science to take it for granted that the respective thinking happens in realms which are totally outside and independent of all the other phenomena that constitute the objects of…
Human consciousness has been a long-lasting mystery for centuries, while machine intelligence and consciousness is an arduous pursuit. Researchers have developed diverse theories for interpreting the consciousness phenomenon in human brains…
One of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics is what gives rise to the arrow of time. Since the fundamental dynamical laws of physics are (essentially) symmetric in time, the explanation for time's arrow must come from…
Our knowledge of the Universe remains discovery-led: in the absence of adequate physics-based theory, interpretation of new results requires a scientific methodology. Commonly, scientific progress in astrophysics is motivated by the…
With the relentless rise of computer power, there is a widespread expectation that computers can solve the most pressing problems of science, and even more besides. We explore the limits of computational modelling and conclude that, in the…
Nature abhors an infinity. The limits of general relativity are often signaled by infinities: infinite curvature as in the center of a black hole, the infinite energy of the singular big bang. We might be inclined to add an infinite…
In this paper we review a part of the approaches that have been considered to explain the extraordinary discovery of the late time acceleration of the Universe. We discuss the arguments that have led physicists and astronomers to accept…
[Taken from the "README" in the book] My goal with this book is to provide some kind of bridge for mathematics between the high-school-level and college-level for physics students. From my perspective, our job as physicists is to observe…
We discuss the question of if and how undecidability might be translatable into physics, in particular with respect to prediction and description, as well as to complementarity games.
After a brief review of current scenarios for the resolution and/or avoidance of the Big Bang, an alternative hypothesis is put forward implying an infinite increase in complexity towards the initial singularity. This may result in an…