Fundamental Rubik’s Cube Problem Is Nearly Solved

…used in his fascinating Cube Explorer software (which you can download for free). However, to produce his most recent results, Rokicki had to head over to Sony Pictures Imageworks. Sony lent Rokicki their super-computers during the idle-time between productions, which allowed him to grind through cube positions much more quickly. Yes, the very same computers that brought you Spiderman 3 now bring you “God’s Algorithm” for the Rubik’s Cube. Unfortu…

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Stop commercializing academic publishing

and journals, you turned around and sold that content at commercially high prices. You actively prevented the dissemination of scholarly knowledge. On the other hand, by making half a million scholarly books publicly available, Library.nu actively enabled it. The end of this service amounted to a huge loss for the scholarly community. Academics and publishers alike are beginning to recognize that we have a problem. Fortunately, there are many othe…

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Soul Physics: Best of 2009

…Positions on the Passage of Time. An illustrated catalogue of your options. Group Structural Realism (Part 4). The last of a 4-part argument that there’s little hope for this kind of view. Best wishes for 2010! — Bryan Soul Physics is authored by Bryan W. Roberts. Thanks for subscribing. Want more Soul Physics? Try the Soul Physics Tweet….

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Could You Have Defended Galileo?

…ies fall. But you can still try to put upper and lower bounds on motion in free fall, in order to get your result. How can the law of uniform velocity provide bounds on the time it takes for a body to fall? On Monday, I’ll elaborate on that last hint. (It’s actually an interesting problem all by itself.) Later, I’ll sketch a little bit of the first answer to this challenge, which was given by Pierre de Fermat in an obscure letter to Gassendi, arou…

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Penrose in Pittsburgh

…aeons in Penrose’s Conformal-Cyclic-Cosmology — indeed, this is apparently required in order to glue the aeons together smoothly. A remaining question, of course, is whether or not this is related in any useful way to the Boltzmann entropy on the scale of every-day objects… Second: the black-hole information paradox. As I’ve ranted before: black hole evaporation isn’t really a paradox, but rather a case where many physicists are demanding a more “…

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