In a conversation with Curt Jaimungal on his Theories of Everything podcast, David Deutsch made a claim that really piqued my interest. Einstein, he argued, would not survive the modern academic funding system. Not because his ideas were bad — obviously — but because the system is structurally incapable of recognizing the
It is amazing how many different definitions there are for science, considering its enormous position in modern society. And as with many things, inconsistent definitions, or the failure to recognize the use of different definitions, seems responsible for many, many disagreements. So here is my definition of science. The minimization
On Friday April 17th, we hosted Professor Krishnaswami Alladi, a long-time professor of mathematics at the University of Florida. In the landscape of modern number theory, some mathematicians produce results, while others help preserve and extend intellectual legacies. Professor Alladi stands out for doing both, with a particular commitment to
When we think about time, we usually imagine a steady flow — a one-directional progression from past to future, fixed and irreversible. This intuition feels almost self-evident. Yet within modern physics, this picture begins to fracture. Under certain conditions, time may not simply flow forward; it may bend, loop, and return.
When we think of nothing, we usually imagine emptiness — a space devoid of matter, motion, and meaning. Yet at the heart of contemporary physics, this everyday intuition collapses. In the quantum world, nothing is not a barren void; it is a dynamic foundation, alive with possibility. What physicists call zero-point
My wife and I spent the day in Istanbul, mostly on foot, mostly moving without any particular plan except to see the Hagia Sophia. Anyone who has read even a little about the city knows that the building is treated almost like a condensed version of the region’s history.
You may have never heard of Federico Ardila-Mantilla, but let me just introduce you to his four axioms from the project he calls Todos Cuentan. This approach really resonates so strongly with us. We didn’t create the axioms, but we admire them and see them as a thoughtful foundation
What if the universe is fundamentally relational rather than built from isolated parts? That question appears in many traditions, but one of the most striking expressions is Indra’s net. It is believed to come from the Avatamsaka Sutra (and later writings in the Huayan school of Buddhism), where reality
Prime numbers — 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and so on — are simple to define but endlessly strange. They’re the indivisible building blocks of arithmetic, yet their pattern across the number line feels almost random. For centuries, mathematicians have suspected that there’s a deeper structure behind that apparent chaos.
What if the whole universe — space, time, and everything in it — were a quantum object? That’s the question behind quantum cosmology, a field that applies the strange rules of quantum mechanics to the entire cosmos. Einstein’s general relativity explains how the universe expands and how gravity shapes space
For generations, peer review has been the backbone of academic publishing. It's the mechanism that decides which ideas are “worthy” of print. Most of us who left academia have lived inside that system. We would wait for months to get a referee report, navigating opaque verdicts, and often
There’s an audacious idea that's been batted around the physics and philosophy circles for years now. It says the universe didn’t need to begin, didn’t need to be caused, and didn’t even need to be made of matter in the first place. Instead, everything