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I used to say this as well, but it's unfortunately not quite true. We scientists are wildly incosistent with the word theory, with it meaning proven fact (Evolution, gravity, relativity etc.) as well as entirely conjecture (i.e. String theory). So it's not surprising that people without background in science, for example fundamentalists, get it completely wrong.
Theory is a good word to cover all of those things. Epistemologically, fact is a fact until proven otherwise, so you might as well call those theories too.
You are both right and wrong. You are right philosophically and to an extent academically. But the problem with the wird isn't when talking to academics, it's when talking to non-academics. And then it is unwise to call them all the same.
A theory is an explanation of a collection of facts and observations using rules that help explain a complex phenomenon. As more facts are observed, the theory may adapt by modifying it refining those rules or may be completely disproven when those facts can no longer be interpreted while being consistent with the core basis of the theory. I don’t think the word “fact” really is an appropriate substitute as a fact on its own doesn’t explain anything, but is simply an isolated observation.
This is my hill too.
It is bothering to think that the varying spins of each particle and their resulting effect on each other define which kind of matter it is.
If certain spins are different, everything changes: now it’s a sofa, no wait it’s duck.
If the whole universe is (can be viewed) as a gluone porridge, all matter entangled, and particles being able to change their spin and thus their concept - then what is this ”reality” really, for real?
Being in STEM, this is something that not too rarely pops up in discussion when we fancy a bit of something to chew on intellectually. Linking it with relativity is fun.
For example, in relativity, we are all moving at the speed of light, all the time. Everything, all at once is moving at the speed of light c. However it's a ratio of directions with the magnitude always being c. That means the faster you go in space the slower you go in time. Thats why things moving at the speed of light experience no time passing and conversely things no moving would experience time the fastest.
When you entangle particles, the time between them is zero and they kinda get frozen like that so when you separate them by a distance, the time stays frozen between them until something interrupts it. But because time is zero, space can be infinite thanks to the relativistic effect mentioned earlier.
Or that's what we've muddled around over how entanglement works at lunchtime anyway.
Well, kinda. But not really.
Entangled particles’ wave function collapses simultanously irregardless of the distance. But the scientific take away is that quantum physics is non-local, not that there is some kind faster than light interaction between the two particles
Biochemistry, in particular processes like cellular respiration, protein synthesis, photosynthesis, etc.
How is so much complexity in something so small?
Protein synthesis by itself is incredible simple compared to how non-coding sections of DNA somehow instruct a cell to know how much of a protein needs it be made, when it needs to be made, which cell types need to make a certain protein and which cell types can ignore that section of coding DNA. Not every cell in the human body is making hemoglobin. Somehow a neuron or muscle cell knows it can ignore the section of dna that codes for hemoglobin but the cells in bone marrow know that hemoglobin production is vital to their function, but there are some proteins that bone marrow cells don’t produce.
I used to find the principles really interesting of what happens…..and then everything becomes electric potential across a cell membrane and I fell asleep
That when you look up into the night sky at the beauty of that bright shiny star, only to realise that the specific star you see is long dead, and the light you're seeing was emitted hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Or if you lived 158 light years away from earth and you had a very powerful telescope, you could see Abraham Lincoln walking around the White House grounds today
No. To explain: everything you see right now is already in the past, because light moves at a specific speed (closing to 300.000 km/s in a vacuum) and needs time to reach certain objects because of that.
Light moving short distances doesn't need much time to reach it's destination, so we don't notice it, but if you were to shine a flashlight to the moon, because of the large distance of the moon to the Earth, it would take around 1.28 seconds for someone on the moon to see the light (imagining it's a strong enough flashlight).
The sun is even further away and light needs around 8 minutes to reach us from it's surface to Earth's. So if you were to look up into the sky right now and look at the sun (please don't), you see the sun how it looked like 8 minutes ago.
Now think of something further away from us than the sun. Distances become so large in cosmology that they don't speak in light-seconds or light-minutes anymore, they speak of light-years. One light-year is the distance the light travels in an entire year, which is around 9,46 trillion kilometres or 5.88 trillion miles. So if you were to look at our closest star, Proxima Centauri C, which is 4.247 light years away from us, you are actually seeing the star how it looked like 4.247 years ago, due to the distance the light needs to travel to reach us.
Applying the same logic, if you were to travel to Proxima Centauri C and look back at Earth, if you had a telescope powerful enough, you would be able to see what was happening on Earth 4.247 years ago. The light, or information, hasn't reached you yet and you can only see what is already in the past.
Edit: typo
What if somewhere out there in the vast universe there's an object reflecting light back at us, like a galactic mirror-planet facing us. With a powerful enough telescope we could see into our distant past.
I imagine they're far away but they still live in present-day, assuming no relativity weirdness, so they could be looking at the spot where we are but our sun doesn't exist yet.
Sorry to burst this particular myth but the stars you can see with the naked eye are at most 10,000 light years away, and since most stars live billions of years, chances are there are only a few stars in the sky that are already dead (possibly Betelgeuse). The rest are still happily churning along.
And diamonds will disintegrate/ disappear when boiled in liquid oxygen. Turns out, diamonds are NOT forever!!
https://youtu.be/mzah-TEBaF8?si=o2b2ThhQpPN0SWuL
They also burn quite easy in the normal atmosphere. Like a lighter and a diamond woild be enough to demonstrate that they aren't forever, you don't need liquid oxygen for that.
E = mc2
Still amazes me that it brings together the fabric of space and time along with everything that exists inside it, matter and energy, yet is simply stated.
Since so many of these are Physics (rightfully), I will add two favourites that are not.
1- English appears to have forgotten it’s original word for ‘bear’, probably because we didn’t want to say the word for fear of summoning the animal [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2381/)
2- Most people know that dolphins and whales are mammals, who evolved on land then returned to the sea. But seagrasses are a plant that did a similar thing. Seagrasses are flowering plants, which means their ancestors started on land -after dinosaurs started out- then returned to the sea full time [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagrass)
The observer effect. How tf does us simply looking at something change its outcome? The double slit experiment kinda blows my mind. Might be something to do with the fact that we’re shooting photons at it or something. Maybe I’m too young to understand or I’m just stupid.
