Free Republic

A Japanese mathematician claims to have solved one of the most important problems in his field. The trouble is, hardly anyone can work out whether he's rightSometime on the morning of August 30 2012, Shinichi Mochizuki quietly posted four papers on his website. The papers were huge—more than 500 pages in all—packed densely with symbols, and the culmination of more than a decade of solitary work. They also had the potential to be an academic bombshell. In them, Mochizuki claimed to have solved the abc conjecture, a 27-year-old problem in number theory that no other mathematician had even come...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: There's another theory going around, too. I just have to share it with you. I have no idea. I'm not on the inside with the Republican Party, and I haven't ever been, really. People have assumed, you know, that I'm the titular head of the Republican Party. If I were an ideas guy, that might be true, but I'm not, and I've never been. I've never chatted with Reince Priebus. I've never met him. I wouldn't know how to get hold of him other than look up the phone number at the RNC -- and I don't...

The existence of parallel universes may seem like something cooked up by science fiction writers, with little relevance to modern theoretical physics. But the idea that we live in a “multiverse” made up of an infinite number of parallel universes has long been considered a scientific possibility – although it is still a matter of vigorous debate among physicists. The race is now on to find a way to test the theory, including searching the sky for signs of collisions with other universes. It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory,...

Mathematicians Chase Moonshine’s Shadow Researchers are on the trail of a mysterious connection between number theory, algebra and string theory. In 1978, the mathematician John McKay noticed what seemed like an odd coincidence. He had been studying the different ways of representing the structure of a mysterious entity called the monster group, a gargantuan algebraic object that, mathematicians believed, captured a new kind of symmetry. Mathematicians weren’t sure that the monster group actually existed, but they knew that if it did exist, it acted in special ways in particular dimensions, the first two of which were 1 and 196,883.McKay, of...

A New Physics Theory of Life Katherine Taylor for Quanta MagazineJeremy England, a 31-year-old physicist at MIT, thinks he has found the underlying physics driving the origin and evolution of life. By: Natalie WolchoverJanuary 22, 2014 Comments (151) print Why does life exist?Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as...

When he died on September 7, 2012, theoretical physicist Claud W. Lovelace left behind a house filled with parakeets. With no family or close companions, the eccentric Rutgers professor loved to be surrounded by his colorful fine-feathered friends and listen to classical music as he contemplated the nuances of unified field theory. A loner not particularly close to his colleagues, members of the Physics and Astronomy department were astounded and delighted when he willed his entire fortune of $1.5 million to it. The funds were used to help establish endowed positions in practical fields of physics, a far cry from...

The universe shouldn't exist — at least according to a new theory. Modeling of conditions soon after the Big Bang suggests the universe should have collapsed just microseconds after its explosive birth, the new study suggests."During the early universe, we expected cosmic inflation — this is a rapid expansion of the universe right after the Big Bang," said study co-author Robert Hogan, a doctoral candidate in physics at King's College in London. "This expansion causes lots of stuff to shake around, and if we shake it too much, we could go into this new energy space, which could cause the...

Americans Question the Big Bang by Brian Thomas, M.S. * A new poll revealed that 51 percent of Americans question the Big Bang theory, and 54 percent of Americans believe that the universe is so complex that there must have been a designer.1 Mainstream scientists are not happy about it. The Associated Press-GfK poll queried Americans' confidence in a number of other issues—the genetic code's link to inherited traits, smoking's link to lung cancer—and the respondents expressed more confidence in these issues than they did in the Big Bang. According to AP, "Those results depress and upset some of America's...

If you love literature, you might find it easier to actually buy it than take a course in it. “According to the most recent comprehensive report on staffing by the Modern Language Association and the Association of Departments of English, published in 2008, English lost 3,000 tenure-track positions from 1993 to 2004, roughly 10 percent of the total,” Marc Bousquet writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Even that understates the case, since more than a third of the new tenurable hires have not been in traditional literary fields but in composition, rhetoric, theory, cultural studies, new media, and digital...

