Sean Carroll has a nice post explaining why the universe cannot be considered a giant black hole: If there’s any quantitative reasoning behind the question (or claim), it comes from comparing the amount of matter within the observable universe to the radius of the observable universe, and noticing that it looks a lot like the… Continue reading Why the Universe is not a black hole….
Tom Bethell and the Romance of Scientific HeresyBack in November I linked to Stephen Barr’s post spanking American Spectator columnist Tom Bethell for his long held, ideological grudge against Einstein –and further, his irresponsibly uncritical championing of a pet theory devised by his friend and fellow traveler, the late Petr Beckmann–which Bethell has now summarized… Continue reading
New steps toward quantum gravity: Despite the success of general relativity, one of the most important problems in modern physics is finding a theory of quantum gravity that reconciles the continuous nature of gravitational fields with the inherent ‘graininess’ of quantum mechanics. Recently, Petr Hořava at Lawrence Berkeley Lab proposed such a model for quantum… Continue reading
