I love how this obviously-true result is making people so very angry. It’s long been obvious that human evolution didn’t magically stop 10,000 or even 500 years ago — anyone who believed anything else was, sincerely, a fucking laughable clown.
And now there is good evidence. It’s better to know the truth than to pretend people are and have always been exactly the same.
Physicists think they’ve resolved the proton size puzzle.
This story. Oof. They should have someone who understands quantum mechanics write about it. So many problems.
But quantum mechanics gives us a much more precise (albeit weirder) description. The electrons aren’t really orbiting the nucleus; they are technically waves that take on particle-like properties when we do an experiment to determine their position. While orbiting an atom, they exist in a superposition of states, both particle and wave, with a wave function encompassing all the probabilities of its position at once. A measurement will collapse the wave function, giving us the electron’s position. Make a series of such measurements and plot the various positions that result, and it will yield something akin to a fuzzy orbit-like pattern.
“They are technically waves….”
Nope. Electrons are not ordinary classical waves like ripples in water. They are quantum objects described by a wavefunction. That is a totally different thing. There is a quantum state in Hilbert space, represented in position space by a wavefunction, whose squared magnitude gives the probability density for finding the electron at different locations.
“Take on particle-like properties when we do an experiment….”
This is way too crude to be accurate. That suggests the electron was truly a wave and then becomes a particle only because we took a look at it. Quantum mechanics does not work that way. What it predicts is that measurements yield discrete, localized outcomes. That is different from saying the electron was previously just a classical wave. (It wasn’t.)
“While orbiting an atom….”
In modern quantum mechanics the whole point is that atomic electrons are not moving on definite classical orbits. They occupy orbitals, which are stationary quantum states with definite energy, angular momentum properties, and spatial probability distributions. Quantum state, not orbit.
“They exist in a superposition of states, both particle and wave….”
Not conceptually sound. “Particle” and “wave” are not usually the two states in a superposition. Superposition refers to combinations of quantum states such as different energy eigenstates, angular momentum states, spin states, or position states. Wave-particle duality is really not well described as “being in a superposition of wave and particle.” That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“With a wave function encompassing all the probabilities of its position at once….”
That is imprecise. The wavefunction does not directly list probabilities. Its squared magnitude gives the probability density for position. More generally, the wavefunction encodes the probabilities for many possible measurement results, not just position.
“Make a series of such measurements and plot the various positions that result, and it will yield something akin to a fuzzy orbit-like pattern….”
This is misleading in two ways. First, repeated position measurements on the same electron do not reveal some hidden orbit. That’s just not how reality is, unfortunately. The measurements disturb the state. Second, what you recover from many measurements on many identically prepared atoms is the orbital probability distribution, not an orbit-like path. It is not revealing of a blurred trajectory around the nucleus. It is a cloud-like spatial distribution characteristic of the quantum state.
My corrected, accurate version of that portion would read:
“Quantum mechanics replaces the antiquated picture of electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets orbiting the sun. In the quantum way of doing things, an electron in an atom is described by a wavefunction, which encodes the possible outcomes of measurements and their probabilities. Bound electrons occupy orbitals, which are standing-wave-like quantum states with discrete energies. These orbitals are not paths through space. They are stationary state descriptions whose squared magnitude gives the probability density for finding the electron at different locations. When a position measurement is performed, the electron is detected at a particular place as a localized event. Repeating the experiment across many identically prepared systems does not reveal a smeared-out orbit, but rather the characteristic spatial probability pattern of the orbital. The electron therefore does not fit neatly into the classical categories of either a tiny orbiting particle or a literal extended wave. Instead, it is a quantum object with behavior that shows aspects of both, depending on how it is probed.
If you measure position across many identically-prepared atoms and plot the results, you recover the orbital’s probability distribution, which looks like a cloud or density pattern, not a fuzzy track traced out by an electron in orbit.”
