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Neil deGrasse Tyson says it’s ‘very likely’ the universe is a simulation. This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page.

Neil deGrasse Tyson says it’s ‘very likely’ the universe is a simulation

Terms of use. Sometimes, physicists can get too up in their own heads. At the most recent Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, recently held at New York’s Hayden Planetarium, scientists gathered to address the question for the year: Is the universe a computer simulation? It’s an older question that you might imagine, and if we interpret it a bit more broadly then it’s really one of the oldest questions imaginable: How do we know that reality is reality?

And, if our universe were a big, elaborate lie, could we ever devise some test to prove that fact? Thankfully, that’s clearly silly. When you set yourself to proving, or disproving, the hypothesis that we live in a computer simulation, there are basically two modes of attack. Neil DeGrasse Tyson (as though you didn’t know). The other, more popular strategy is to reason your way out of the box — the Descartes approach. There is, in all probability, a spoon. General Relativity - Conceptual time/space distortion. Gravity - From Newton to Einstein - The Elegant Universe. The Great Mysteries of Math - New HD Documentary. TIME is an ILLUSION according to EINSTEIN - (the space-time continuum) Rainbows - MIT Spring 2002 (Walter Lewin) Without Einstein it would have taken decades longer to understand gravity. It was 1905, and Albert Einstein had just turned theoretical physics on its head by publishing a paper on what later became known as special relativity.

Without Einstein it would have taken decades longer to understand gravity

This showed that space and time could not be considered in absolute terms: time could speed up or slow down; standard lengths could contract; and masses could increase. And, most famously, energy was equivalent to mass, proportional to each other based on the famous equation E = mc². Although there is no doubting Einstein's genius in formulating special relativity, it is generally accepted that had Einstein not published the theory in 1905, some other physicist would have done so shortly thereafter.

It was not until 1915 that Einstein's unparalleled genius was demonstrated when he published his general theory of relativity. Electricity from the air - Drayson's big idea. Free energy from the air.

Electricity from the air - Drayson's big idea

It sounds like a fantasy but that is what the entrepreneur and former science minister Lord Drayson has just unveiled at London's Royal Institution. He claims that a technology called Freevolt can be the power source for the "internet of things", allowing low energy devices from wearables to sensors to operate without being plugged in. The technology involves harvesting radio frequency energy from existing wireless and broadcast networks, from 4G to digital television. Lord Drayson says it's a world first: "It doesn't require any extra infrastructure, it doesn't require us to transmit any extra energy, it's recycling the energy which isn't being used at the moment. " The Subatomic Race to Harness Quantum Science. Subatomic particles that appear to defy Standard Model points to undiscovered forces. Subatomic particles have been found that appear to defy the Standard Model of particle physics.

Subatomic particles that appear to defy Standard Model points to undiscovered forces

The team working at Cern's Large Hadron Collider have found evidence of leptons decaying at different rates, which could possibly point to some undiscovered forces. Publishing their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team from the University of Maryland had been searching for conditions and behaviours that do not fit with the Standard Model. The model explains most known behaviours and interactions of fundamental subatomic particles, but it is incomplete – for example it does not adequately explain gravity, dark matter and neutrino masses.

Researchers say the discovery of the non-conforming leptons could provide a big lead in the search for non-standard phenomenon. The Standard Model concept of lepton universality assumes leptons are treated equally by fundamental forces. “Spookiness” Confirmed by the First Loophole-free Quantum Test. FQXi Administrator Zeeya Merali wrote on Aug. 26, 2015 @ 19:05 GMT Spookiness, it seems, is here to stay.

“Spookiness” Confirmed by the First Loophole-free Quantum Test

Quantum theory has been put to its most stringent “loophole free” test yet, and it has come out victorious, ruling out more common sense views of reality (well, mostly). Many thanks to Matt Leifer for bringing this experiment -- by a collaboration of researchers in the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK -- to my attention (arXiv:1508.05949). Frontier of Physics: Interactive Map. “Ever since the dawn of civilization,” Stephen Hawking wrote in his international bestseller A Brief History of Time, “people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable.

Frontier of Physics: Interactive Map

They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world.” In the quest for a unified, coherent description of all of nature — a “theory of everything” — physicists have unearthed the taproots linking ever more disparate phenomena. With the law of universal gravitation, Isaac Newton wedded the fall of an apple to the orbits of the planets. Albert Einstein, in his theory of relativity, wove space and time into a single fabric, and showed how apples and planets fall along the fabric’s curves.

And today, all known elementary particles plug neatly into a mathematical structure called the Standard Model. Einstein for Everyone. Einstein for Everyone Nullarbor Press 2007revisions 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Copyright 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 John D.

Einstein for Everyone

Norton Published by Nullarbor Press, 500 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260 with offices in Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15222 All Rights Reserved John D. An advanced sequel is planned in this series:Einstein for Almost Everyone. Why do electrons not fall into the nucleus? The picture of electrons "orbiting" the nucleus like planets around the sun remains an enduring one, not only in popular images of the atom but also in the minds of many of us who know better.

Why do electrons not fall into the nucleus?

The proposal, first made in 1913, that the centrifugal force of the revolving electron just exactly balances the attractive force of the nucleus (in analogy with the centrifugal force of the moon in its orbit exactly counteracting the pull of the Earth's gravity) is a nice picture, but is simply untenable. An electron, unlike a planet or a satellite, is electrically charged, and it has been known since the mid-19th century that an electric charge that undergoes acceleration (changes velocity and direction) will emit electromagnetic radiation, losing energy in the process.