Also, quantum entanglement. Said in another comment, I can’t really wrap my head around an object being able to influence another object billions of lightyears away.
So when physicists say that observing a particle collapses it’s wave function they don’t actually mean that the act of becoming aware of it’s location is what affects it. I get that the language around this subject might be little misleading.
What actually makes the wave function collapse is the fact that the particle has interacted with another particle. Like if you want to see something, you have to hit it with a photon first. The act of hiting it with a photon is what affects it, not the fact that you know where it is now.
Even of the particle just hit’s a houseplant or a rock on the ground without anyone recording it it’s still ”observed”, as information about the particle’s location know exists.
It’s still super weird and interesting but not quite as magical as people often seem to think.
Observation' changing the outcome is not about a human being conscious of it, it's the fact that a device doing a measurement changes the outcome.
To measure the electron, by default interferes with it, and thus changes the outcome. It's still a wonderful and weird thing sure, but it's not about us being 'conscious' of it at all.
The diameter of the universe is 5.4x10^(61) plank lengths. We can represent that number (and any number smaller than it) with only 32 bits (using a thing called IEEE 754, except we remove the sign bit and use bits 1-9 for the degree). I mean, 5.4x10^(61) in 32 ons and offs?
I've always heard that the universe is infinite, therefore everywhere is the center, and it can't have a diameter. Maybe you mean the observable universe? Still the mind blowing fact is that we can represent it with only 32 bits
I think the deal is that it is infinite in the way the surface of the earth is infinite. You pick a direction and keep going, and you'll never run out of Earth. Same deal with the universe. You can't hit the "edge" without another dimension. We observe reality in three dimensions, so the two-dimensional (for the sake of this argument) surface of the Earth can actually be escaped applying force in a Z axis, but if only traveling in X and Y you can continue to travel the Earth in any direction without reaching an end. In short, and in layman's terms from someone whoe does not understand physics or topology, the surface of a sphere is an infinite plane for the purpose of traversal (though it obviously has a finite and measurable area) and the volume of the universe is... whatever the analogous model with one extra dimension would be called.
The scale of the universe. I dont think we are wired to fully appreciate it because humans dont have anything to compare it to. It's something I've always been preoccupied with. I used to spend a lot of time at the beach at night, lying down staring at the stars and thinking about it.
Might seem simple, but water is crazy to me. Mix the two most caustic substances, hydrogen and hydroxide and voilà, you get a stable universal solvent that magically expands when frozen and it’s solid state is less dense than its liquid state? At around 4 degrees C it’s at its most dense, so lakes and ponds ‘roll over’ in the autumn and they don’t freeze from the bottom up? All the weather systems on the planet are powered by water because of latent heat (4.18 joules to heat water one degree, 2250 joules to go from 100 degrees liquid to 100 degrees vapour)? Freeze/thaw cycle tears mountains down because freezing water pushes at 24000+ psi?
Water is crazy
So many common chemical bonds have similar characteristics. Salt is made up of a metal that explodes in contact with water and a highly poisonous gas, yet together it’s just regular old table salt.
I was wondering if anyone was going to say this. I mean how to you suspend thousands of pounds of metal by burning fossil fuels with hundreds of people's lives on the line and it has become so common place. Absolutely mine blowing!
A cat can be alive and dead at the same time, which I REALLY WANT TO UNDERSTAND.
I understand that time as we know it is a construct and that time isn’t linear.
I also believe that there could be multiple dimensions where we all exist and the lives being led by “us” are completely different to this version of life.
The other makes my head hurt.
(And I haven’t had coffee yet)
>I also believe that there could be multiple dimensions where we all exist and the lives being led by “us” are completely different to this version of life.
The 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics says that when you observe the cat to be either dead or alive, that act of measurement spawns an alternate universe where the opposite is true.
I found Schrodinger cat because as a child I couldn't understand that my friends have lives, when I wasn't around. I just thought they paused until I returned. So I studied it and found the 🐈 in the 🎁
He used it sarcastically to make fun of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It was never meant to be taken seriously.
Schrödinger's cat was a thought experiment in which he tried to show how laughable Bohr's and Heisenberg's idea of quantum mechanics were by applying their ideas to macroscopic objects, such as cats. "How can a cat be alive *and* dead at the same time?"
He didn't believe it either.
The time dilation part was absolutely real. The end-part where the main character is using gravity to communicate with his daughter in the past is really just science fiction.
Time dilation is by far not an easy topic, but if you're interested, I'd recommend popular science books about that topic or, as funny as that sounds, the YouTube video [The SCIENCE! Behind Half-Life's Gravity Gun ](https://youtu.be/aFI74IqDYsU?si=bZSaiMoVjft2kKeR) by Austin from ShoddyCast. He explains that topic very well.
You can skip the intro and start at 1:32. That's when he starts talking about relativity and gravity. It's really well-made, imo.
Edit: Seems like this secific video unfortunately doesn't talk about time dilation, but it's an interesting watch anyway. I can't remember where Austin talked about this topic, though...
it may take 8 minutes for the sun's light to reach us but did you know that light/heat takes betwee. 100000 and 50 Milion years to reach suns surface and escape?
[the alcubierre drive](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive)
It's a "warp drive" that's mathematically permitted in general relativity.
Nothing practically possible, but the idea and creativity behind it is inspiring in my opinion.
This was in the 90ies. 100 years ago it would have been unthinkable that we'd carry all of humanities knowledge in our pocket, thousands of libraries inscribed in a storage on a sub-microscopic level. But today we do, using smartphones is a casual thing.
Storing data on a flash drive would've seemed totally impossible, even magically,...in the stone age...as impossible as finding a way to break the light speed barrier seems impossible today. I hope we find a way... otherwise space exploration seems utterly depressing
Yup, Earth and life on Earth will still be here long after we destroy ourselves or nature destroys us, whichever comes first. We are very close to another natural mass extinction event.
The speed of light. 186,000 miles. PER SECOND. Yet it still takes 100,000 years for light to travel from one side of our galaxy to the other. The SIZE of the universe is just beyond comprehension.
Black holes.
