MPJ

Let me answer with what I think right away. To me, this is not one of those yes-or-no questions because it's impossible to tell. Simply put, the theory behind the question is most likely unprovable. Not from the inside anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'Non Playable Characters' are concepts relatively new, born not that long ago, when digital computing came to be fast enough to produce graphically demanding multi-player games sophisticated enough to hint at this question and the probability that we might also be inside one of those simulations. And to dispute the question about the nature of reality is quite useless, because everything that surrounds us, no matter how strange we think it is, can also be real and not part of the code. Even if our reality were simulated, its origin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove. By design, nothing inside the simulation could be able to see the lines of the code, only the outcome of its work. In...

I was no more than four years old when our car got stuck on a snowy hill decades ago. Everyone but me went outside to push to get us out of frozen road. More people gathered from other cars to help each other and soon everyone was engaged in a small rescue operation. That certainly didn't mean I didn't help - as well as others pushing the car from the outside, I did the same from the inside. From the back seat, I put my hands on the front and pushed hard. In my defense, deep down I knew that what I was doing was kind of weird and useless. At the time I just didn't know why. I was just ashamed sitting alone and doing nothing. Well, like they say, with age comes the wisdom and now I know that what I did was physically impossible, just like in the case of baron Münchhausen - when he got out himself and his horse he was sitting on out of a swamp by pulling his own hair upwards. And just like in old expression about an absurd and impossible thing one can do - if I were to pull b...

More than two hundred years passed after Thomas Young performed the famous double-slit experiment as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light and still it's revelation puzzles our sanity ever since. In short, if we shoot a beam of light at a panel with two small slits (less than a millimeter apart), the photons - elementary particles that light is made of, have to figure out how to get through the slits to radiate out the other side. If they are truly particles, like in macro world, they would project a solid image of two piles on the background wall behind the slits. If they travel similar to the waves, like water does in macro world, the image would resemble a wave-like interference pattern: alternating locations, equidistantly spaced, where particles leave a mark on the wall. Thanks to the outcome of the experiment, we know that light is capable to do both. It always travel in wave like fashion, even if we shoot photons in a row towards slits, one after another. Qua...

Do you gamble? I don't. Not because it is not fun nor because it is one of famous five sins. It is simple for me. I never win. I tried couple of times with lottery tickets and I never won a dime. Not to mention that I am terrible at predicting sport results or to win any kind of gambling event. I remember once I watched Euro-song contest and had strong feeling that Austrian band will win big time. Their performance was great and the song was pretty good.. I even typed one of those SMS messages to support them. And yet, they scored exactly zero points! Were they bad? No. Check the video within YouTube refs below. They were pretty good. Only sometimes, the luck doesn't come with quality.. It chooses by some strange criteria, as it seems, I will never understand. When I was in high school I thought I was smart enough to build some system by analyzing previous results in national lottery and to win at least the second prize which would be enough for me to buy super home compu...

Rarely I've got a chance and real opportunity to revive an old article from the past and to update it to fit better in the present day. Actually, the quantum weirdness is still where it was four years ago - science is not something that changes over night especially with quantum mechanics, so I am not going to update the post with any new physics or breakthroughs. Instead, what 's new and what pushed me to repost today is one extraordinary novel in the field. The book that kept me from sleeping last weekend was "Quantum Space" by Douglas Phillips and in short it is by far, one of the best titles I read this year. It is one of those true sci-fi stories that follows the real science and in this case the weirdness of the quantum world I wrote about in this post and I would add one of those articles I enjoyed the most writing in the history of the blog. But, before couple of my glimpses to the book itself, followed by my warm recommendation and especially if you want to r...

Last night I had a vividly strange science fiction dream. Like with most of my dreams, and dreams in general I guess, it was hard to recall all the details in the morning and this one was no exception, but in the nutshell the scene started with me in some science lab, describing the idea of how to effectively make a tiny hole in the universe. It was pretty simple - I was using four Tesla coils, perfectly positioned in the corners of the large square with edges of about couple of meters long and with a small, battery sized, two metal plates positioned in its center of the square. The experiment was that at the precise moment, Tesla coils fired four filaments of thunder, reaching the center point exactly between two metal plates in the same time, initiating a process that in the end created a tiny breach in the universe that I was describing in the dream as a brane between dimensions and within the void between multiverses. Anyway, in the process, one plate goes from metallic through dar...

Let me start this story with remarkable opening of the Michael D. Gordin's book named "The Pseudoscience Wars". The full quote is this: "No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself - I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts". And this is the ultimate truth - there is no pseudoscience. It's not the real thing. You can, with more or less enthusiasm, add adjective "pseudo" to anything you like and get yourself the bad or opposite meaning of the original word. But in the world we are currently living in and with, for example, TV shows like " Ancient Aliens " being vastly popular than attending lectures or reading published scientific papers by professional archaeologists and historians, pseudo combined with science are now recognized word in almost ...