I’ve seen similar rumblings online. The thing is, the signals are so faint (in several senses) that you can only be 95% or so sure, which doesn’t meet the usual standard of evidence in those fields. Chances are, we’ve seen evidence of life already. But no one will say that because it’s only fairly certain.
You really can just go look things up, no matter what the “experts” tell you. Most people are bad at it, sure, but most people are bad at nearly everything.
Doofish clowns disbelieve black holes exist but fail to realize that they are already trapped on a black hole de facto: the planet Earth itself is a gravitational prison. The event horizon for an unaided human is only as high as you can jump.
And just like a black hole, there is no obvious edge.
You’re stuck. Deal with it.
Nope. Black holes aren’t real. Time dilation goes to infinity as escape velocity approaches speed of light. Black hole does not form in finite time, but does evaporate in finite time. No black holes, only dark brown. https://t.co/1nABrZC9ah
— Wolf Tivy (@wolftivy) June 30, 2025
That is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. It literally cannot work like that. It. Cannot.
That is not how time, physics, or black holes work. Again: It. Cannot. Work. Like. That.
Since the speed of light is the ultimate limit (and that it has a limit), every observer experiences their own frame of reference in finite proper time. From the perspective of an outside observer anything falling into a black hole appears to be “plastered” across the event horizon forever. However, from the perspective of the infalling object, crossing the event horizon is uneventful — assuming the black hole is large enough to avoid spaghettification at the horizon. What this means is that, beyond the event horizon, all possible paths through space and time curve inward toward the singularity.
This isn’t some mysterious thing. We’ve imaged black holes. The math is obvious and verifiable. They exist.
But now for something harder but that has deeper truths, and what I meant above about it simply cannot be that way.
The author’s clownish claim that black holes don’t form in finite proper time and that they do evaporate in finite time is self-contradictory based on the speed of light and the laws of entropy.
That is because causality paired with light speed definitionally ensure local, finite evolution. And entropy (classical or quantum) requires the event horizon to exist in order to account for the information and energy involved.
For the author’s claim to stand, you’d have to ignore the speed of light and local physics. The goofus says: “Time dilation goes to infinity as escape velocity approaches the speed of light. Therefore, the black hole never forms.” This is not how relativity works. Like, at all. Time dilation only appears to external observers. And as I said in different words above, locally, matter crosses the event horizon in finite proper time. GR is a local theory — physics at each point in spacetime only cares about its own neighborhood, subject to light cones and the (space-time) metric.
So the event horizon forms from the falling matter’s frame. You can’t just privilege the observer at infinity and ignore the local process. It does not (and again, cannot) work like that. If black holes didn’t form because “you can’t see something cross the horizon,” no process that approaches light speed could ever complete. And yet we’ve built particle accelerators.
In short, this doof’s absurd assertions violate causal consistency in general relativity by privileging one frame’s illusion (infinite time dilation) over the local frame’s finite process.
Let’s say that Wolf Mutt is right that nothing ever forms a black hole because it never fully collapses in visible time. Then we can ask, what exactly happens to the entropy of the collapsing matter? If the matter is collapsing but never crosses the horizon, then its entropy is still “accessible.” But to whom? You’d have a singularity-like object with infinite time dilation visible externally but still generating entropy…by magic? That doesn’t even make the least lick of sense (because it’s im-fucking-possible).
The above contradicts both Bekenstein-Hawking entropy (that the entropy of a black hole is proportional to event horizon area) as well as the Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that entropy never decreases. And the event horizon’s entropy must count if you’re going to conserve information globally as Mutt attempts to.
So if a black hole never forms, where does this area-based entropy even come from? Without a black hole formation, you cannot explain nor account for:
If you say, “the object never becomes a black hole,” then you’ve erased the very entropy reservoir needed to make Hawking evaporation even make sense. It’s like saying a campfire smokes like mad but never ignites.
