Plato set out to explain everything with five perfect shapes. His theory died centuries ago. But in 2013 a shape called the amplituhedron burst upon the science scene. Physicists find it performs a miracle. But they don’t know how. The answer may hold a deep truth physics can sense but can’t quite find. Understanding the […]
Physicists have a mental image of the way the universe works. Most think of it as driven by energy. Even leading British physicist Sir Roger Penrose falls for this. He should know better. The conventional wisdom begins with all mass of the universe exploding out in the Big Bang. No-one knows why it would do […]
Two weeks ago we took a look at a question from systems engineer Muralidharan Thiyagarajan. Referring to the observation that space everywhere is expanding, he asks: ‘What creates the space?’ My answer is: At the Planck level (named for German physicist Max Planck who first described it) where space is made of incredibly tiny quanta, […]
Life is all about order. Life forms use energy to organize themselves. Their often-exquisite order is created at the expense of disorder which they dump somewhere else. The net effect is always a decrease in total order of the universe. It’s basic physics (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, if you care). The Second Law says […]