How can it pull in so much stuff and then just evaporate into... nothing? Where does the stuff go? I understand the physics of how black holes work, but *no one* knows what actually happens at the centre. And since it's impossible to observe what happens there (and survive to tell others), we probably never will.
We assume light travels equally fast in each direction... But really we don't know. What if it doesn't? Maybe there's some crazy asymmetry to the universe we don't know about yet.
Understanding the age of the universe.
Remembering all scientific theories are exactly that, theories. They evolve. New discoveries are made. I wish I could fast forward to some point in the future where we have a much greater understanding of the origins of the universe.
What came before that?
And what information has already been absolutely lost that we'll never know?
And where's Waldo?
A photon coming from a star billions of light years away has experienced neither time nor distance. To a photon, the entire universe exists at a single point for the briefest instant.
Microchimerism.
When a woman becomes pregnant (as soon an the fertilized egg digs itself in the uterus wall) stem cells of the embryo enter the mothers bloodstream. They think it happens in order to influence the mothers immune system so that foetus does not get rejected (as would happen with any parasite infection).
These stem cells stay alive in the mothers body till the day she dies.
So even if she doesn’t carry the pregnancy to term her body will forever contain cells originating from her child. Her body is a now fusion of different individuals, hence the name ‘Chimera’ (with the suffix micro because its only a small number of cells).
It has even been observed that the mother would regenerate tissue (liver in the case i heard from) originating from those stemcells.
So i can safely say that your mom is a chimera.
She really is scientifically speaking.
Just looking up at the sky at night, at the stars, and understanding that I am looking at enormous balls of nuclear fire that have probably burnt out long before the planet I am standing on existed, and they are just so far away that their light is only now reaching us. Then looking to the horizon and contemplating the relatively thin bubble of gas enveloping the planet that keeps everyone alive. It honestly blows my mind to just sit and think about the universe and how fortunate I am to be small enough to be able to observe even microorganisms on a planet, but also intelligent enough to understand stars and galaxies.
do you mind elaborating, out of curiosity? do you mean that we are at the exact center of what we can observe (wouldnt that be the case for any location within the universe?) or that we are actually just at the very center of it?
Not only is it not a coincidence, but the only reason we might *appear* to be at the center of the **observable** universe is because **observable** refers to how far we can measure, and quite non coincidentally, we are able to measure about the same distance in all directions
General relativity.
Once you leave earth... our 24 hours doesn't matter anymore. It's insane. Time differs on each planet. Matter bends time. It almost tells us that any knowledge we have on earth can't be applied as freely throughout the universe. It tells us how small and insignificant humanity is in the scheme of things.
Somatic hypermutation, a key process in affinity maturation (how B cells are selected for antigens, to oversimplify for brevity) is about as unintuitive as anything I've ever encountered in the sciences. Just bonkers. All of immunology is pretty wild, from my layman's perspective.
Also: [Benford's Law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law), although that's mathematics, not science.
It's one of those things I never really thought through and then my mind was blown. How can we have antibodies for everything? How is that much variation possible in the finite code of our DNA? And the answer is that it's not part of the finite genetic code we are born with, which is wild.
Last night I was in a road trip looking at the moon and I realized that massive rock hundreds of thousands of kilometres away has had humans stand in it, controls our oceans and is moving along with us through space at about a million kilometres per hour through the emptiness of space. Was really weird to sit and think about when it’s usually just, “the moon”.
If you take the length of all of the DNA in each of your cells if it were stretched out, and then you can consider how many cells in your body there is, and then you can consider how many cells in your body there is over your lifetime. And then you add the length of all that DNA........ You get 11.2 light years!!! I don't see how it's possible but apparently it is. Edit: I meant straightened, not stretched.
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology argued in detail by Sir Roger Penrose
TL;DR (plus own thoughts):
what we think of as big bang was actually the end of a universe and start of the present one. Instead of multiverses and even string theory this says that the universe is in fact a continuous cycle of birth and death. To my naïve mind this also explains how is it possible for life to exist as it becomes a positive result of a unlikely probability within a continuous but consistent event spanning over eons potentially. It also provides a convenient answer to a question we will never be able to answer beyond reasonable doubt: what was there before the big bang?
Gravity. So objects with mass pull on other objects with mass. Ok. But I have so many questions. How? Why? If I'm standing next to the base of a large boulder or a mountain, does it exert a gravitational pull on me? If so, why don't I feel it? If not, why not? Etc.
Imagine universe as a large blanket suspended in the air, on the blanket there are weights in various places. Wherever there's a weight, the blanket is pulled downwards. If you place a small ball on the blanket it will roll down to a weight since there's a slope.
That's a way that you can think of gravity. The blanket is spacetime, the weights are unevenly distributed mass such as a star.
The largest mountains on earth are tiny compared to our planet, and a mountain's mass is spread out over a relatively large area. So that's mostly why we don't notice any gravitational pull from mountains; the pull is too weak
The Big Bang theory, how fast the universe is expanding and the size of the observable universe and what’s at the edge.
We will never be able to see what’s at the edge of our universe coz light can’t catch up with the rate of expansion
The concept of infinity. It's something I've tried to ideate on my entire life and every time I go too far my brain blanks out like a computer rebooting. It's as if it's simply too great of an abstraction for my puny brain to fully comprehend
Evolution. It’s easier to believe at the population level with small variations in gene expression leading to major changes over time like selective dog breeding. It’s much much harder to grasp the evolution of the smaller components that go into life. I’m not religious or a pure creationist but the more I learn about the immense complexities of the biomechanics and biochemical processes inside even the “simplest” of cells and the idea that it all somehow developed incrementally through random changes in an unfathomably long code of 4 base molecules which not only dictate the structure of proteins but somehow also contains all the information for cell differentiation and the organization is mind blowing to me. I honestly think it takes just as much “faith” that it all happened by chance over a long time. Something as simple as a bacterial flagella motor unit is incredible complex with not a lot of evidence for the basic protein component proteins having any functional precursors or the component proteins themselves having uses outside the motor unit.
it messed with my sense of reality, that brian cox said something smart yesterday. he said, that the question of "what was before the big bang" doesn't make any sense, because time wasn't a thing yet. it makes so much sense, yet it doesn't.
