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Physics Of Universal Bondage: The Ends of the Past
Bruce Gordon
[long_description] Could the universe have existed forever? Bruce Gordon challenges the possibility of an eternal past, revisiting the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem and exploring the limits of cyclic and emergent-universe models. Drawing on thermodynamics, quantum theory, and spectral analysis, he argues that every known path to a universe without a beginning ultimately encounters a formidable obstacle.
Philosophy The Perpetual Rose and Its Reader
Dr. Fateh Bazerbachi
[short_description] Fateh Bazerbachi reads David Berlinski’s The Perpetual Rose as an inquiry into mathematics, naming, and consciousness. Moving through Kant, Gödel, Kripke, and ancient traditions, he asks whether the witnessing mind ultimately escapes the catalogue of things it names.
Mathematics AI will not make mathematicians obsolete
Sergiu Klainerman
[short_description] Sergiu Klainerman examines what AI’s recent mathematical breakthroughs really mean for mathematicians. Revisiting the Navier–Stokes problem, he distinguishes exhaustive machine search from the deeper human task of deciding which questions matter and what meaningful answers should look like.

Dispatches

Researchers have directly imaged electron and lattice temperatures in nanoscale conductors, revealing thermoelectric cooling behavior beyond conventional near-equilibrium descriptions. The experiments identify an important role for the Thomson effect when electrons and the surrounding crystal lattice remain at substantially different temperatures ...Read more

France's Mistral AI has released the weights of Mistral Large 4, a trillion-parameter model emphasizing software development and cybersecurity. Independent testing places it among the strongest open-weight coding models, strengthening Europe's ability to deploy advanced AI independently of proprietary American systems ...Read more

Astronomers studying the superluminous supernova SN 2024afav predicted that its increasingly rapid brightness oscillations would reverse direction. New observations reveal precisely such a reversal, near the predicted time. The result supports a model involving a precessing disk around a newborn magnetar ...Read more

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Recent Articles

The Millennium Problem
Amélie Dupont
[long_description] Amélie Dupont examines how an OpenAI mathematical model resolved the Navier–Stokes Millennium Problem by constructing a smooth external force that drives a fluid from rest to finite-time singularity. Moving from vorticity and vortex stretching to oscillatory disturbances and shear amplification, Dupont explains how unbounded velocity can coexist with finite energy and argues that the construction answers one of the alternatives explicitly permitted in Charles Fefferman’s original formulation of the problem.
The Film That Launched a Thousand Tweets
David Boos
[long_description] Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has ignited fierce debate over casting, historical fidelity, and the politics of adaptation. David Boos argues that the film’s real betrayal lies somewhere far deeper.
On Doing Otherwise
David Berlinski
[long_description] The claim that to act freely is to be able to do otherwise has become the reigning assumption of the free-will debate, and the lever by which determinists such as Robert Sapolsky, in Determined, dismiss free will as an illusion. David Berlinski subjects the claim to a sustained logical analysis, tracing what "could have done otherwise" must mean across its modal and causal commitments, and reaches a contrary conclusion: that acting freely is a matter of how one acts, not of what one might instead have done.
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Letters to the Editors

Mechanical Thinking
Sylvia Berryman
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] Could a single implement, such as the Antikythera mechanism, change the understanding of the cosmos? Sylvia Berryman is wary of viewing mechanistic pictures as unique keys to historical worldviews.
Archaeology and Armageddon
Erin Hall
[short_description] In the interwar period, a team from the University of Chicago oversaw an archaeological dig in Megiddo, modern day Israel. The dig’s findings, and shortcomings, proved foundational for archaeology.
A Riddling Mirror of Nature
Paul Keyser
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] When studying the origins and nature of the Antikythera mechanism, Paul Keyser cautions scholars to be mindful not to “retroject things seen or deduced from one era back into times well prior.”
Translating Theory into Technology
Paul Cartledge
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] Paul Cartledge describes how the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism has challenged long-held views about the ability of Greek scholars in antiquity to translate theory into technology.
The First Computer
Kyriakos Efstathiou
reply by Mike Edmunds
[short_description] Was the Antikythera mechanism the first computer in world history? Kyriakos Efstathiou makes the case for the predictive powers of the device, which have now been tested in detail.
Neither Denouncing nor Celebrating
Richard Noakes
reply by David Kordahl
[short_description] Is scientific advancement entrapped by its historical context, or could history be the driving force behind such progress? Richard Noakes and David Kordahl discuss.
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From the Archives
State of the Union
Michael Fumento
[long_description] Is fusion really the energy of the future? Michael Fumento explores some of the many false starts in the development of controlled nuclear fusion and considers its current prospects, including inertial and magnetic confinement, inertial electrostatic confinement, and compact reactors.
The Fourth State of Water
Marc Henry
[short_description] What is water that is not ice, liquid, or vapor? Marc Henry explains the unfolding discovery of water’s elusive fourth state, which could bring a revolution for biology and medicine.
From Conception to Kamchatka
Joshua Socolar
[short_description] In The Second Kind of Impossible, Paul Steinhardt tells the story of his first encounters with quasicrystals and his subsequent decades-long search for a naturally formed example.
Divine Medicine
George Scialabba
[short_description] In reviewing A Natural History of Beer by Rob DeSalle & Ian Tattersall, George Scialabba summarizes beer’s story, including its major historical moments, the science of its components, and its future.
The Concept of Self
Neeraja Sankaran
[short_description] In 1960, Macfarlane Burnet became Australia’s second winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Neeraja Sankaran examines his wide body of work and enduring significance, both at home and abroad.
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