The universe is confoundingly simple, but understanding it is nowhere near easy. From the smallest to the grandest scales, physics stands at a crossroads.
At the opening panel of Convergence on Monday morning, leading thinkers gave a glimpse into their slices of the scientific realm.
Cosmologist Paul Steinhardt said science is still searching for a “good story” that pulls together black holes, dark matter, and dark energy.
From dark matter to the Standard Model, theory and experiment are butting up against unknowns. The path ahead promises to be rich, and demands a new wave of exploratory experiments.
And between the two, on the “human scale,” Matthew Fisher says quantum computing might already exist in the capacity of the human brain.
“Evolution has had 2.5 billion years to become absolutely expert at manipulating things on the nanoscale. I’d like to know if our brain is a quantum computer... that uses 'spooky action at a distance,' that uses quantum entanglement."