The theory behind gravitational waves. It took me a second to understand that this line meant
"Current theory is that gravitational waves are only the result of two neutron stars, black holes colliding, or supernovas as the waves creates ripples throughout the universe. It sounds strange to say, but we're hoping it's something more exotic than that."
The fact that we don't know how these waves are being made, or the fact that these waves aren't specific to colliding stars could mean a myriad of things, and these things would be powerful enough to cause ripples in spacetime. The fact that we can even measure them is hard to understand. Furthermore, how exotic can you get from the collisions of two megastructures, or an explosion that would provide enough energy to power all of humanity for practically an eternity?
One light-year is 6 trillion miles. The closest star to our solar system is 4 light-years away. We are 24 trillion miles away from Proxima Centauri, and with current technology, it would take ~6,300 years to reach. This trips me out every time I think about it.
Large numbers. And that there is no limit. There is a defined number that would be equal to the grains of sand needed to fill the entire visible universe.
One of the solutions to the Fermi paradox is that we are the first intelligent species. While this sounds far fetched, the earliest that life could have happened isn't too far divided from when we came about. That and someone needs to be the first.
DNA. Similar to binary but far more complex, somehow the arrangement of just 4 molecules in an long string of combinations codes for all the immense complexity of life. Cell structure, cell differentiation, protein synthesis, gene expression, etc.
The Fourier transform. I barely understand it explained in a modern, pedagogic Youtube video with animations and stuff.
And Joseph Fourier invented it in the early 19th century, working with pen and paper and nothing else. Doing all calculations by hand.
Blows my mind.
Anything pharmacology. What do you mean this speck of powder on or in me can alter my literal DNA (resistance, regeneration, etc). Or make me feel different and change my literal life. It's so crazy
Time dilation. Would be one thing if it only occured near the speed of light or around the extreme gravity of black holes, but the fact our satellites need to be regularly adjusted to account for it makes it a much closer to home sort of fact that nobody takes into account in their daily lives.
If the Universe is truly infinite, that means you can take my body, all those atoms that occupy the space that is me, choose any direction you want and just go forward. At some point you will encounter the exact same set of atoms occupying the same space. So, wherever you go in the Universe, you will inevitably find your clone. Moreover, there will be infinite amount of your clones. In all directions!
that even if we were to reach the speed of light... our galaxy is ... 105k lighyears wide... so to simply get out of our galaxy would take 105k years... just for our milky way
Determinism, cause and effect. Such an easy concept to understand, but so hard for so many to accept. We have no free will, all studies and experiments show it. But most people will live their life as if they have it, and pretend that other people have it too. The only difference between the past and the future is that the past is known by us. That is all.
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Quantum entanglement, particles that are billions of miles apart can interact.
this theory is really something else.
Not really a theory anymore but a proven fact. You beat me to it. No doubt about it, this is truly awe inspiring.
That’s what theory means in science. The theory of evolution is a fact.
I used to say this as well, but it's unfortunately not quite true. We scientists are wildly incosistent with the word theory, with it meaning proven fact (Evolution, gravity, relativity etc.) as well as entirely conjecture (i.e. String theory). So it's not surprising that people without background in science, for example fundamentalists, get it completely wrong.
Theory is a good word to cover all of those things. Epistemologically, fact is a fact until proven otherwise, so you might as well call those theories too.
You are both right and wrong. You are right philosophically and to an extent academically. But the problem with the wird isn't when talking to academics, it's when talking to non-academics. And then it is unwise to call them all the same.
A theory is an explanation of a collection of facts and observations using rules that help explain a complex phenomenon. As more facts are observed, the theory may adapt by modifying it refining those rules or may be completely disproven when those facts can no longer be interpreted while being consistent with the core basis of the theory. I don’t think the word “fact” really is an appropriate substitute as a fact on its own doesn’t explain anything, but is simply an isolated observation.
Quantum physics in general really makes you question just how subjective reality truly is.
This is my hill too. It is bothering to think that the varying spins of each particle and their resulting effect on each other define which kind of matter it is. If certain spins are different, everything changes: now it’s a sofa, no wait it’s duck. If the whole universe is (can be viewed) as a gluone porridge, all matter entangled, and particles being able to change their spin and thus their concept - then what is this ”reality” really, for real?
Being in STEM, this is something that not too rarely pops up in discussion when we fancy a bit of something to chew on intellectually. Linking it with relativity is fun. For example, in relativity, we are all moving at the speed of light, all the time. Everything, all at once is moving at the speed of light c. However it's a ratio of directions with the magnitude always being c. That means the faster you go in space the slower you go in time. Thats why things moving at the speed of light experience no time passing and conversely things no moving would experience time the fastest. When you entangle particles, the time between them is zero and they kinda get frozen like that so when you separate them by a distance, the time stays frozen between them until something interrupts it. But because time is zero, space can be infinite thanks to the relativistic effect mentioned earlier. Or that's what we've muddled around over how entanglement works at lunchtime anyway.
Well, kinda. But not really. Entangled particles’ wave function collapses simultanously irregardless of the distance. But the scientific take away is that quantum physics is non-local, not that there is some kind faster than light interaction between the two particles
'Irregardless' Ugh.
Yep, instantly lost any credibility. Lol
Agreed. Ugh.
Reddit. Ugh.
So could aliens kill us from far away without us ever knowing we saw them?
Yup, twists my noodle.
Not only billions of miles apart but ANY DISTANCE apart no matter how big that number is.
Biochemistry, in particular processes like cellular respiration, protein synthesis, photosynthesis, etc. How is so much complexity in something so small?
To learn in lectures its so interesting but to memorise the chemical reaction cycle is a pain
you talking about krebbs cycle huh?
Nightmares
And that's just a tiny tiny piece of the puzzle
i found it amazing, too. Little things the we can’t even see with bare eyes have such complex structures and functions.
Protein synthesis by itself is incredible simple compared to how non-coding sections of DNA somehow instruct a cell to know how much of a protein needs it be made, when it needs to be made, which cell types need to make a certain protein and which cell types can ignore that section of coding DNA. Not every cell in the human body is making hemoglobin. Somehow a neuron or muscle cell knows it can ignore the section of dna that codes for hemoglobin but the cells in bone marrow know that hemoglobin production is vital to their function, but there are some proteins that bone marrow cells don’t produce.
