Ask A Genius 1500: Information Pressure, Unsung Physics Heroes, and Nobel Prize Politics
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/20
Rick Rosner explains his idea of “everything eats its tail” as matter under extreme pressure becoming degenerate, then differentiating into new states—essentially a universe as an information processor. Time itself emerges from this unfolding differentiation. He compares the incompleteness of his own ideas to George Gamow, who conceptualized the Big Bang before all the math was worked out. Asked about unsung physics heroes, Rosner points to Rosalind Franklin, whose crystallography enabled Crick and Watson’s DNA breakthrough but who died before Nobel recognition. He critiques the Nobel system as topical, political, and inconsistent, likening it to basketball MVP awards or Obama’s premature Peace Prize.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You said, “Everything fucking eats its tail. Not as a general principle.” What did you mean in that schtick?
Rick Rosner: Look: matter under pressure becomes degenerate. Under super-duper pressure—black hole, neutron star pressure—it gets all the information squeezed out of it.
Right? Moreover, as that matter differentiates itself from a degenerate state, that is the equivalent of the beginning of a new universe. The different ticks of the clock as it differentiates—that is time. That is the deal. Those are the broad strokes for the universe as an information processor.
You have the arrow of time. You have some big-bang-like shit going on. It is big-banging, but not just one single Big Bang. I do not know. I am getting old and lazy now, so I should think about it more. However, there it is.
You could call it “information pressure”—degenerate matter differentiating itself. However, it is not a want. It is just what happens as time unfolds. It does not drive time as much as it is time.
That is near T=0. However, the process continues in a mature universe—long-range particles traversing space, losing mass as they share information across the universe. That is the whole fucking thing.
Jacobsen: How would you characterize this as ‘solving physics’? Moreover, how would you characterize it as solving math—like physics when the full math has not been fleshed out?
Rosner: Well, then it has not been fully solved. However, there it is. Look—George Gamow. He was not the best at math, but he thought his ass off. If you cornered him in a bar in 1956—or not even cornered him, just walked up at a party—and said, “Hey, I hear you have got a comprehensive theory of the origin and unfolding of the universe,” Gamow, half-drunk, would say:
“Yeah, I have got this whole thing where we have got nucleosynthesis, the universe starting at a point and exploding outward. In the first microseconds, this happens, then other stuff happens. There are a bunch of details we have not worked out yet. However, I think the universe originated with a Big Bang, and it accounts for the state of matter as we see it now. I do not have all the math, but that is the deal.”
Moreover, he was right. He figured that out. Even though he struggled with math and had to rely on others—Gamow and Hans Bethe, maybe others—they laid it out. Even though they did not have the math fully worked out, they had the idea.
Jacobsen: Who is an unsung physics hero?
Rosner: The most “unsung” legendary case is Rosalind Franklin. She was a crystallographer. She shot X-rays at crystals of unknown composition and configuration and created scatter patterns. Crick and Watson used those patterns to deduce that DNA was a double helix.
She probably would have gotten the Nobel Prize, except she died before they awarded it. Moreover, you cannot be dead and get a Nobel Prize. Also, they only give it to three people maximum.
So they gave it to Maurice Wilkins, another guy in their lab. Rosalind Franklin was dead, so the credit devolved onto him. Would he still have gotten it if she had been alive? I do not know. However, it took a couple of decades before she got proper recognition for her role in that discovery.
Moreover, I do not know who the other unsung people in physics are—because, well, they are unsung. However, given how the Nobel Prize works, I am sure there are plenty. Because you cannot be dead, and there can only be a maximum of three awardees.
Also, the Nobel Prize is topical and political. Something may look hot at the time, like it is opening up a gateway to everything, and then ten years later, maybe not so much. The physics prize reflects that, too, but I am not sure. I have not read a detailed critique of the Nobel Prize in physics to know whether they are generally on target.
The Nobel Peace Prize, and probably literature and economics too, can be controversial. It is a guessing game, akin to an MVP award in basketball. Even that is controversial because players have different skill sets, but at least they are playing the same game. In physics, people are not even playing the same game; they are working with different methods in different subfields. However, you only get one prize per year.
So, I do not know what a historian of science would say about the accuracy of the Nobel Prizes overall, but I am guessing the verdict would be mixed. Like Obama—he got the Peace Prize in 2009 just for not being George W. Bush. He had barely been president and had not done anything yet. It was more of a hopeful prize, like: “We will give it to him and hope he lives up to it.” That is a weird way to give an award.
And then he went ahead and made some blunders. He pulled the U.S. out of Iraq, which allowed the civil war there to continue. Lance will rant about that—he blames all Democratic presidents for everything and gives Republicans a pass.
George W. Bush invaded Iraq without a plan to maintain peace, thinking it would all be kumbaya after Hussein was taken out. It was not. Hundreds of thousands died. Then things were halfway stabilized, and Obama pulled out prematurely, leading to hundreds of thousands more deaths.
And then there was Gaddafi in Libya. They took him out because he was a brutal dictator. However, without him, Libya became a failed state. Tens of thousands die there each year from rampant criminality. Libya is also a gateway to the Mediterranean, so countless people travelling from Africa to Europe pass through, only to be murdered, enslaved, or held for ransom. So, Obama’s record has some significant blemishes.
However, I cannot tell you who is unsung in physics.
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