Category Archives: Universe

Thermodynamics and Entropy – Our Irreversible Universe

A photographic montage representing entropy, shown a dropped china tea cup being broken down on impact.
Irreversibility

A friend of mine once casually asked me over a drink: “What is entropy?”  Eeek!  Interesting concept.  But…  How do you define entropy in a non-mathematical way?  How can you sum up entropy in 30 seconds?  In one mental image.  In a single concept…  In one word.  A form of energy?  A measure of disorder in the Universe?  Randomness?  All of the above?  Tricky question.  And then, I dropped my glass…

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A Classical Quantum Conundrum – When To Be or Not To Be… a Wave?

An animation showing the formation of the typical wave-particle duality interference pattern.
Wav-icles?

Ever since French physicist Louis de Broglie first described the wave-particle duality in 1926, scientists have struggled to come to terms with this strange particularity of our natural World when observed at the quantum level.  Waves can be particles, and particles can be waves.  But are entities waves AND particles all at the same time?

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Why the Universe may be Inherently Unstable

"The Cosmic Soup": An impressionist artist's view of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation at the edge of our Local Universe. Artwork:: NaturPhilosophie

Exploring Vacuum Instability

Scientists are currently exploring the concept of vacuum instability.  What does this mean?  Well, they believe there is a chance that…  Billions of years from now, a new universe could open up into the present one and replace it.  It all depends on some very precise numbers related to the Higgs boson particle that researchers are currently trying to pin down.

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