What’s even more dubious than claims of catastrophic warming? Claims that scientists know what to do about it.The IPCC released a report warning that unless a “rapid shift” to green energy is undertaken, we’re all going to die…or, something.And even that may not be enough. The group is saying that we “might even need to enlist controversial technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”We’ll get started right away on those gigantic atmospheric scoops to remove all those offensive greenhouse gases.It’s more of the same from the IPCC, with a little more hysteria to get our juices flowing.USA Today: “There...

‘Secret Negotiation with Hijackers’ Theory Bolsters as Last Words from Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Revealed Before the flight disappeared from radar screens, the Malaysia's civil aviation heard the words, "All right, good night", The Straits Times reported. There is however, conflicting reports on what exactly were the last words. The BBC says that the last heard reply from flight MH370 was "All right, roger that". The meeting held in a packed room with nearly 400 relatives at the Metropark Lido hotel in Beijing, non-the-less, is important as anguished family members were given the chance to ask direct questions...

In 1964, a pair of engineers at Bell Labs in New Jersey tried to build a better antenna and ended up uncovering the origins of the universe. After ruling out city noise, nuclear bombs and pigeon poop, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson argued that a strange radio hiss in their readings was the first confirmed signal of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This relic glow emerged as a result of the big bang and now permeates the universe. The discovery solidified big bang theory as our best explanation for cosmic origins, and Penzias and Wilson went on to net a...

One physicist says he likes this theory because of “its simplicity, uniqueness and the fact that it can be tested.”Theoretical physicists at Vanderbilt University contend that a simply theory may explain mysterious dark matter. They propose that most of the matter in the universe may be constructed of particles that have an abnormal, donut-shaped electromagnetic field known as an anapole. According to a news release from Vanderbilt University, Professor Robert Scherrer and post-doctoral fellow Chiu Man Ho carried out an in-depth analysis to determine the validity of this theory. Scherrer points out that he likes this theory because of “its...

It now seems clear that the Department of Homeland Security’s stockpiling of ammunition and other warfare supplies can no longer be dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” but is a very real development in the actions of an overreaching federal government. Many have suggested and assumed that the ammo and gun shortage experienced across the country is the result of private citizens’ unprecedented purchases, in recent years, in preparation for impending gun control measures. While this is true in part, it is only half of the logical explanation that can be assessed based upon available facts. This phenomenon has been described as...

WASHINGTON -- More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote "The Art of War." In it, the Chinese strategist postulated: "One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. ... One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated." Two millenniums later, Prussian military theorist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz wrote a detailed exposition on the principles of warfare. His book "On War" -- published after his death in 1831 -- posits, inter alia, that inadequate, incomplete or incorrect intelligence will inevitably contribute to the "fog of war" and lead...

Particles do not retain "information", don't have "knowledge". It is not that the act of observation that alters reality. In fact the physical nature of the "observation" small though it may be is sufficient to alter the metrics of sub atomic particles.

The Overton Window, as coined by the Mackinac Center, is a model to explain how changes in public policy occur. When evaluating the options within any specific public policy issue, only a relatively narrow window of options will be considered politically acceptable by politicians. The window of acceptable policies is not primarily defined by the politician’s preference, but by what he or she can support without jeopardizing re-election. As society embraces new ideas, the Overton Window shifts to include additional public policy options that were previously deemed unacceptable. Meaningful policy change may take decades. Or, as in the case of...

Outrageous claims made by a professor who specializes in conspiracy theories are set to provoke grieving family by saying that the Sandy Hook massacre may not have happened at all. James Tracy, a tenured history professor at Florida Atlantic University, wrote a lengthy post on his personal blog saying that the shooting that left 20 children and six teachers dead may not have happened the way that it is widely believed, if it happened at all. Backed solely by the erroneous early reports filed during the midst of the horrendous incident, Mr Tracy 's claim is preying on the confusion...

Worth the few minutes to watch if you like Glenn Beck.

The Cardinal Newman Society Blog is reporting that: "DePaul University, the largest Catholic university in America, has invited one of the foremost population control advocates who once called Christianity “the most dangerous of devotions” to speak at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and College of Science and Health commencement ceremony. E.O. Wilson, a Harvard professor and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize who once called humans “an environmental abnormality,” is scheduled to speak at DePaul University’s commencement on June 10th. He is one of a number of prominent people who will be speaking on campus that day....