Books

To begin, assume that at every point in space there is a probabilistic presence of a secondary radiator (an electron) that, were it present, would oscillate in resonance when…Read more

I assume we all know someone for whom lemons are sweet and, although war is not ideal, there has to be something positive in everything – even genocide must…Read more

Instead of questioning the immediate phenomena associated with streaks in galaxy surveys that put us at the center of the universe, cosmologists deflect with the humor of Zwicky and…Read more

Science is taught like world history with special deference to the winners of major disputes independent of the retrospective merits of either side. Unlike history, however, science can and…Read more

Physics has long aspired to provide a faithful map of reality: a representation in which events can be placed unambiguously, trajectories traced deterministically, and the past and future related…Read more

Why Relativity Looks Like Spacetime—and Why It Isn’t Relativity is usually presented as a theory about spacetime: its structure, its curvature, and the transformations that relate one observer’s measurements…Read more

I generally avoid religious topics per se on this blog, not out of policy, but for lack of interest.  But there are many topics usually addressed in conversations concerning…Read more

We’re trained to think that causes precede effects, energy flows like water.  With the variational principles in physics, it doesn’t work that way.  The solutions don’t violate causality —…Read more

Analogies are easily stretched beyond viability, but they are the stuff of intuition. Consider a barrel filled with water and a rock on a string dangling over it.  If…Read more

Our familiarity with the concept of dimensions is based on a commonsense notion of specifying the locations of objects in what we otherwise consider to be an empty ‘space’.…Read more