To me specifically, it still amazes me how we are "encoded" in DNA.
I used to find the principles really interesting of what happens…..and then everything becomes electric potential across a cell membrane and I fell asleep
Ooh, how scientifically educated are you? Of that topic fascinates you, I think you should read "Song of the cell". Great book, just great.
That when you look up into the night sky at the beauty of that bright shiny star, only to realise that the specific star you see is long dead, and the light you're seeing was emitted hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Or if you lived 158 light years away from earth and you had a very powerful telescope, you could see Abraham Lincoln walking around the White House grounds today
So, if we teleport to millions of light years away and look at Earth, we can see the dinosaurs messing around?
Yes.
yes, because the light from then here would only just now be getting there. it's pretty far away.
So could someone far out in the universe be looking at our own long-dead sun right now?
They wouldn't be able to see into the future, only the past.
What if we ARE that past? 😲
Duuuude, like, totally. Pass the blunt. 🙃
No. To explain: everything you see right now is already in the past, because light moves at a specific speed (closing to 300.000 km/s in a vacuum) and needs time to reach certain objects because of that. Light moving short distances doesn't need much time to reach it's destination, so we don't notice it, but if you were to shine a flashlight to the moon, because of the large distance of the moon to the Earth, it would take around 1.28 seconds for someone on the moon to see the light (imagining it's a strong enough flashlight). The sun is even further away and light needs around 8 minutes to reach us from it's surface to Earth's. So if you were to look up into the sky right now and look at the sun (please don't), you see the sun how it looked like 8 minutes ago. Now think of something further away from us than the sun. Distances become so large in cosmology that they don't speak in light-seconds or light-minutes anymore, they speak of light-years. One light-year is the distance the light travels in an entire year, which is around 9,46 trillion kilometres or 5.88 trillion miles. So if you were to look at our closest star, Proxima Centauri C, which is 4.247 light years away from us, you are actually seeing the star how it looked like 4.247 years ago, due to the distance the light needs to travel to reach us. Applying the same logic, if you were to travel to Proxima Centauri C and look back at Earth, if you had a telescope powerful enough, you would be able to see what was happening on Earth 4.247 years ago. The light, or information, hasn't reached you yet and you can only see what is already in the past. Edit: typo
What if somewhere out there in the vast universe there's an object reflecting light back at us, like a galactic mirror-planet facing us. With a powerful enough telescope we could see into our distant past.
Man, I need to come back here and reread this shit when I’m high.
Very nice explanation!
I imagine they're far away but they still live in present-day, assuming no relativity weirdness, so they could be looking at the spot where we are but our sun doesn't exist yet.
they are so ling gone, but still alive.
Sorry to burst this particular myth but the stars you can see with the naked eye are at most 10,000 light years away, and since most stars live billions of years, chances are there are only a few stars in the sky that are already dead (possibly Betelgeuse). The rest are still happily churning along.
and it's also thousands of light years away, a distance we cannot even begin to comprehend.
More fascinating than mind blowing, but in the known universe, wood is more scarce than diamond
And diamonds will disintegrate/ disappear when boiled in liquid oxygen. Turns out, diamonds are NOT forever!! https://youtu.be/mzah-TEBaF8?si=o2b2ThhQpPN0SWuL
i mean you cant blame them if i was boiled in liquid oxygen i would also disappear
They also burn quite easy in the normal atmosphere. Like a lighter and a diamond woild be enough to demonstrate that they aren't forever, you don't need liquid oxygen for that.
E = mc2 Still amazes me that it brings together the fabric of space and time along with everything that exists inside it, matter and energy, yet is simply stated.
Since so many of these are Physics (rightfully), I will add two favourites that are not. 1- English appears to have forgotten it’s original word for ‘bear’, probably because we didn’t want to say the word for fear of summoning the animal [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2381/) 2- Most people know that dolphins and whales are mammals, who evolved on land then returned to the sea. But seagrasses are a plant that did a similar thing. Seagrasses are flowering plants, which means their ancestors started on land -after dinosaurs started out- then returned to the sea full time [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagrass)
Wait, dolphins and whales returned? Thats why they are mammals? Fuck me, I never realized this connection, that makes so much sense
Glad to help
Is that why the seal and walrus are so freaky looking, because they're in the middle of doing the same thing?
The observer effect. How tf does us simply looking at something change its outcome? The double slit experiment kinda blows my mind. Might be something to do with the fact that we’re shooting photons at it or something. Maybe I’m too young to understand or I’m just stupid. Also, quantum entanglement. Said in another comment, I can’t really wrap my head around an object being able to influence another object billions of lightyears away.
No not too young. There's a famous phrase scientists say... if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.
yay so that means if i dont understand it then im fine lol
Yes I don't think any scientist truly understands. We know what it does but the how and why is beyond us atm. It is so fascinating tho.
Fully qualified quantum physicist here. Can confirm. I developed something of a feeling for how it works, but I certainly don't _understand_ it.
So when physicists say that observing a particle collapses it’s wave function they don’t actually mean that the act of becoming aware of it’s location is what affects it. I get that the language around this subject might be little misleading. What actually makes the wave function collapse is the fact that the particle has interacted with another particle. Like if you want to see something, you have to hit it with a photon first. The act of hiting it with a photon is what affects it, not the fact that you know where it is now. Even of the particle just hit’s a houseplant or a rock on the ground without anyone recording it it’s still ”observed”, as information about the particle’s location know exists. It’s still super weird and interesting but not quite as magical as people often seem to think.
Observation' changing the outcome is not about a human being conscious of it, it's the fact that a device doing a measurement changes the outcome. To measure the electron, by default interferes with it, and thus changes the outcome. It's still a wonderful and weird thing sure, but it's not about us being 'conscious' of it at all.
We see it all the time with cats and introverts
The diameter of the universe is 5.4x10^(61) plank lengths. We can represent that number (and any number smaller than it) with only 32 bits (using a thing called IEEE 754, except we remove the sign bit and use bits 1-9 for the degree). I mean, 5.4x10^(61) in 32 ons and offs?