Don't take this title too seriously. It's wrong on multiple levels. Grammatically and scientifically. Nonetheless it fits perfectly for this post. As for grammar amiss - I used Latin root word 'Gravis' which means heavy and it is actually perfect adjective for gravity as we perceive it here on Earth. As for scientific issue, the rest of the title might be all wrong. If we glimpse into features of three main natural forces of the universe, it is obvious that they work in more or less the same fashion - they use carriers or elementary particles to mediate the force through the force field. Photon is one of them and it carries electromagnetism while strong and weak force in nucleus respectively are mediated by gluons and w/z bosons and they are all confirmed in experiments. Gravitons suppose to be the same thing for gravitation force, but they are never found and confirmed either directly or consequently. Ever since Einstein we are having second thoughts about whether or ...

You probably heard that matter is pretty much an empty space. It's true. Everything is made of tiny particles with nucleus in their centers and cloud of electrons orbiting around. If we take Hydrogen (H) for example - the smallest atom with just one proton in nucleus orbiting by just one electron and if we scale the proton to be the basketball size, the orbit of the electron in diameter would be something about 15km. Both, nucleus and electrons are electromagnetically charged, keeping everything in stable equilibrium and also inside nucleus two more fundamental forces - strong and week nuclear interactions are keeping all the matter and energy in line. However, the smallest atom in the Universe is not the smallest, standalone system we know of. According to standard model, all atoms and complex molecules found in nature or artificially produced are made of fundamental particles. Something we cannot cut into smaller pieces. Electron is one of them. But there are more. So far, as far...

Think about it. If life really is some sort of a game and we are just a characters in one giant artificial intelligence play then ... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game then we are only just either a slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Do you know how big is our Solar system? I can't be sure of course, but there's a strong possibility that common knowledge about our planetary neighborhood ends with enumerating most of the planets, one dwarf planet and couple of named moons, asteroids and comets. Amazingly, the truth is far, far beyond that and believe it or not, if we include Oort cloud, the Solar system, with us representing its only living residents, is approximately 3 light years in diameter. This is, more or less, equal to 3e+13 kilometers or 30.000.000.000.000 km. The distance about 100 million times bigger than the distance to the Moon. It is tremendously huge and just about one and a half light years shorter than the distance from our Sun to the nearest star! The layout of the solar system*

It's a well known fact that our universe is, as far as we know today, four dimensional space-time continuum with three spacial coordinates and the time playing a role of the fourth one. We are perfectly capable of traveling backwards and forwards within first three spatial coordinates, but is it possible to do the same on the fourth one? I am sure you would agree that it is not too exciting going up or down or left or right but traveling through time could be something special. But, is it possible? Let's explore all the theories, share some stories and read about one connected hoax.

Have you ever been in situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with: "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really 'Yes and No'. And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is of course Parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro and micro organisms who can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life which in most cases leads to host's malfunction, to use raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessne...

Most of famous movies and novels that are dealing with remarkable and bold scientific ideas in existence, like plotting the script behind the most intriguing property in the latest string theory called "Holographic principle", lack one main attraction I am always looking in science fiction. The plausibility of the story. To get to the wider audience, science behind is somehow always pushed below the main layer and the result is either too philosophical, ridiculous or unnecessary too complex (like planting humans for energy in 'Matrix' by AIs) or simple love story, like in case of "The Thirteenth Floor" or other simple and proven Good-vs-Bad chases in virtual realities, like those portrayed in Caprica. The Thirteenth Floor* But, if I had to choose one of those Hollywood fictions, maybe you would be surprised if I preferred "The Thirteenth Floor" over all the others I had chance to watch or read. For one simple reason. Like with holographic p...

Not so long ago I mentioned great city of Alexandria in post Constantine & Naissus when I described the horrible misfortune and death of Hypatia, one of the greatest philosopher and astronomer of 4th century AD, who lived at the very end of classical Greek era of prosperity. Within the same city walls, couple of centuries before, one of the equally greatest and famous scientists of all times, Claudius Ptolemy was living, exploring, teaching and dedicating his life in various disciplines including astronomy and, of course, unavoidable astrology which was considered to be "connected science" for centuries, especially in the old ages. Rachel Weisz as Hypatia of Alexandria in Agora (2009) Among other things, Ptolemy will be remembered as the one of first scholars who described and identified 48 constellations of clear and unpolluted nightly skies above Alexandria so many centuries ago. One of the biggest constellations in his list was the great constellation of Gem...