Last week's virtual demo of D-Wave’s proof-of-concept quantum computer has of course been greeted with quite a bit of skepticism. Regardless, any developments that increase our knowledge – or simply ...

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the book by Douglas Adams, a machine made interstellar travel possible by nudging nature toward extremely improbable, but not impossible, events. A new ...

In view of the success of Douglas Adams’s Infinite Improbability Drive, which allows instant access to all points of his universe, it seems to me that a little tweaking could produce a Totally ...

You mention the line of argument which says that since our early universe had low entropy, and since this is inherently unlikely, it must be one among a multiverse of other universes (28 April, p 33).