The Boltzmann brain hypothesis suggests that our memories are nothing more than unlikely fluctuations. According to the theory, the past and the future don’t exist—only the present does. Researchers ...

Science popularization has its legends and heroes, just like any other field, though I’ve heard no plans as yet to open a Hall of Fame. Should that day come, one of the first inductees would ...

To many physicists, “Tsallis entropy” has been a revolution in statistical mechanics. To others, it is merely a useful fitting technique. Jon Cartwright tries to make sense of this world of disorder. ...

Ludwig Boltzmann is best known as the Austrian physicist who wrote down the statistical formula for entropy, but if the physics thing hadn’t worked out, he would have made an excellent travel writer.

A new analysis of the “Boltzmann brain” paradox suggests our memories and sense of reality could, in theory, be random illusions born from cosmic chaos. By uncovering circular reasoning in how ...

In a recent paper, SFI Professor David Wolpert, SFI Fractal Faculty member Carlo Rovelli, and physicist Jordan Scharnhorst examine a longstanding, paradoxical thought experiment in statistical physics ...