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How to Design a Perpetual Energy Machine
This April, find the fatal flaws in two paradoxical claims — one about a perpetual source of energy and the other about whether you will ever see the solution to these puzzles.
Solution: ‘Is It Turtles All the Way Down?’
While the age-old chicken-and-egg paradox is easily answered, the question of infinite regress in physics is far from resolved.
Did the Chicken Come First or Is It Turtles All the Way Down?
The apparent paradox of the chicken and the egg smells like “turtles all the way down.” This puzzle shows how biology and physics can overcome infinite regress.
Solution: ‘Natural Law and Elegant Math’
While mathematics gives us elegant explanations for many physical phenomena, real-world situations often require us to scramble through dense numerical thickets.
Does Natural Law Need Elegant Mathematics?
Many of us are drawn to beauty in mathematics. But is that the way nature really works?
Solution: ‘Randomness From Determinism’
Readers’ modifications of a bean machine showed how deterministic laws are capable of producing random-seeming behavior.
How Randomness Can Arise From Determinism
Playing with a simple bean machine illustrates how deterministic laws can produce probabilistic, random-seeming behavior.
Solution: ‘Perfect Randomness’
Is nature inherently random or is perfect randomness just an illusion based on our ignorance?
The Puzzling Search for Perfect Randomness
Does objective, perfect randomness exist, or is randomness merely a product of our ignorance?