Spooky Computers at CERN

Quantum of what? Physicists have been wrestling for more than a century with quantum mechanics, a set of rules that govern the behaviour of atoms and other small systems - small compared to a human being. As a matter of fact, even what quantum mechanics is about is not so obvious: first, because if everything …

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Of Time, Entropy and Consciousness

My fascination with entropy began during my Freshman year, when a colleague suggested me to read a book written by the Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine . For some reason unknown to me, the Belgian-Russian physicist was awarded the honorary citizenship of my hometown - an honour later awarder to another Nobel laureate, Gerard 't Hooft - so maybe …

Has Particle Physics Been Hijacked by ET?

After the two sophons arrive on Earth, their first mission is to locate the high-energy particle accelerators used by humans for physics research and hide within them. At the level of science development on Earth, the basic method for exploring the deep structure of matter is to use accelerated high-energy particles to collide with target …

The Higgs Boson: A God Particle, After All?

Forewords My opinion about this issue shifts as more data are accumulated according to the Bayes theorem, so it may change in the near future after the LHC Run2 starts. Anyway, it seems to me that data are pointing towards J. A. Wheeler's self-aware Universe. What if the truth was that we are afraid of …

The Computational Universe

The Laws of Nature When you first encounter physics at school, you are initiated to the common idea that at least in principle every phenomenon could be explained if we knew which are exactly the "Laws of Nature". This idea is pretty simple, but not free from conceptual problems. First of all, you are assuming …