Sabine Hossenfelder
@skdh
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German Physicist. Author of "Lost in Math" & "Existential Physics". Creator of "Science Without the Gobbledygook". rt's/shares/likes are not endorsements
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A very well done article about, erm, me.
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I wrote my PhD thesis about "Large Extra Dimensions". I didn't want to use the abbreviation LED, so I called them LXD. When I moved to Arizona -- almost exactly 20 years ago -- I got "LXD" as my licence plate. This is me at age 28.
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50,000 astrophysicists: "The universe is 13.7 billions years old."
One guy in a press release: "Maybe it's 26.7 billion years?"
Twitter: SEE I TOLD YOU ALL OF SCIENCE IS WRONG!
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I've said it before but I'll say it again: phasing out nuclear power was the dumbest thing the Germans have ever done.
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Everyone who thinks the world could just stop using fossil fuels on the snap of a finger should have a look at this chart. More than 80% of the world's energy supply presently comes from oil, gas, and coal, and that number has barely changed in the past decade.
Of course we will…
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The trouble with society is that the most reasonable people are also the most quiet.
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Submitted a laTex doc to a physics journal and they wrote back to say please send a word doc. What's the world coming to?
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This makes me feel incredibly uneasy. Not because of its content, which is kind of unobjectionable, but because it's the same vibe I get from flat earthers and climate change deniers.
New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science
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I understand that some people believe in God, but I don't understand how they manage to do that.
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It's me, the woman with a PhD in physics who has to look up whether the anode or cathode is the positive thing each and every time.
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News are erupting in Germany that the parliament's decision to go through with the nuclear phase-out was partly based on false information that seems to have been deliberately falsified.
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How I fell out of love with academia
(this video was an accidental publication/scheduling blunder😬😬 but well uh, happy Friday I guess)
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I wish that everyone who followed the
#LK99
ups and downs, the "Yes it works!" excitement switching to "It's all wrong" disappointment and back understood that this is how doing science is ALL THE TIME, it's just that often the stakes aren't that high & you don't get to see it.
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I started my first postdoc position in the US in early January 2004, the date was on the scholarship letter that came from a German agency. Alas, the Americans thought 01/09 would be September 1st rather than January 9. They were very surprised to see me.
A map of every country in the world using a MM/DD/YYYY date format.
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This is what happens when a quantum wave-function hits a wall that it does not have enough energy to cross. Part of it goes through anyway. This is the famous "tunnel-effect". A particle without quantum properties cannot do that.
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I've been working on a video about net zero -- what is it, how will we get there, how far are we along the way, etc. Just finished recording. Research has been extremely depressing.
In an nutshell, every serious source (incl the IPCC) agrees that there's no way we'll reach net…
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We talk about rich people and poor people, left-leaning people and right-leaning people, smart people and, well, not so smart people. But I have come to think that to understand what's happening in the world, a much more important distinction is that between people people and…
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About 10 years ago, I was on a PhD committee. It wasn't until the evening before the defence that I made my way through the thesis. The student was not a native English speaker, his grammar was very creative, and it was tough going.
In chapter 2 the English grammar dramatically…
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I really feel like there are a lot of people who cannot grasp why climate change is such a big problem, people who are like "ah, cmon, we'll just all buy air conditioning". You must have seen them here on twitter before: It's the "climate's always been changing" type who thinks…
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I've been doing my weekly Science News for about 4 months now. I have literally read thousands of press releases to that end. The major insight that I have taken away from this is to never, ever, trust a press release.
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Agree with
@elonmusk
here. Some advertisers seem to think supporting this platform means supporting Musk (and his statements) personally, which makes no sense.
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The idea of dark matter is that a single constant (the initial value of the energy density) explains tons of data. It's a simple hypothesis with extraordinary explanatory power. If you had a million wrong sums with a +1 missing, what would you conclude?
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I wish that everyone who condemns the morals of earlier generations would keep in mind that coming generations will almost certainly condemn our morals, too.
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This is a bad idea. Science is not a democracy. The more scientists you poll on a topic the fewer of them will actually understand the topic. Collect arguments, not opinions.
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Got my hair cut yesterday and the woman with the scissors asked what I've been up to lately. I said I wrote a book about physics and she told me that women aren't good at physics because they can't think logically. Possibly I'm a physicist b/c as kid I used to cut my hair myself.
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My mum didn't want to buy me a Barbie doll when I was a child. Eventually I bought one from my pocket money. I really liked the many movable parts. ➡️ Don't be afraid to let your daughter play with a Barbie doll, she might still end up being a physicist.
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Well those who complained yesterday that the physics Nobel was really about engineering should be pleased today that the chemistry Nobel is really about physics.
