Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Storytelling Beats Facts in Social Media Mental Health Battle
The idea that social media causes children mental health distress is plausible, but unfortunately it isn’t true. Trouble is, if you read what the press has written about it, you wouldn’t know. Scientists have described it as a “moral panic” that isn’t backed by data, which has been promoted most prominently by one man: Jonathan Haidt.
Monday, November 18, 2024
New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome
The Kessler syndrome is a scenario where, if too many collisions occur between pieces of space debris, low earth orbit will become filled with clouds of tiny particles. All those particles floating around the planet will then make the area unusable for spacecraft and satellites. According to a new study, that scenario might unfold sooner than you’d think. Let’s take a look.
Sunday, November 17, 2024
AI Scaling Hits the Wall, Rumours Say. How Serious is it?
In the past few days we have seen a lot of rumours about troubles with AI scaling. In this video, I have a brief summary of recent events, who said what, and why I don't think AI will solve all of physics.
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Science is in trouble and it worries me.
Innovation is slowing, research productivity is declining, scientific work is becoming more disruptive. In this video I summarize what we know about the problem and what possible causes have been proposed. I also explain why this matters so much to me.
Friday, November 15, 2024
“New Evidence” That CO2 Doesn’t Cause Global Warming? I Don’t Think So.
Many viewers have asked for a review of a recent study which supposedly shows “new evidence” in the climate change “debate.” More specifically, the study’s authors claim that we need to conduct more research into whether or not carbon dioxide emissions really affect climate change. I’ve had a look.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
This New Energy Storage Idea Makes A Lot Of Sense
As we look to transition to our electric future, researchers are still stumped about how to store the electricity generated by inconsistent renewable power sources like solar and wind. In a new paper, scientists have displayed progress in storing energy by shifting the shapes of molecules, a solution that could be directly combined with photovoltaics. This idea makes a lot of sense — at least to me. Let’s take a look.
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Dark Energy Might Be Black Holes
Recently, some astrophysicists have claimed that black holes are the source of dark energy, a force that speeds up the expansion of our universe. The idea fits well together with observations that seem to show that dark energy is getting weaker. How does this work? Let’s have a look.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Why Our Dreams of a Final Theory Might Remain Dreams
For decades, scientists have been looking for a theory of everything, which can combine Einstein’s theories with the standard model while also explaining all masses and interactions within the standard model. In this video I explain why I have become convinced that such a theory does not exist.
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
Saturday, November 09, 2024
Self-Censorship is Rising, And It’s a Problem
According to multiple new surveys, many people – including scientists – censor their personal views in fear that their reputations will be damaged or that they will be harassed. Most worryingly, scientists admit to self-censorship even in academic publications. Let’s take a look at this trend and why it’s happening.
Friday, November 08, 2024
My problem with the black hole information loss problem
This is a response to some comments on my recent video about the black hole information loss problem.
Thursday, November 07, 2024
Space-Filling Aether Theory Makes Comeback
In the 19th century, scientists came up with the idea of the “aether,” a medium that filled all of space and allowed forces to travel from one place to another. While this was famously proved wrong by the Michelson-Morley experiment, the idea of the aether made a comeback. The new aether is compatible with Einstein’s theories and could explain dark energy and maybe even dark matter.
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
You can now also create your own quizzes on our website. We have a GPT link that lets you generate questions automatically.
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
You can now also create your own quizzes on our website. We have a GPT link that lets you generate questions automatically.
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
The Problem with Flying Cars
For years, startups have been developing eVTOL (electric vertical take-off & landing) aircraft. The idea is that these vehicles could one day act as electric-powered flying cars or aerial taxis, helping people take short-haul flights without the need for fossil fuels. But despite roughly 15 years of development and billions of dollars of investment, there are no flying vehicles buzzing overhead in cities anywhere. Let’s take a look at why.
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
Scientists Discover a Law of Natural Laws
People often talk about mathematics as a sort of language. Languages are known to have near-universal regularities, which brings up the question of whether the mathematics that we use in physics has similar features. According to a new study which just appeared, this is indeed the case: The maths of natural laws has a hidden law itself — but it’s not the same law that governs other languages. What might this mean? Let’s take a look.
Monday, November 04, 2024
The crisis in physics is real: Science is failing
In which I apologize that my videos sometimes lack nuance and explain why I think we are witnessing the failure of science.
Sunday, November 03, 2024
Did the Black Hole Information Paradox just Disappear?
Do black holes destroy information? Physicists have been trying to answer that question for decades, because the idea that black holes could irreversibly destroy information is incompatible with the principles of quantum physics. Now, researchers claim that some information actually can escape black holes, so there was never a problem to begin with. Let’s take a look.
Saturday, November 02, 2024
Democracy is having a hard time
Since the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol in 2021, some Americans have increasingly insisted that their country is not a democracy, but a republic. What’s the difference? Why is democracy having such a hard time at the moment and would randomly picking members of parliament help?
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:
Thursday, October 31, 2024
The Amplituhedron: Why Space-Time Is Not Doomed
Scientific magazines and websites have been raising quite the hubbub about the Amplituhedron, a geometric structure that can be used to simplify calculations in particle physics. They claim that its existence means “space-time is doomed,” or some other nonsense along those lines. Today I will (try to) explain what all this is about.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Small Nuclear Reactors Have A Big Problem
Small modular nuclear reactors are supposed to fix the problem of conventional nuclear reactors being too expensive and time-consuming to build. But we’ve been hearing about how promising they are for 15 years now. So where are they? A report that just appeared sheds light on what happened.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
This new “AI Scientist” can “fully automate discovery”, researchers claim
AI has already replaced writers, software developers, customer service agents, and more. Now it’s coming for science. In two new papers, researchers present AI agents that can do the entire job of a scientist – from hypothesis formulation, to literature research, data collection and analysis, all the way to writing a paper.
Sunday, October 27, 2024
A New Pattern in Nature
Mathematicians are obsessed with patterns. They've been obsessed for so long you'd think they've got it figured all out. But just recently they discovered a new type of pattern that is everywhere in nature. Once you have seen it, you can't help but notice that it's really everywhere.
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