Science | Physics

Why We Don’t Live in a Simulation: A Physicist’s Perspective

Describing reality as a simulation vastly understates the complexities of our world. Here’s why the simulation hypothesis is a lousy one

Is the world simulated like in the Matrix movie? Probably not. (Photo by Markus Spiske)

With the advent of artificial intelligence, and ever-increasing computational power, it seems like there’s no limit to what computers can do. From hyper-realistic 3D rendering to deepfake images and videos (e.g., thispersondoesnotexist), the possibility of fully simulating reality seems to be right around the corner.

All these advances have generated…

Making Sense of Big Data

BigQuery Hack: Flexible Queries For Any Number of Columns

How can we use BigQuery to handle tables with many columns? Here’s a how using scripting and table metadata.

BigQuery is great, but how can it handle tables with many columns? Especially when we don’t even know how many columns there are? (Photo Credit: Ilse Orsel)

BigQuery (BQ) is a Petabyte-ready proprietary Google data warehouse product. Pretty much every day in my work, I use BQ to process billions of rows of data. But sometimes, tricky situations arise. For example, what if my table has a large number of rows and columns? …

Quantum Physics Without All the Weirdness: The Consistent Histories Approach

Quantum physics doesn’t have to be weird. Here, we explore a modern and intuitive interpretation of how quantum systems really work.

Can a (Schrödinger’s) cat in a box be both dead and alive? Common sense says no, and the Consistent Histories Interpretation elaborates how this works (credit: Gerd Altmann)

The word “quantum” is often associated with complicated equations and unintuitive physical phenomena. Yet, our world is unapologetically quantum; quantum physics governs all that exists in the Universe. …

BigQuery Hack: 1000x More Efficient Aggregation Using Materialized View

Learn how to supercharge your aggregation queries using Materialized View

Learn how to supercharge your aggregation query using Materialized View! (Photo by Nana Smirnova on Unsplash)

BigQuery (BQ) is Google’s proprietary data warehouse product, advertised to be ready at the PetaByte (PB) scale. However, it’s not immediately obvious how to scale to PB. In fact, looking at the cost structure of BQ ($5/TB), running PB-scale analytics seems prohibitively expensive, as querying 1PB of data will quickly…

The Arrow of Time: What Thermodynamics Doesn’t Tell You

Many people think the arrow of time can be explained by the increase of entropy; but that’s inadequate. We’ll explore why.

The irreversibility of time is ubiquitous, but it’s not so obvious why that has to be the case (Photo by Aron Visuals)

“An inch of time is an inch of gold”: The transience of time has been known since time immemorial. Unlike trekking across an open plain or diving into the ocean’s depths, one can neither explore around nor remain stationary in time. …

Happy July 4th: or as I Remember It, Higgs Boson Discovery Day

The story of discovery from the perspective of a physicist in training.

During the presentation of the discovery of a “Higgs-like boson” (Credit: CERN Photo, Maximilien Brice, Laurent Egli)

I can still vividly recall the events of July 4th, 2012. The alarm clock woke me up around 3 a.m. I was slightly groggy, but I quickly collected myself, remembering the significance of the moment.

I was still a graduate student at Princeton at the time. There was a celebration…

BigQuery Hack: Compute for Free Using Javascript UDF

Unlike slot machines, BigQuery lets you generate random numbers for FREE! Here’s how to leverage this to perform free computations

Unlike slot machines, BigQuery lets you generate random numbers and run computations for FREE! (Credit: Amit Lahav)

BigQuery provides a convenient and cheap serverless framework to run data analytics and algorithms at scale (you can sign-up for a free account here). However, its SQL frontend might seem like a rather stringent constraint.

No worries, there is a hack out of this: custom User-Defined Functions (UDFs) in Javascript.

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Entropy Is Not Disorder: A Physicist’s Perspective

Entropy is often treated as synonymous to chaos and disorder. But what is it really? In this article, we explore how entropy is more about ignorances.

From the “invisible force” to the “harbinger of chaos,” you may have heard quite a few sensational phrases describing entropy.

But what is it really? The equations—frequently misunderstood—tell a more humbling story.

In many cases, entropy doesn’t capture anything particularly deep about a physical system. …

BigQuery Hack: Create Multiple Tables in One Query

Learn how to create multiple tables (concatenated) in one query

Learn how to create concatenated tables in BigQuery

BigQuery (BQ) has become a popular way of managing large databases and running ad-hoc queries. BQ can be very cost-efficient, as it charges by the amount of data queried ($5/TB), and not the amount of computation time. …