Lifeboat Foundation

An engine idea that can accelerate to 99 percent of the speed of light, all without the need for propellant. That may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s not. This is exactly what one of NASA engineers is developing, and it promises to break the law of physics.

How will these engines be developed? If it is going to work without propellant, then what will be its fuel? And most importantly, will a human be able to travel in a vehicle with such an engine as its thruster? Well, we will find out in just a second.

Boltzmann brains are perhaps one of the spookiest ideas in physics. A Boltzmann brain is a single, isolated human brain complete with false memories that spontaneously fluctuates into existence from the void. They’re the kind of thing you’d find in a campfire horror story. The big problem, however, is that a range of plausible cosmological models (including our current cosmology) predict that Boltzmann brains will exist. Even worse, these brains should massively outnumber “ordinary” conscious observers like ourselves. At every moment of your existence, it is more likely that you are an isolated Boltzmann brain, falsely remembering your past, than a human being on a rocky planet in a low-entropy universe.

In this video I explain where the idea of Boltzmann brains originated, and why they haunt modern cosmology.

Continue reading “Boltzmann Brains: A Cosmological Horror Story” »

If you know anything about special relativity then you probably know that how fast you’re moving has an impact on how quickly time passes for you. What physics gives rise to this effect? Do you need to know some complicated mathematics in order to understand it?

It turns out that this effect, known as “time dilation”, can be very easily derived for a special kind of clock: a light clock. In this video, I consider a light clock moving through space and show how the postulates of special relativity entail that this moving clock runs slow.

Continue reading “The Light Clock: How Moving Clocks Run Slow” »

Year 2020 face_with_colon_three

The rigorously proven No Free Lunch theorem shows that physicists will always be needed to determine the correct questions.

Year 2022 😗

AI observed videos of lava lamps and inflatable air dancers and identified dozens of physics variables that scientists don’t yet understand.

Year 2022 What they find is a new type of physics generated by their artificial intelligence.

The determination of state variables to describe physical systems is a challenging task. A data-driven approach is proposed to automatically identify state variables for unknown systems from high-dimensional observational data.

OzGrav is turning Albert Einstein’s imagination into reality as they pursue groundbreaking discoveries in the rapidly expanding area of gravitational wave physics. Read the article to find out more.

Year 2022 face_with_colon_three

Since the discovery of black holes, they have inspired images of the universe’s extremities in both scientists and storytellers. Their immense gravity — sucking in any matter and light unfortunate enough to come within grabbing distance — conjures images of crushing death and infinite possibility.

That same gravity, however, creates a well which consumes indiscriminately and from whence nothing can ever emerge. The only trouble is that isn’t the case. Among Stephen Hawking’s many accomplishments was the discovery that black holes actually radiate very slowly and will eventually evaporate. This discovery, while enough to make Hawking famous, threw a wrench in contemporary astrophysics by creating a paradox.

Continue reading “If you could see a black hole, it might look like a cosmic koosh ball” »

Extended special relativity describes how the universe would look if you broke the speed of light.

Scientists from the University of Warsaw in Poland and the National University of Singapore are pushing the limits of relativity with a new theory called the “extension of special relativity,” a report from Science Alert reveals.

The scientists’ new study suggests that objects may be able to go faster than the speed of light without completely shattering our current laws of physics.

Continue reading “A new physics-defying theory describes the effects of faster-than-light travel” »