Video Description
Light is the fastest thing we know. It’s so fast that we measure enormous distances by how long it takes for light to travel them. In one year, light travels about 6,000,000,000,000 miles, a distance we call one light year. To give you an idea of just how far this is, the Moon, which took …
Light seconds, light years, light centuries: How to measure extreme distances – Yuan-Sen Ting 더 보기 »
Many people in the United States and Latin America have grown up celebrating the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage, but was he an intrepid explorer who brought two worlds together or a ruthless exploiter who brought colonialism and slavery? And did he even discover America at all? It’s time to put Columbus on the stand …
Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is one of the founders of quantum mechanics, but he’s most famous for something he never actually did: a thought experiment involving a cat. He imagined taking a cat and placing it in a sealed box with a device that had a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next …
Schrödinger’s cat: A thought experiment in quantum mechanics – Chad Orzel 더 보기 »
Albert Einstein played a key role in launching quantum mechanics through his theory of the photoelectric effect but remained deeply bothered by its philosophical implications. And though most of us still remember him for deriving E=MC^2, his last great contribution to physics was actually a 1935 paper, coauthored with his young colleagues Boris Podolsky and …
Einstein’s brilliant mistake: Entangled states – Chad Orzel 더 보기 »
We usually think of rhythm as an element of music, but it’s actually found everywhere in the world around us, from the ocean tides to our own heartbeats, rhythm is essentially an event repeating regularly over time. Even the ticking of a clock itself is a sort of rhythm. But for musical rhythm, a steady …
The sun is shining. The birds are singing. It looks like the start of another lovely day. You’re walking happily in the park, when, “Ah-choo!” A passing stranger has expelled mucus and saliva from their mouth and nose. You can feel the droplets of moisture land on your skin, but what you can’t feel are …
How do germs spread (and why do they make us sick)? – Yannay Khaikin and Nicole Mideo 더 보기 »
For most of us, two degrees Celsius is a tiny difference in temperature, not even enough to make you crack a window. But scientists have warned that as CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, an increase in the Earth’s temperature by even this amount can lead to catastrophic effects all over the world. How can …
Is our climate headed for a mathematical tipping point? – Victor J. Donnay 더 보기 »
Would mathematics exist if people didn’t? Since ancient times, mankind has hotly debated whether mathematics was discovered or invented. Did we create mathematical concepts to help us understand the universe around us, or is math the native language of the universe itself, existing whether we find its truths or not? Are numbers, polygons and equations …
One of the most remarkable aspects of the human brain is its ability to recognize patterns and describe them. Among the hardest patterns we’ve tried to understand is the concept of turbulent flow in fluid dynamics. The German physicist Werner Heisenberg said, “When I meet God, I’m going to ask him two questions: why relativity …
The unexpected math behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” – Natalya St. Clair 더 보기 »
“Sorry, my phone died.” “It’s nothing. I’m fine.” “These allegations are completely unfounded.” “The company was not aware of any wrongdoing.” “I love you.” We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day, and we spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect them, from medieval torture devices to polygraphs, blood-pressure …