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Sometimes I come across a paper on an idea I have long ago explained is nonsense, even published a paper laying out why that is so, but people just continue publishing more nonsense on it. Academia is so fucking broken and I'm so fucking tired of it.
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Got another seminar invitation today that said they invited me because I'm a woman. I said no. I want to give seminars to people who are interested in my work, not in my gender.
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Lots of climate activists urgently need to wake up and accept that at this point the only realistic way to limit global warming is massive amounts of carbon dioxide removal, everywhere, all at once. And, yes, that will also make it possible to continue using fossil fuels.
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Reading news about this year's
#NobelPrize
in physics. I haven't yet found a single article (!) that actually gets it right. This is incredibly depressing.
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Scotland ditches its super ambitious climate plans. Many other nations will follow. Most of these plans are bullshit and we all know it. Time to get real.
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My life made a little detour in 2008 when I was shortlisted for a postdoc position at the Santa Fe Institute and went for a job interview. I did at the time seriously consider switching to economics (partly because of recent events). Eventually I just barely didn't get the job,…
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I want this to be real.
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A scary thought I had the other day.
You know how climate scientists keep warning that this ocean circulation in the Atlantic (the AMOC) might collapse and that this could cool mid & north Europe by several degrees Celsius?
Well, if the AMOC collapses (which looks increasingly…
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The black hole information loss paradox really shouldn't be called that way. The word "information" in this context doesn't mean what most people (even in physics) thinks it means. All it means is that the process seems to be fundamentally irreversible: You cannot infer the…
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I don't know why everyone wants me to comment on the nuclear fusion news. It's all well and fine and a great experimental achievement and all, but as I've said before, that's energy in and out of the reaction, not the entire system. Great science, but far from application.
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If I write a paper and you write a paper, each of us has one paper. If we each agree to put each other as a co-author on the paper, now each of us has two papers. Lots of academics figure this out very quickly...
Gonna dig in here.
5 papers written by a group of 5 people shoudn't be worth so much more than the exact same 5 papers each written independently by 1 of the 5 people. But the way we count things, it really is.
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It's Tuesday and someone who calls themselves "ecosocialist" just declared me an "antiscientific climate denier". If you call everyone who you dislike a science denier, the word will soon have lost any meaning, much like "transphobic" and "racist".
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I have to admit, Musk did a really good job at making Zuckerberg look likeable.
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We need to stop obsessing about the perceived shortcomings or virtues of individuals. The relevant changes in human society are systemic. Individuals rise or fall in that system. If it's not one of them, it'll be another.
The real stories aren't Trump or Thunberg or Musk, the…
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In case you're following the news about the supposed Korean superconductor breakthrough, there's some guys on twitch livestreaming their reproduction attempt (though nothing will happen until they've baked the stuff, 9:40 pm Pacific Time)
#LK99
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I seem to have reached an age where physics textbooks become a welcome escape from dystopian headlines
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I know it's weird, but it bothers me that the world is running out of Helium.
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Deciding to phasing out nuclear power is the dumbest thing Germans have done past WWII. It's about time the Green party lives up to its name and realizes that times have changed.
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Getting older has slowed down my brain. It's noticeable. So far, I have found it to be a good thing because it's made it easier for me to focus and my mental health has much improved. But it also worries me, as I don't know how it will further develop.
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This is the maybe most surprising development in theoretical physics I’ve seen for a decade. A well-renown physicist is saying that there’s a mistake in a proof that dates back half a century, and black holes might not actually contain singularities.
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Of course climate change will not cause human extinction. If sufficiently many people die, that'll much reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It's a self-regulating system, isn't that nice?
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No they didn't create a wormhole. It's a bullshit headline that deliberately misinforms the reader and I think you should unfollow and unsubscribe from every outlet that promotes this nonsense.
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Nuclear power is back in fashion in many countries because of its potential to decarbonize even energy-intense industry quickly. In its latest success, Poland has authorized the construction of 24 small nuclear reactors at six sites across the country.
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photon approaches a beam splitter
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You cannot transfer information faster than light with entangled particles or quantum anything. There is literally a theorem that proves it's impossible. Doesn't matter what that website you read and like claimed, it's wrong
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@GretaThunberg
The major reasons Germans are now digging up more coal is that they turned off their nuclear power plants. What will it take for you "environmentalist" to understand that you're shooting into your own foot by lobbying against nuclear.
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By the time you're 35 you should have your own interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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Well since you ask^^
1) Popular science coverage of climate change is extremely weak on communicating the basics. How does the climate system even work, how do we know climate change is man-made, what are the observations, how do we make them, how do we analyse them etc.
Yeah,…
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It never ceases to amaze me how utterly dumb people with a PhD can be.
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In case you watched my video about
#LK99
I changed my mind pretty much immediately after I recorded it because I remembered the thing about flux pinning. (Forgive me, it's been a long time since I had anything to do with superconductors.)
