Linked Questions
16 questions linked to/from Is limited computational capacity a fundamental obstacle?
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Does physics explain why the laws and behaviors observed in biology are as they are?
Does physics explain why the laws and behaviors observed in biology are as they are? I feel like biology and physics are completely separate and although physics determine what's possible in biology, ...
user236241
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6
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Do photons gain mass when they travel through glass?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that photons slow down when travelling through glass. Does this mean they gain mass? Otherwise, what happens to extra kinetic energy?
I understand now ...
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Where does the irreversiblity came from if all the fundamental interaction are reversible?
There isn't too much to explain:
We know that all fundamental forces are reversible then where does the irreversibility come from?
Edit: The following is edit based on comments:
Consider a block of ...
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What are the primary obstacles to solve the many-body problem in quantum mechanics?
(This is a simple question, with likely a rather involved answer.)
What are the primary obstacles to solve the many-body problem in quantum mechanics?
Specifically, if we have a Hamiltonian for a ...
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4
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Why can't we run the laws of physics backwards and forwards in time infinitely?
So assuming we know all the laws of physics in differential equation form, and I have an estimate for the current large scale state of the universe (whatever standard assumptions/data cosmologists use ...
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Is Brownian motion truly random?
We say that Brownian motion is caused by the random collisions of particles. But let's consider an ionized gas; in that case, there's a nonzero net charge on the atom. Doesn't this mean the ...
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3
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Can we fully simulate molecular physics?
Is our knowledge of physics complete enough to achieve fully natural simulations of molecular interactions in a computer simulation? How far off are we?
Reason for question: I wonder how far we are ...
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6
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Scientific evidence of reductionism
There are claims that the standard model is a theory which explains almost all phenomenon that we see in the world. I am wondering what scientific evidence backs this claim?
Specifically, there is a ...
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3
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Scientific determinism and the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
I'm reading Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking. In chapter 4, it discusses whether we can predict the future. As many have known that Laplace put forth that if we knew the positions ...
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1
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What are the objections to stochastic quantum mechanics? [closed]
I recently discovered the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is different from the De Broglie-Bohm theory The best article I found on it was very much a comparison of the two by ...
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Information content needed to predict a physical coin flip perfectly [closed]
Let's just take a typical coin flip where a person flips the coin off their finger into the air (some reasonable distance, say 30-40 cm or so), catches it, and opens their hand to reveal one side face ...
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2
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1
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In-principle, can we precisely simulate physics in reverse?
A naïve question, I'll admit, about entropy and the various arrows of time.
If we have as input the position or momentum (the wave function, I suppose) of every particle, would it then be possible to ...
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Electrons and atoms
Electrons do not follow fixed orbits around an atom's nucleus but exist within "clouds of probability" (orbitals), where there is a high chance of finding them. As one extends the search for ...
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1
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1
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Does statistical mechanics imply that the universe is probabilistic?
Statistical mechanics says that a system will evolve to a state of higher entropy (i.e. states with higher number of microstates) simply because it is overwhelmingly more probable than evolving to a ...
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0
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Could one, in principle, make any predictions using the wavefunction of the universe? [closed]
Do physicists talk about the wavefunction of the universe? What does that wavefunction even mean? Usually, wavefunctions describe probabilities of measurements of a system. But in this case, every ...
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Can we calculate everything with an exact theory? [closed]
This question is not opinion based:
If we have found the fundamental theory of how our universe works and we have no limitation for our Supercomputer:
Could we then calculate everything/ every ...
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