Sabine Hossenfelder's Blog

Small Nuclear Reactors are Coming --- Against All Odds

Small modular nuclear reactors are supposed to fix the problem of conventional nuclear reactors being too expensive and time-consuming to build. But we’ve been hearing about how promising they are for 15 years now. So where are they? A report that just appeared sheds light on what happened.

I Worry AI Might Become Conscious – And We Won’t Notice

AI is changing the world – how we work, how we write, and how we consume media. But it doesn’t seem like many people are interested in how AI is learning to think about itself. I am convinced that eventually AI will become conscious and I am beginning to worry that we simply wouldn’t notice because no one is watching out for it.

This is a special time in human history

In today's video I want to talk about why I am optimistic about the future and why I think that some major technological breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering are just around to corner.

Scientists may have detected dark matter.

A physicist from Japan claims that he has found the first direct evidence for dark matter in very highly energetic gamma-ray emissions from the centre of our galaxy. Let’s have a look at the paper.

Huge Gravity Anomaly Discovered!

Scientists just found a massive 7,000 kilometer-long gravitational anomaly off the coast of Africa in data from a NASA satellite. The anomaly occurred from 2006 to 2008 and has now disappeared. What caused it? Let’s have a look.

All of Nature Needs only One Constant, Physicists Prove

Physics has 7 base units: seconds, metres, kilograms, amperes, kelvins, moles, and candela. Of those, we technically only need the first three to calculate the latter four. But according to a new paper, we can actually calculate the first three as well – from a single constant. Let’s take a look.

Odds Are The Universe is Full Of Intelligent Life, Mathematician Finds

Why haven’t we heard from aliens? That’s a question that sounds simple but turns into a mess the moment you try to answer it. Recently, a mathematician tried to simplify the equation by trying to calculate the odds that we’re the only intelligent life in the universe – according to his math, we shouldn’t be. Let’s take a look.

It Took Physicists 50 Years To Prove Einstein Right About This

Over a century ago, Einstein wrote his theories of special relativity and general relativity. Within those theories, he predicted that, as an object moves faster, it slightly contracts in length. However, 50 years later Penrose and Terrell predicted that what one would see is instead that the object is rotated. In a recent experiment, physicists proved that this Penrose-Terrell effect is actually

Is it pointless now to fight climate change?

I’d much rather only bring you good news, but I feel like I can’t just be quiet about this unfolding climate disaster. I no longer believe that we are able to keep the damage manageable by reducing emissions, and so all signs point to geoengineering. Remarkably enough, most climate scientists now think the same. Let’s have a look.

AI Is Suddenly Surprisingly Good At Physics

LLMs aren’t able to actually use logic or reasoning to reach thought-out conclusions. Despite that, several startups plan on using the current systems to do serious physics research. And some physicists, including myself, have used AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude to write papers. The situation is changing incredibly fast. Let’s take a look at how LLMs might be improving at physics, and the