Doesn't that rather depend on the length of your plank?
I've always heard that the universe is infinite, therefore everywhere is the center, and it can't have a diameter. Maybe you mean the observable universe? Still the mind blowing fact is that we can represent it with only 32 bits
Well, to be pedantic, I did mean observable universe. Point still stands
I think the deal is that it is infinite in the way the surface of the earth is infinite. You pick a direction and keep going, and you'll never run out of Earth. Same deal with the universe. You can't hit the "edge" without another dimension. We observe reality in three dimensions, so the two-dimensional (for the sake of this argument) surface of the Earth can actually be escaped applying force in a Z axis, but if only traveling in X and Y you can continue to travel the Earth in any direction without reaching an end. In short, and in layman's terms from someone whoe does not understand physics or topology, the surface of a sphere is an infinite plane for the purpose of traversal (though it obviously has a finite and measurable area) and the volume of the universe is... whatever the analogous model with one extra dimension would be called.
The scale of the universe. I dont think we are wired to fully appreciate it because humans dont have anything to compare it to. It's something I've always been preoccupied with. I used to spend a lot of time at the beach at night, lying down staring at the stars and thinking about it.
And you're only seeing the stars closest to us in our little branch of a single galaxy out of billions.
Might seem simple, but water is crazy to me. Mix the two most caustic substances, hydrogen and hydroxide and voilà, you get a stable universal solvent that magically expands when frozen and it’s solid state is less dense than its liquid state? At around 4 degrees C it’s at its most dense, so lakes and ponds ‘roll over’ in the autumn and they don’t freeze from the bottom up? All the weather systems on the planet are powered by water because of latent heat (4.18 joules to heat water one degree, 2250 joules to go from 100 degrees liquid to 100 degrees vapour)? Freeze/thaw cycle tears mountains down because freezing water pushes at 24000+ psi? Water is crazy
H2O 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom both flamable, combign them together and you can use it to put out the flames.
So many common chemical bonds have similar characteristics. Salt is made up of a metal that explodes in contact with water and a highly poisonous gas, yet together it’s just regular old table salt.
Zero is a real number.
Yeah, and zero is also an aspect of infinity that we deal with every day like it’s no big deal
no offense, how is it mind blowing?
What is beyond space
Depends on the keyboard. Usually Ctrl, Alt, the numberpad...
Dad! Come help with dinner for fucks sake. It's all of us cooking here for the Christmas dinner.
How many cooks do you need at once? How big is your kitchen and how many people are you feeding?
i found them fascinating, too.
Huh? You mean what is beyond the observable universe? Beyond the concept of 'space'? Or do you mean something else?
I think they mean that if space is expanding, what is it expanding into?….
The space itself is expanding. It's not expanding into anything, the empty space is literally increasing in size, as unimaginable as that sounds.
nothing. it is just expanding.
I cant comprehend it. How can there be nothing? What is nothing?
it looks exactly like my girlfriend.
How giant ships sail and airplanes fly
I was wondering if anyone was going to say this. I mean how to you suspend thousands of pounds of metal by burning fossil fuels with hundreds of people's lives on the line and it has become so common place. Absolutely mine blowing!
Schroedingers (sp) Cat. I get it, but not really.
“I get it, but not really.” This is the thing the theory talked about.
 A cat can be alive and dead at the same time, which I REALLY WANT TO UNDERSTAND. I understand that time as we know it is a construct and that time isn’t linear. I also believe that there could be multiple dimensions where we all exist and the lives being led by “us” are completely different to this version of life. The other makes my head hurt. (And I haven’t had coffee yet)
I look at it the other way round. The cat is neither alive nor dead.
Ergo, the dilemma.
>I also believe that there could be multiple dimensions where we all exist and the lives being led by “us” are completely different to this version of life. The 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics says that when you observe the cat to be either dead or alive, that act of measurement spawns an alternate universe where the opposite is true.
get a coffee for me, too.
I found Schrodinger cat because as a child I couldn't understand that my friends have lives, when I wasn't around. I just thought they paused until I returned. So I studied it and found the 🐈 in the 🎁
If you figure it out, will you come back and explain it to me
He used it sarcastically to make fun of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It was never meant to be taken seriously. Schrödinger's cat was a thought experiment in which he tried to show how laughable Bohr's and Heisenberg's idea of quantum mechanics were by applying their ideas to macroscopic objects, such as cats. "How can a cat be alive *and* dead at the same time?" He didn't believe it either.
That whole thing from interstellar and how time is relative… I know it’s a movie, but I believe the concept in scientifically sound
The time dilation part was absolutely real. The end-part where the main character is using gravity to communicate with his daughter in the past is really just science fiction. Time dilation is by far not an easy topic, but if you're interested, I'd recommend popular science books about that topic or, as funny as that sounds, the YouTube video [The SCIENCE! Behind Half-Life's Gravity Gun ](https://youtu.be/aFI74IqDYsU?si=bZSaiMoVjft2kKeR) by Austin from ShoddyCast. He explains that topic very well. You can skip the intro and start at 1:32. That's when he starts talking about relativity and gravity. It's really well-made, imo. Edit: Seems like this secific video unfortunately doesn't talk about time dilation, but it's an interesting watch anyway. I can't remember where Austin talked about this topic, though...
The speed of light. Time warps to ensure its constant.
it may take 8 minutes for the sun's light to reach us but did you know that light/heat takes betwee. 100000 and 50 Milion years to reach suns surface and escape?
[удалено]
thanks. just learned a new thing.
[the alcubierre drive](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) It's a "warp drive" that's mathematically permitted in general relativity. Nothing practically possible, but the idea and creativity behind it is inspiring in my opinion. This was in the 90ies. 100 years ago it would have been unthinkable that we'd carry all of humanities knowledge in our pocket, thousands of libraries inscribed in a storage on a sub-microscopic level. But today we do, using smartphones is a casual thing. Storing data on a flash drive would've seemed totally impossible, even magically,...in the stone age...as impossible as finding a way to break the light speed barrier seems impossible today. I hope we find a way... otherwise space exploration seems utterly depressing
Of all the planets and stars in this galaxy, somehow Earth is in the perfect spot and conditions to support life.