Now let’s take a peek at the quantum side, where the author is still of course also grievously and hilariously incorrect. In quantum gravity contexts (e.g., AdS/CFT, firewall arguments, fuzzballs, etc.), black holes are consistent quantum states with defined entropy. Denying their existence breaks the unitarity and thermodynamic bookkeeping of quantum field theory.
“The black hole never forms” that denies the event horizon is contradictory with the “But it evaporates,” as the evaporation relies on the presence of an event horizon to define Hawking radiation and entropy loss.
The author’s own “proof” is at odds with itself, along with about half a dozen other factual errors that also doom it. Idiot.
This is someone who only understands the surface and is not quite correct:
The reality is that any measurement is an interaction. Even in cases where there’s no obvious physical disturbance (like a photon bouncing off an electron) the act of determining the state of a quantum system is itself a measurement. Please take this at face value: a quantum system does not have a definite state until it is measured.
This is not a matter of incomplete knowledge or imprecise instruments. It is a fundamental feature of nature. Recent Nobel Prizes have been awarded for experiments that confirmed this point beyond doubt.
In quantum mechanics observation changes a system not merely because of physical interaction, but because the act of measurement fundamentally alters the system’s quantum state. It matters not a whit whether there is a classical physical interaction or not — the system is changed by the very fact of being measured.
I think maybe only a couple of thousand people in the world understand QM to the extent that it can be understood, and I am one of them.
I saw some goofy-ass Bluesky blabberer the other day who claimed that discussion of Schrödinger’s Cat in QM was elitist. Ok then. Mainly, Schrödinger’s Cat is useless for thinking about most things most people apply it to and 99.99% of people who use it don’t understand it and its historical context.
That said, QM is both easier and harder than its usual presentation. It’s not difficult to get across the basics, which are these:
1) Particles and waves aren’t the way to think about things in QM. Think about fields instead and that gets you so much further. The whole particle/wave “debate” is mostly junky bunk and bunky junk.
2) There is uncertainty always. Not because we don’t know something or because we haven’t measured it well enough. The uncertainty is inherent to the universe. It simply cannot be known because the universe itself does not know and has not “decided.” (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and related.)
3) It’s all probabilities. Always. All the way down. Which is related to the above, ineluctably. The universe simply is probabilistic at its heart.
4) Entanglement is real, it’s not faster-than-light communication, and though it’s not “spooky,” it does have some very real implications about non-locality and reality.
5) Superposition is also real (contra dumbasses like Carlo Rovelli) and this also has very easily-measurable real-world implications.
In the same set of Bluesky clownery I also saw someone (same person? can’t recall) claim that if you could not explain what a de Broglie wave was or the significance of the time-independent Schrödinger equation (which they didn’t even spell correctly), you shouldn’t be talking about QM. Ok, LOL, de Broglie wave, big whoop: the wavelength of a particle or matter or whatever. Everything has one, it’s just that yours is really tiny because you’re really large (while an electron’s is large because it’s really fucking small). Damn ya’ll.
And the time independent Schrödinger equation just tells you what are the possible energy states of a static (which is what “time independent” means here) non-perturbed quantum system. Also I think that person put “time independent” in there to make their crap sound more impressive. The time-independent version is super easy to work out, by the way. A clever nine-year-old could do it.
Wake me up when that doof can talk about how gauge symmetry causes the Standard Model to just kind of fall out of it. And explain how that works. That’s about 10,000 times harder and until you understand that, you don’t really understand shit. (It took me about a decade of thinking about it every day and actually, yech, doing math, to understand that.)
Fuck.
Even though I am generally a supporter of eugenics actually doing this plausibly is ridiculously hard: Polygenic scores aren’t environmentally robust. Pleiotropy and epistasis mean that when you alter one (what you wrongly think is a) monogenic trait, you’re probably going to get effects elsewhere almost inevitably since our knowledge is very limited here.
We cannot actually do eugenics because of this and many other reasons. We need more tech and we need more insight. And we should work on that.