What Can We Do with a Quantum Computer? The study of quantum information could lead to a better understanding of the principles common to all quantum systems.

What Can We Do with a Quantum Computer?

When I was in middle school, I read a popular book about programming in BASIC (which was the most popular programming language for beginners at that time). But it was 1986, and we did not have computers at home or school yet. So, I could only write computer programs on paper, without being able to try them on an actual computer. Surprisingly, I am now doing something similar—I am studying how to solve problems on a quantum computer. The Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos That Weren't: The Data That Threatened to Break Physics. Antonio Ereditato insists that our interview be carried out through Skype with both cameras on.

The Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos That Weren't: The Data That Threatened to Break Physics

Just the other side of middle age, his salt-and-pepper hair frames wide open eyes and a chiseled chin. Light-picture.jpg (JPEG Image, 630 × 419 pixels) Two-in-one photography: Light as wave and particle! (sous-titres français) Scientists slow the speed of light. 22 January 2015Last updated at 20:28 ET By Kenneth Macdonald BBC Scotland Science Correspondent. What's The Difference Between The Meissner Effect & Flux Pinning Re-Edit!

Quantum Levitation - Meissner effect. Finding faster-than-light particles by weighing them. In a new paper accepted by the journal Astroparticle Physics, Robert Ehrlich, a recently retired physicist from George Mason University, claims that the neutrino is very likely a tachyon or faster-than-light particle. There have been many such claims, the last being in 2011 when the "OPERA" experiment measured the speed of neutrinos and claimed they travelled a tiny amount faster than light. However, when their speed was measured again the original result was found to be in error – the result of a loose cable no less. Ehrlich's new claim of faster-than-light neutrinos is based on a much more sensitive method than measuring their speed, namely by finding their mass.

The result relies on tachyons having an imaginary mass, or a negative mass squared. The Secrets of Quantum Physics Episode 2 Let There Be Life BBC Documentary 2014. The Secrets of Quantum Physics Episode 1 Einstein's Nightmare BBC Documentary 2014. 2 Futures Can Explain Time's Mysterious Past. Digital Einstein Papers Home. Time Always Marches Forward. “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once,” wrote Ray Cummings in his 1922 science fiction novel “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” which sums up time’s function quite nicely. But how does time stop everything from happening at once? What mechanism drives time forward, but not backward? Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. " His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI. But others are less gloomy about AI's prospects. CERN frees LHC data. Today CERN launched its Open Data Portal, which makes data from real collision events produced by LHC experiments available to the public for the first time. “Data from the LHC program are among the most precious assets of the LHC experiments, that today we start sharing openly with the world,” says CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We hope these open data will support and inspire the global research community, including students and citizen scientists.”

Grover’s Quantum Search Algorithm. Quantum Physics And How We Affect Reality! (Powerful!) Physicists Achieve Quantum Teleportation of Photon Over 25 Kilometers. Quantum teleportation from a telecom-wavelength photon to a solid-state quantum memory. Capping decades of searching, Princeton scientists observe elusive particle that is its own antiparticle. Posted October 2, 2014; 04:00 p.m. by Steven Schultz, Office of Engineering Communications Princeton University scientists have observed an exotic particle that behaves simultaneously like matter and antimatter, a feat of math and engineering that could eventually enable powerful computers based on quantum mechanics. QUANTUM PHYSICS 2. New math and quantum mechanics: Fluid mechanics suggests alternative to quantum orthodoxy. The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that small chunks of matter sometimes seem to behave like particles, sometimes like waves.

Noah Movie - "Creation" Clip. Microwave signals turned into electrical power. 11 November 2013Last updated at 10:18 ET Researchers have found a way to capture microwave signals and turn them into power An electrical current capable of charging a mobile phone has been created from microwave signals. Light can break Newton's third law – by cheating - physics-math - 15 October 2013.

Isaac Newton just got cheated. Molten air – a new class of battery. Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab. 7 October 2013Last updated at 17:25 ET By Paul Rincon Science Editor, BBC News website. One-way mirror. A one-way mirror, one-way glass, or two-way glass is a mirror that is partially reflective and partially transparent. Fata Morgana (mirage) Fata Morgana as seen of coast of Manhattan Beach, CA on March 9, 2014.

What Color Is A Mirror? Consciousness & quantum physics ~ Reality is an illusion. The Quantum Zeno Effect actually does stop the world. A world first! Success at complete quantum teleportation. Confused about the NSA’s quantum computing project? This MIT computer scientist can explain. You're Interacting With Dark Matter Right Now - Megan Garber. Bell's Inequality. New Quantum Theory Could Explain the Flow of Time. Einstein - Notes for lecture on Relativity. From E=mc² to the atomic bomb. Science Magazine. The only known photo of Einstein's Mass-Energy Equivalence formula.

Richard Feynman talks about light. Richard Feynman on the Double Slit Paradox: Particle or Wave? Richard P Feynman: Quantum Mechanical View of Reality 1 (Part 1) Google's Quantum Computer Proven To Be Real Thing (Almost) Feynman: FUN TO IMAGINE 1: Jiggling Atoms. Richard Feynman on Quantum Mechanics Part 1 - Photons Corpuscles of Light.FLV. Richard Feynman: The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures: Pt 2: Fits of Reflection and Transmission. Richard Feynman: The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures: Pt 3: Electrons And Their Interactions. Richard Feynman: The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures: Pt 4: New Queries. Horizon: Richard Feynman - No Ordinary Genius (full version) Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. New Studies Suggest the Speed of Light is Variable : science. Electromagnetic spectrum. Wavelength of light. Doppler effect.