Thursday, October 16, 2025
NASA Is Considering Nuking An Asteroid
Late last year, an asteroid made global headlines as astronomers discovered it had a 1% chance of hitting the Earth in 2032. That chance has since gone to almost zero, but astronomers say there’s now a 4% chance of it hitting the Moon. NASA is now considering two possible options for protecting our moon: deflecting the asteroid, or blowing it up with a nuke. Let’s take a look.
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Quantum Healing Might Be Real – But Not Like We Thought
Quantum biology is an area of research at the intersection of biology, chemistry, and physics which examines how organisms use quantum effects in their bodily functions. The field is quickly gaining momentum in the scientific community, and a recent (not-yet-peer-reviewed) study has revealed how quantum mechanics play a role in wound healing. Let’s take a look.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Looks Increasingly Weird
Our solar system has an interstellar visitor. It’s an object called 3I-Atlas, and is just the third interstellar object to enter our system. It’s shedding nickel and iron at “exceptional” rates, emits “unusual” amounts of carbon dioxide and water, and changes the polarization of light in a way “unprecedented among asteroids and comets.” Let’s take a look at this object, and answer your biggest question: is this some sort of alien tech?
Sunday, October 12, 2025
The Webb Telescope Just Observed Faster Than Light Signals
Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope observed signals that moved faster than the speed of light. Does this mean that faster-than-light travel is real? If not, what explains the phenomenon the telescope just observed? And how could information travel faster than light, for real? Let’s take a look.
Saturday, October 11, 2025
Why is Everyone Suddenly Talking about Nuclear Fusion?
Recently, the hype around nuclear fusion has reached new peaks. Government officials are promising that fusion reactors will be powering the grid within the decade, fusion startups are receiving billions of dollars in funding, and other companies are selling off energy that they haven’t yet produced. Let’s take a look.
Thursday, October 09, 2025
How AI Is Replacing Mathematicians
AI is threatening to take over multiple jobs currently fueled by human labor. It appears that the world of mathematics is no exception – a few recent advances in AI’s math capabilities seem to indicate that mathematicians might go the way of human calculators and find themselves fully replaced by proof-writing algorithms. Let’s take a look.
Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Is Gravity Just an Illusion Caused by Entropy? New Theory Explains How.
Over the past few decades, the idea that gravity is not a fundamental interaction but is instead caused by the increase of entropy has become increasingly popular in the world of physics. Today, we have a paper from a group of physicists who claim that entropic gravity might be the result of space being full of qubits. Let’s take a look.
Tuesday, October 07, 2025
The 2025 Physics Nobel Prize: Quite A Surprise
The 2025 Physics Nobel Prize was awarded for macroscopic quantum tunneling. What is this and what is it good for. I have a brief summary.
Sunday, October 05, 2025
Does Acceleration Create Particles from Nothing? These Physicists Say they can test it
For half a century, physicists have wondered whether the vacuum is actually made of particles, and falls apart under acceleration. Most physicists think it does: It is called the “Unruh effect” after Bill Unruh who developed the mathematics for it. Now, researchers say they’ve come up with a way to test this effect. Really? I’ve had a look at the paper.
Saturday, October 04, 2025
He Just Wants You To Survive: Bryan Johnson's Strange New Philosophy
In today's video I have a look at Bryan Johnson's quest for longevity and his philosophy of life. It's much stranger than you might think and is all about what comes after the artificial intelligence revolution. I am broadly speaking sympathetic to his ideas though I do have a few reservations.
Friday, October 03, 2025
How long will it take to solve the 5 big physics problems?
Progress in the foundations of physics is moving slowly. And yet it moves. Today I look at the five biggest problems in physics, what their status is, and how long it will take to solve them: quantum gravity, dark matter, dark energy, the origin of the universe, and a theory of everything.
Wednesday, October 01, 2025
Academia's Scam Problem is Getting Worse
Academic research is deteriorating at an increasing pace. We’ve talked several times previously about how organized fraud is spreading in science, and today I have some recent stories that document this is becoming a global problem which has now reached Europe. America, brace yourself, soon this will hit you, too.
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Is the recent global warming a “termination shock”?
You might know the term “Termination shock” from science fiction, but recently it has appeared in real world headlines. It refers to a jump in global temperatures that occurs when small particles (aerosols) are removed from the Earth’s atmosphere. In science fiction, this happens when we stop geoengineering efforts, but we’re experiencing this in the real world now because we’ve been cleaning up air pollution. Climate scientists argue over how large the effect is. Let’s take a look.
Saturday, September 27, 2025
In which I lose faith in quantum computing
Quantum computing is one of the most anticipated new technologies on the horizon, with many quantum computing firms earning themselves billion-dollar valuations. In today’s video I explain why I strongly doubt that the technology will ever have a sensible return on investment.
Friday, September 26, 2025
Why People Aren’t Having Kids & How To Fix It
People in Western countries are having fewer kids, making politicians worried about the future of their nations’ populations. Let’s take a look at how bad the problem is, what governments are doing to fix it, and why it’s happening.
Thursday, September 25, 2025
DNA Data Storage 5 Years Away, New Report Says
DNA is more than just a cool little shape that stores genetic information inside your cells. It’s actually a remarkably useful molecule which researchers are trying to use for a wide variety of mind-blowing applications – these include storing data, building neural networks, and creating materials for specific applications. Let’s have a look at the future of DNA innovations.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
This New Time Crystal is Visible
Normal crystals have their structures repeat across space, while time crystals also have their structures repeat across time. This new phenomenon has attracted a lot of attention among physicists in the past decade. In a new study, material scientists report they have created liquid time crystals, opening up new possibilities for practical applications of the fascinating phenomenon. Let’s take a look.
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Did Graphene Just Break A Fundamental Law?
Graphene is a sort of miracle material which is exceptionally strong and conducts electricity and heat better than most other materials. In a new study, physicists claim that a super-cleaned version of graphene breaks a fundamental law of nature and could even be used to somehow study black holes. Sounds intriguing, let’s take a look.
Monday, September 22, 2025
Quantum Computers Could Test Free Will, Researchers Claim
In quantum physics, the idea that observed correlations between particles come from the way that the measurement device affects the particles is called a violation of “Measurement Independence” or “Superdeterminism.” The authors of a new paper claim that the more complicated one makes an experiment, the larger the violation of measurement independence must be to explain observations. They conclude that quantum computers can test free will. Wait what? I’ve had a look at the paper.
Saturday, September 20, 2025
Researchers Warn of “Musk Illusion” That Brain Can be Sped Up
These days, if you have internet speeds that run in the kilobits per second range, accessing most things online is probably painfully slow. But according to new research by biologists from Caltech, human brains run at just a fraction of those speeds – they estimate that we process information at just 10 bits per second. They warn of the “Musk Illusion” that new technology could speed up our thinking and say it won’t happen. Let’s find out.
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