Backreaction

A recent investigation has revealed that the final steps in phasing out nuclear power in Germany was partly based on false information. And doesn’t look like it was a mistake, but a deliberate ...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/scandal-over-nuclear-phase-out-in.html

I thought electric vehicles were the future of transportation. Not so much because they're clean, but because many car enthusiasts love them for their powerful acceleration. However, it's becomin...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/i-thought-electric-cars-were-future-i_01647737158.html

Australian television outlets were recently raving over a supposed “world-first breakthrough converting carbon dioxide into electricity”. It's a device that takes carbon dioxide from the air ...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/breakthrough-tech-makes-energy-from-air.html

Most astrophysicists believe that 95% of the universe is dark stuff - dark matter and dark energy. We can’t see, feel, or hear it, but it’s supposedly all around us. NASA scientists recently ...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/are-we-surrounded-by-dark-energy.html

The Future of Humanity Institute announced last week that they have shut down. Located at the University of Oxford in the UK prior to its demise, the institute was one of the few places worldwide...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/institute-for-extinction-risk-shuts.html

You might have heard that according to Einstein's theories of special and general relativity time doesn't pass for light, or that time actually stops for light. Can this possibly be correct? In t...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/does-time-stop-for-light.html

This is the story of how particle physicist Paul Frampton ended up in prison for smuggling drugs after being scammed by someone who pretended to be a bikini model, and what happened next.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-prof-who-looked-for-love-and-ended.html

I recently read that using artificial intelligence creates fewer carbon emissions than human labour. Really? The human brain doesn't have much going for it, but we know that it is much more energ...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/ai-more-energy-efficient-than-humans.html

Most astrophysics are pretty convinced that 80% of the matter in the universe is some invisible stuff that they can’t detect - dark matter. The idea has become more popular recently modified gr...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/modified-gravity-strikes-back.html

A new nuclear fusion startup in German is working on a "quasi-isodynamic stellerator". I had a look at what that means and think it's a pretty cool approach that is among the most solid, low-risk...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/this-fusion-startup-is-strong-newcomer.html

If you google the “worst prediction ever”, you will get hundreds of results that tell you it was the prediction of the cosmological constant that was infamously 120 orders of magnitude wrong....

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-worst-prediction-was-never-made.html

A group of physicist has proclaimed that we owe our existence to gravitational waves. Really? What sense does that make. Aren't gravitational waves far too weak to have any effect on life on eart...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/gravitational-waves-necessary-for-human.html

Hyperjumps, wormholes, and warp drives sound like science fiction, but they’re actually based on real science! Though I believe out of the three, warp drives are the most plausible. The math se...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/warp-drives-new-simulations.html

It sounds weird, but randomness can actually improve computer calculations, in certain circumstances. After some digging into the reasons why, I’ve uncovered three different ways this can happe...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/randomness-improves-computation-no.html

Several European countries have done trials for electric highways , some of which have now been concluded. The results have been unexpectedly controversial. What are electric highways? Why are th...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/electric-highways-good-idea.html

Elon Musk launched an XPRIZE for Quantum Applications! It’s a 3-year, 5 million dollar global contest that’s looking for ways to use quantum computers to solve real-world challenges that bene...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/musk-are-quantum-computers-even-good.html

Climate change has had some pretty weird consequences - beers are tasting worse, goats are shrinking, and flights are bumpier. Another unexpected outcome is that the rotation of the earth has slo...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/climate-change-slows-rotation-of-earth.html

Last year, Ranga Dias from the University of Rochester in New York claimed he had found a material that was superconducting at room temperature. He has now been accused of research misconduct. Th...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/new-superconductor-scandal-what-we-know.html

Wildfires have made a lot of headlines recently. Climate change, they say, has made them worse. But some ecologists now say that suppressing wildfires is a bad idea and will just make things wors...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/are-wildfires-good.html

On April 8th, a total solar eclipse will cast its shadow across Mexico, the United States and Canada. This solar eclipse is quite special for a number of reasons. Let’s have a look at why this ...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/my-first-total-eclipse-what-i-am.html

Material scientists at Drexel University in Philadelphia have developed a self-heating concrete that warms up on its own when temperatures drop below zero. No power needed. How does this new “s...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/this-self-heating-concrete-melts-snow.html

Events on the world lines of two theoretical physicists, from the horizon to timelike infinity. A scientifically minded blog with varying amounts of entertainment, distractions, and every day trivialities.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-i-fell-out-of-love-with-academia.html

Artificial intelligence will likely eventually exceed human intelligence, which could turn out to be very dangerous. In this video I have collected how things could go wrong and what the terms th...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-ai-could-kill-us-or-save-us.html

Physicists will soon begin an experiment at the South Pole to test if space has quantum fluctuations. Their new approach looks for decoherence in neutrinos oscillations that are sensitive to what...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/search-for-quantum-foam-begins-at-south.html

New articles have been popping up about CERN’s new experiment looking for so-called “ghost particles.” What are ghost particles? Is CERN haunted? What is this new experiment? Let’s have a...

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/04/cerns-new-ghost-experiment-could-find.html