Time Warp: Delayed-Choice Quantum Erasure.
This article is crap. It sounds convincing and is not wholly wrong, but the most important parts are misleading or are completely incorrect.
I haven’t researched this person but the article seems to be written by a superdeterminist type. Also, it’s cute when physicists and other STEM randos do philosophy without realizing they are doing it. It’s always so poorly expressed and kindergarten-level (as seen here).
Anyway, retrocausality is not at all required to explain the effects observed in this experiment and almost no actual physicist believes any retrocausaility explanation. This is a straw man argument. This part isn’t even a quantum result, really! You can do the same thing with completely classical objects, even macro ones.
It’s all very stupid, in other words. The basis of the article and the article itself.
But on to where the article is incorrect. This delayed choice experiment still works even if the detectors are widely separated. And by widely, I mean any distance at all, when there is no time for light (or any signal) to pass between the points. And that is a true quantum effect. (Though what really matters here is time separation, not space separation! But in our universe, they are analogous. Most of the time.)
To expand on that a bit, neither one of the photons is in any particular state before some measurement occurs. It’s not that we don’t know the state — it’s that it does not exist. Again, it is not a knowledge problem. There are ways of testing this and people have won Nobel Prizes proving this to be true.
Moving on, then. What I said about time above means that when you separate something like two photons there is no “real” time something occurred. It is observer dependent. And the delayed choice experiment still works under such conditions because the nature of entangled photons means that if one is detected as Polarity A then the other must be Polarity B no matter how separated they are (in time or space), and no matter which reference frame “thinks” which photon is detected first.
That’s where the author’s contentions fall apart. Poor article with a real lack of any deeper understanding of the physics or the universe. Removes some mysticism, but replaces it with garbage.
Fail.
Ugh, this Rovellian nonsense. RQM is almost as bad as superdeterminism.
RQM cannot be correct because the superpositional state of quantum systems is an observable fact that has real-world testable and tested consequences. Simple as that.
RQM is not saying much. And what it is mostly saying is covered by already-existing QM theories. And as to the rest, what it’s claiming is purely wrong. To put it bluntly and to reiterate the above, RQM is either obvious or wrong. The parts that are obvious already exist elsewhere. And that parts that are wrong are all Rovelli’s.
It’s a theory that has no purpose and is directly contradicted by the way the universe actually works.
Life on a closed timelike curve.
This is just symmetrical time reversal, which is just an identity. I mean, it couldn’t be any other way. That’s just how the equations work since they are all time-reversible.
To greatly, greatly simplify, this paper is just saying 2+1 = 3 is the same as 3 = 1+21.
One of the biggest myths about evolution is that every trait, feature and behavior has some purpose. But no, they do not. Many are just spandrels. To get more colloquial, there is a lot of “slop” in evolution and what it produces. The habit of fidgeting doesn’t have to be for anything, or even occur evolutionarily as the result of anything quantifiable directly.
It could just be a consequence of having a nervous system above some level of complexity.
Nope. Nearly all viruses and bacteria that infect humans have non-human reservoirs, with only a few exceptions. In addition, some viruses are resident in human DNA and can re-emerge from your genome itself with no outside vector and no infection present.
Viruses are with us forever, likely1. Harmful bacteria might be more capable of being eliminated fully.
Eh, is this some kind of trick question? Or a trick question on yourself? Don’t mean to be dismissive though also don’t really care if I am, but one of the basic tenets of computer science and the deeper math “below” that is that all non-trivial outputs of programs are not determinable without running the program in question. That’s Rice’s Theorem and it’s a generalization of the halting problem first formalized by Alan Turing.
There is not a single word for it, I guess. “Undecidability,” perhaps. But Rice’s Theorem and its various proofs are what’s being sought here. There is no possibility of omniscience for us in this realm. You might write the sim, but you still don’t know what it’ll do without setting it in motion and taking a peek. That’s all that is possible (even in principle).