The laws of physics underlying everyday life are, at one level of description, completely known, and can be summarized in a single elegant—if quite complex—equation. That's the claim physicist Sean Carroll, an SFI Fractal ...
Quantum Physics
Jan 17, 2022
18
1501
We can't understand polarization unless we analyze it as a complex system, argue SFI External Professor Scott Page (University of Michigan) and co-author Delia Baldassarri in a commentary for a special feature on the dynamics ...
Political science
Dec 16, 2021
0
2
Polarization is dangerous for democracy. Though the U.S. Constitution was designed to harness rivalry with a diverse, redundant, and modular set of institutions, if that rivalry curdles into the belief that your competitors ...
Political science
Dec 16, 2021
0
3
Encouraging interactions between people on opposite ends of the political spectrum may not be the best way to foster tolerance in a polarized nation.
Political science
Dec 8, 2021
0
9
What lies at the root of inequality in human communities? It is a question that has captivated human beings for millennia. Is there a scientific method to find out what makes all the difference?
Archaeology
Nov 12, 2021
0
4
While Rolf Landauer was working at IBM in the early 1960s, he had a startling insight about how heat, entropy, and information were connected. Landauer realized that manipulating information releases heat and increases entropy, ...
General Physics
Nov 5, 2021
1
298
According to the second law of thermodynamics, the total entropy of a closed process can increase or stay the same, but never decrease. The second law guarantees, for example, that an egg can wobble off a table and leave ...
General Physics
Nov 5, 2021
6
2867
Mathematicians who study dynamical systems often focus on the rules of attraction. Namely, how does the choice of the starting point affect where a system ends up? Some systems are easier to describe than others. A swinging ...
Mathematics
Nov 4, 2021
0
58
Higher education in the United States spans five orders of magnitude, from the tiny institutions like the 26-person Deep Springs College in the high desert of eastern California to behemoths, like Arizona State University's ...
Education
Nov 1, 2021
0
161
Consider two stories: the first, about a boy who gets all the attention. He's the cool kid in class who comes from a well-known family. He seems to soar through life. When he errs, few seem to care. The more popular he is, ...
Social Sciences
Oct 27, 2021
0
12