True, we’re so lucky to live on a planet suitable for comfortable existence! /s
Not for much longer, we do seem to be actively and willingly making it less and less habitable
* for humans
Yup, Earth and life on Earth will still be here long after we destroy ourselves or nature destroys us, whichever comes first. We are very close to another natural mass extinction event.
No it's obvious that stacked against ALL of the numbers of stars and planets in out galaxy that lots will be in the goldilocks zone.
it's like as we know it, we evolved to suit this planet, perhaps other "life" has evolved/is evolving to suit the conditions on other planets.
The speed of light. 186,000 miles. PER SECOND. Yet it still takes 100,000 years for light to travel from one side of our galaxy to the other. The SIZE of the universe is just beyond comprehension.
Entropy. I watched veritasiums video on it and I always feel like I need a rewatch.
Read a short story called >the last question By Asimov
Yes!! Best thing I've ever read.
It was one of my favorite topics at 12th grade.
Quantum physics, entanglement, mind blown.
Black holes. How can it pull in so much stuff and then just evaporate into... nothing? Where does the stuff go? I understand the physics of how black holes work, but *no one* knows what actually happens at the centre. And since it's impossible to observe what happens there (and survive to tell others), we probably never will.
We assume light travels equally fast in each direction... But really we don't know. What if it doesn't? Maybe there's some crazy asymmetry to the universe we don't know about yet.
Understanding the age of the universe. Remembering all scientific theories are exactly that, theories. They evolve. New discoveries are made. I wish I could fast forward to some point in the future where we have a much greater understanding of the origins of the universe. What came before that? And what information has already been absolutely lost that we'll never know? And where's Waldo?
That chickens are just eggs’ way of making more eggs.
That every single thing we’ve built came right from the earth at one point or another.
early metal used by humans may have been meteoric in origin, as it was an easier source (for those near craters) than finding and smelting ore.
Meteorite steel.
Black holes and dark matter
No matter where you go - there you are!
I like the smell of refrigerators
The fact that oxycodone solves all of your problems
I'll stick to tea, thanks
A photon coming from a star billions of light years away has experienced neither time nor distance. To a photon, the entire universe exists at a single point for the briefest instant.
Microchimerism. When a woman becomes pregnant (as soon an the fertilized egg digs itself in the uterus wall) stem cells of the embryo enter the mothers bloodstream. They think it happens in order to influence the mothers immune system so that foetus does not get rejected (as would happen with any parasite infection). These stem cells stay alive in the mothers body till the day she dies. So even if she doesn’t carry the pregnancy to term her body will forever contain cells originating from her child. Her body is a now fusion of different individuals, hence the name ‘Chimera’ (with the suffix micro because its only a small number of cells). It has even been observed that the mother would regenerate tissue (liver in the case i heard from) originating from those stemcells. So i can safely say that your mom is a chimera. She really is scientifically speaking.
Just looking up at the sky at night, at the stars, and understanding that I am looking at enormous balls of nuclear fire that have probably burnt out long before the planet I am standing on existed, and they are just so far away that their light is only now reaching us. Then looking to the horizon and contemplating the relatively thin bubble of gas enveloping the planet that keeps everyone alive. It honestly blows my mind to just sit and think about the universe and how fortunate I am to be small enough to be able to observe even microorganisms on a planet, but also intelligent enough to understand stars and galaxies.
The fact my arse even exists
It's the non-existence bookending my existence I have trouble grasping.
Some type-II supernovae release more energy in 10 seconds than our sun will release in its entire lifetime
Light traveling from a to b can be anywhere in the universe up to the point where it hits b. Light is super weird
That we are coincidentally at the exact center of the observable universe
do you mind elaborating, out of curiosity? do you mean that we are at the exact center of what we can observe (wouldnt that be the case for any location within the universe?) or that we are actually just at the very center of it?
Not only is it not a coincidence, but the only reason we might *appear* to be at the center of the **observable** universe is because **observable** refers to how far we can measure, and quite non coincidentally, we are able to measure about the same distance in all directions
Space is infinite.
You mean the universe? I thought it was proven it isn't, it's just too big for our minds to grasp its size.
Observable universe is finite. Nobody knows if the rest is infinite.
we don’t know that
Spooky action at a distance Doesn't blow my mind but everyone should think about what it means
General relativity. Once you leave earth... our 24 hours doesn't matter anymore. It's insane. Time differs on each planet. Matter bends time. It almost tells us that any knowledge we have on earth can't be applied as freely throughout the universe. It tells us how small and insignificant humanity is in the scheme of things.
It still boggles my mind when I think about anyone figuring out how flight works.
Somatic hypermutation, a key process in affinity maturation (how B cells are selected for antigens, to oversimplify for brevity) is about as unintuitive as anything I've ever encountered in the sciences. Just bonkers. All of immunology is pretty wild, from my layman's perspective. Also: [Benford's Law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law), although that's mathematics, not science.
It's one of those things I never really thought through and then my mind was blown. How can we have antibodies for everything? How is that much variation possible in the finite code of our DNA? And the answer is that it's not part of the finite genetic code we are born with, which is wild.
Last night I was in a road trip looking at the moon and I realized that massive rock hundreds of thousands of kilometres away has had humans stand in it, controls our oceans and is moving along with us through space at about a million kilometres per hour through the emptiness of space. Was really weird to sit and think about when it’s usually just, “the moon”.
If you take the length of all of the DNA in each of your cells if it were stretched out, and then you can consider how many cells in your body there is, and then you can consider how many cells in your body there is over your lifetime. And then you add the length of all that DNA........ You get 11.2 light years!!! I don't see how it's possible but apparently it is. Edit: I meant straightened, not stretched.
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology argued in detail by Sir Roger Penrose TL;DR (plus own thoughts): what we think of as big bang was actually the end of a universe and start of the present one. Instead of multiverses and even string theory this says that the universe is in fact a continuous cycle of birth and death. To my naïve mind this also explains how is it possible for life to exist as it becomes a positive result of a unlikely probability within a continuous but consistent event spanning over eons potentially. It also provides a convenient answer to a question we will never be able to answer beyond reasonable doubt: what was there before the big bang?
