Sabine Hossenfelder, physicist: ‘If you trust the mathematics, we are immortal’

EL PAÍS US EDITION ^ | OCT 06, 2024 - 10:15 EDT | Raúl Limón

[kiryandil]

Most of modern physics is political.

You have to kiss the poste-rear of your mentors on the way up the ladder.

[gnarledmaw]

I dont think you are thinking of the right person. She promotes the climate hoax including ideas like carbon pollution.

A while back she did content on behalf of a colleague that is a leader at the con-artist department of some university. The whole time when he looked up you could see on his face that he was thinking, “I didnt mind lying to all these people but now they know what I look like!” I guess that means he has enough shame to suggest he has something of a conscience left.

[Sgt_Schultze]

That’s pretty much as I stated. I acknowledged the theory posits that space and time also sprang into existence during this bang. But all the matter had to be somewhere, thus I said, “…if all matter was once concentrated in a single clustered location (wherever that was)…” The rest of my reply is where I directly addressed time, space, and matter. I’m pretty sure we agree.

[The Duke]

Bartender, I’ll have whatever lee martell is having!

[lee martell]

Lol!

[alexander_busek]

I guess I’m unclear as to how information can have existence in and of itself - it seems to me that information must be associated with some sort of medium - a piece of paper with markings on it, an electromagnetic signal, a collection of neurons, a set of semiconductor units, whatever.

The concept of "information" is a mental construct. What "seems to you" is equivalent to expecting, e.g., "truth" to be associated with some sort of medium.

A "fact," for example, exists independent of it being recognized as such by sentient creatures, and independent of those creatures codifying it on a physical medium.

Regards,

[clearcarbon]

"In spirit as Biden, Odongo, and Waltz??? /s "

[cgbg]

Terence McKenna referred to the Big Bang as “science’s one free miracle”.

Lol.

[PUGACHEV]

I agree with Sabine, but her argument is hard to understand unless we redefine some of the terms she is uses. I would start with the concept of "information". In our digital age we typically think of information as a set of numbers. Alternately, we could relate information to historical accounts, either written or oral. Either description is confusingly abstract. Instead, think of information as all the effects of an event, visual, physical, electrical, chemical, and sub-atomic, and even sensational, that is what is seen, thought, or felt. Our sensations and thoughts are not spiritual and ephemeral, as we are taught to believe, but the concrete effects of physical processes. For instance, if I had a miraculously powerful telescope, I might see another living creature on a planet thousands of light years away. That creature, looking back at our planet might see my father walking around as a young man in the 1930s. This is what I take "information" to mean.

The mystery of time is therefore the key. Unquestionably our ancestors were real, even though they may have passed long ago, but where are they now. They have not ceased to be simply because in our personal frame of time they are no longer here. My view is that we live in a block universe, where the past, present, and future all exist together. Taking it a step further I believe that what we would call a simultaneous event is really an illusion created by our perspective which is limited to our physical position in the universe and our personal time frame. Typically, in our world it makes no difference because the distances are tiny, but, think of the hypothetical alien watching my father one-hundred years ago from a planet light years away. My father's actions would seem simultaneous with his own, but we would say they were not. However, there is no center point in the universe from which we could make an objective judgement about which events are truly simultaneous, and which are not.

[Mr. K]

I believe the universe was sneeze out of the nose of the creature called the great Green Arkleseizure.

We live in fear of the coming of the giant handkerchief.

[Reily]

I think she’s walked back her global warming support.

[SunkenCiv]

Some miserable stupid troll added the String Theory keyword.