First video of LK-99 Full Levitation, aka flux-pinning
This video was just posted to the Chinese video-sharing site BiliBili and claims to be a highly pure synthesized sample of LK-99.
What is the physical phenomenon behind this and what does it mean?
Levitation of…
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Interview with me.
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Penrose tiles in front of the maths building in Oxford.
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I'm so disappointed that it's 2024 and political leaders are still threatening with nuclear weapons. You'd think that by now they'd be threatening with antimatter bombs or AI assimilation, at least that'd be interesting.
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The biggest problem with climate change is that all our options are costly and uncomfortable. And while we have delayed accepting the ones with the least cost and discomfort, the remaining ones become more costly and uncomfortable by the day.
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I tried to explain the butterfly effect to the 12 year old. She said "that's creepy", turned around, and walked off.
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Of course we will also miss the 2°C goal. If you find that surprising, you've spent too much time listening to delusional "we can do it" activists who seem to not know anything about human nature. If we are very, very lucky we'll stay below 3°C. (But I don't believe it.)
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Economics 101 turned out to be amazingly effective at pissing off pretty much everyone. Somewhat more seriously, I think it's a huge problem that our discussion of capitalism has been reduced to "capitalism=greed=bad".
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If you're one of those suckers who want me to "stick with physics" I suggest that you unfollow me now. I'll comment on whatever I fucking feel like commenting on. And if you have a problem with me using swear words, you can also fuck off.
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Yes, our climate targets will fail because plans to meet them are mostly empty words. They are slightly slowing down the developments though, so still better than nothing. Of course we should keep on trying, and of course activists will keep on insisting the impossible is…
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If you look at this graph and still believe we'll reach net zero by 2050 I'm afraid you're seriously delusional.
Source:
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Why does Sabine talk about climate change so much recently? Because it worries me and I think a lot of people don't take it seriously enough. There isn't much I can do, really, but at the very least I can try to make people think, so that's what I try.
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The possibly best paper title ever
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.
@YouTube
flagged one of my videos on climate science as "not suitable for most advertisers" -- hugely worrisome as it's a strong disincentive for creators to cover the topic. I appealed & hope it's a mistake.
(Ironically, it was the least controversial one.)
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Hard to shake the impression that twitter is basically turning into a pool of climate change deniers🤮. If you're one of them, then please go ahead and comment so I can block you.
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not sure the world needs a generation of physicists who were inspired by building bombs
i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that.
let's get that movie made!
(i think the social network managed to do this for startup founders.)
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The reason I started my YouTube channel was to talk about important developments in science that don't receive the attention they should get. This video is about one of them that has me greatly worried. The problem of the "hot climate models"
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Here we go again. The Gulf Stream is driven by the rotation of the earth. We would literally have to stop the earth from spinning to collapse it. What climate scientists are worried about is that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation stops.
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They all think they are reasonably "questioning the science" while ignoring any explanations that they've got the basics completely wrong and living in a bubble in which others cheer them for doing so.
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Didn't fully realize just how controversial bitcoin mining is. Now I'm very tempted to talk more about it.
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Huh, I hadn't noticed I've made it past 100k followers. Thanks everyone for being here!
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I know many intelligent and insightful philosophers of science. None of them has ever argued with me by complaining that I don't have a PhD in philosophy...
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I'll be on a debate with Michio Kaku
@michiokaku
, Max Tegmark
@tegmark
and Juan Maldacena on July 3rd, which should be fun at least for some of the involved people. More here
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In other news, my project proposal was rejected by the German Research Foundation
@dfg_public
which means that in three months I'll be unemployed. To make it sound better, let's just say I'll be self-employed.
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People in the foundations of physics had pretty much given up wanting true progress when I entered the field 20 years ago. Only thing most of them really seem to want is tenure and appreciation by their peers. It's a meaningless insider game.
@skdh
I acknowledge my desires as you see from what I wrote. But a stagnant community always wants outcomes. It wants SUSY. Or Strings. Or some g-2 muon anomaly. Etc.
I want too. But what I want is mostly just a desire to get the BS out of physics so we can get back to succeeding.
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It's a big problem with all current democracies that members of the parliament are implicitly tasked to evaluate scientific evidence, a job that most of them are not qualified for.
holy shit. Moderators ask for a show of hands of how many candidates believe in human-caused climate change. Not a single candidate raises their hand.
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No, no one has built a wormhole with quantum computers. No, that's totally not a thing. No, no one knows how to do it, no matter how many press releases try to tell you otherwise. And no, I'm not going to link to the damn thing because that'd just make it worse.
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It's 2022 and I still have particle physicists coming at me defending searches for particles they have invented that we have no reason to think exist in the first place. It blows my mind that this ever became accepted practice AND STILL IS.
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