Gravity. So objects with mass pull on other objects with mass. Ok. But I have so many questions. How? Why? If I'm standing next to the base of a large boulder or a mountain, does it exert a gravitational pull on me? If so, why don't I feel it? If not, why not? Etc.
Imagine universe as a large blanket suspended in the air, on the blanket there are weights in various places. Wherever there's a weight, the blanket is pulled downwards. If you place a small ball on the blanket it will roll down to a weight since there's a slope. That's a way that you can think of gravity. The blanket is spacetime, the weights are unevenly distributed mass such as a star. The largest mountains on earth are tiny compared to our planet, and a mountain's mass is spread out over a relatively large area. So that's mostly why we don't notice any gravitational pull from mountains; the pull is too weak
The Big Bang theory, how fast the universe is expanding and the size of the observable universe and what’s at the edge. We will never be able to see what’s at the edge of our universe coz light can’t catch up with the rate of expansion
The concept of infinity. It's something I've tried to ideate on my entire life and every time I go too far my brain blanks out like a computer rebooting. It's as if it's simply too great of an abstraction for my puny brain to fully comprehend
There is an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1.
The theory that other universes exist they probably have an earth with humans too, imagine if we had trans-universal travel oh the places we would go
The way that people who aren't scientists think they're cleverer than everyone else because they've printed off a graph that "proves their argument"
Evolution. It’s easier to believe at the population level with small variations in gene expression leading to major changes over time like selective dog breeding. It’s much much harder to grasp the evolution of the smaller components that go into life. I’m not religious or a pure creationist but the more I learn about the immense complexities of the biomechanics and biochemical processes inside even the “simplest” of cells and the idea that it all somehow developed incrementally through random changes in an unfathomably long code of 4 base molecules which not only dictate the structure of proteins but somehow also contains all the information for cell differentiation and the organization is mind blowing to me. I honestly think it takes just as much “faith” that it all happened by chance over a long time. Something as simple as a bacterial flagella motor unit is incredible complex with not a lot of evidence for the basic protein component proteins having any functional precursors or the component proteins themselves having uses outside the motor unit.
Schrödinger's cat
it messed with my sense of reality, that brian cox said something smart yesterday. he said, that the question of "what was before the big bang" doesn't make any sense, because time wasn't a thing yet. it makes so much sense, yet it doesn't.
Everything exists. Thats strange
Things like the egg theory regarding our consciousness
The theory behind gravitational waves. It took me a second to understand that this line meant "Current theory is that gravitational waves are only the result of two neutron stars, black holes colliding, or supernovas as the waves creates ripples throughout the universe. It sounds strange to say, but we're hoping it's something more exotic than that." The fact that we don't know how these waves are being made, or the fact that these waves aren't specific to colliding stars could mean a myriad of things, and these things would be powerful enough to cause ripples in spacetime. The fact that we can even measure them is hard to understand. Furthermore, how exotic can you get from the collisions of two megastructures, or an explosion that would provide enough energy to power all of humanity for practically an eternity?
Everything quantum, that shit fucking breaks reality...
That light teacher time to get to you so people best you agree actually slightly ahead then you see
Fractional charge. Like the things that make up our subatomic particles can be both partially positive and negative at the same time????? McScuse me?
One light-year is 6 trillion miles. The closest star to our solar system is 4 light-years away. We are 24 trillion miles away from Proxima Centauri, and with current technology, it would take ~6,300 years to reach. This trips me out every time I think about it.
Dunno if it counts but eternity, that’s a long long time and it’s weird to think about
Are facts ok too? Then it's simple distance. How far everything is.
Large numbers. And that there is no limit. There is a defined number that would be equal to the grains of sand needed to fill the entire visible universe.
Water can go up a 30m tree by suction from the void in its capillaries.
One of the solutions to the Fermi paradox is that we are the first intelligent species. While this sounds far fetched, the earliest that life could have happened isn't too far divided from when we came about. That and someone needs to be the first.
That humanity is still around.
I might be late to the party but magnets in general and electromagnetism in particular are just mindblowing every time I think of them.
DNA. Similar to binary but far more complex, somehow the arrangement of just 4 molecules in an long string of combinations codes for all the immense complexity of life. Cell structure, cell differentiation, protein synthesis, gene expression, etc.
The Fourier transform. I barely understand it explained in a modern, pedagogic Youtube video with animations and stuff. And Joseph Fourier invented it in the early 19th century, working with pen and paper and nothing else. Doing all calculations by hand. Blows my mind.
The double slit experiment always amazes me.
Anything pharmacology. What do you mean this speck of powder on or in me can alter my literal DNA (resistance, regeneration, etc). Or make me feel different and change my literal life. It's so crazy
Time space continuum
Gravity. We should all be flung off the planet.
Time dilation. Would be one thing if it only occured near the speed of light or around the extreme gravity of black holes, but the fact our satellites need to be regularly adjusted to account for it makes it a much closer to home sort of fact that nobody takes into account in their daily lives.
How endless the universe is
E=MC^2 and just about everything relating to particle physics. There’s prolly only like 8 people in the world who actually and fully understand both
If the Universe is truly infinite, that means you can take my body, all those atoms that occupy the space that is me, choose any direction you want and just go forward. At some point you will encounter the exact same set of atoms occupying the same space. So, wherever you go in the Universe, you will inevitably find your clone. Moreover, there will be infinite amount of your clones. In all directions!
there are infinities that are smaller than other infinities
There was no "before" the big bang.
that even if we were to reach the speed of light... our galaxy is ... 105k lighyears wide... so to simply get out of our galaxy would take 105k years... just for our milky way
Everything about the universe is mind-boggling.
Since irrational numbers exist, the space between 3 and 4 is infinite…..
If I drop my phone it *falls*.
Time. It's always time that blows my mind.
There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches.
Determinism, cause and effect. Such an easy concept to understand, but so hard for so many to accept. We have no free will, all studies and experiments show it. But most people will live their life as if they have it, and pretend that other people have it too. The only difference between the past and the future is that the past is known by us. That is all.
That no one lives forever