Sabine posts
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Can Quantum Fluctuations Create a New Universe?
[This is a transcript.]The future is dark, and I don’t mean the upcoming US elections, I mean that stars in the universe will eventually all burn out. They’ll clump together and form black holes. The black holes will evaporate, leaving behind nothing but a very thinly distributed, cold, and dark gas. And that’s how it will remain, forever. Game over. Well, maybe not. This video was prompted by a question that came in on twitter “If you waited long enough, could quantum fluctuations in the universe create a new one at some point?” The ...
New Computer will Mimic Human Brain -- And I'm Kinda Scared
[This is a transcript with links to references.]A lab in Australia is building a new supercomputer that will for the first time both physically resemble a human brain, and perform as many operations as possible, about 228 trillion per second.The scary bit is how few operations this are. Yes, how few. Let me explain. The new supercomputer will be built at the at Western Sydney University. It’s part of a new paradigm called “neuromorphic” computing, that’s computers modelled after the so far best processing apparatuses that nature has gi...
A runaway greenhouse effect is very unlikely on earth
[This is a transcript with links to references.]When I was just about to log off for the holiday break, I saw these headlines popping up, saying that it doesn’t take muchto turn Earth into Venus with a runaway greenhouse effect which would, quote, literally boil earth alive. I thought it’d be best to ignore this. But then I saw that some people on social media got first worried about it, and then confused because no one was addressing this. So I decided to, well, you know, give you all the boring context because that’s what I do. And here...
Will AI kill Quantum Computing?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]It’s hard to keep track of all the things that will supposedly fix climate change but won’t. Such as hydrogen, veganism, or quantum computing. Wait what? Yes, marketing quantum computers as miracle cure for climate change has not fallen out of fashion despite my many jokes about it.For example, in a recent article in The Hill, Sam Howell, a research associate at the Center for New American Security in Washington, DC writes “If countries are serious about climate change, they should get serio...
A New Rocket, Electric Soil, & AI That Predicts Chaos
NASA Tests New 3D-Printed Rocket EngineHot exhaust spews from NASA’s new 3D printed rocket engine. Image Credit: NASA.NASA has tested its new 3D printed rocket propulsion system, dubbed the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE). Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama were able to successfully run the RDRE for over four minutes, producing over 25 KiloNewton of thrust force. Their aim is 44 KiloNewton, which would produce more thrust with less fuel than NASA’s traditional liquid rocket engines.The new engine owes ...
Sattelite debris might start conducting electricity, disturb magnetic field
[This is a transcript with links to references.]We’ve heard that space debris is bad and the problem’s getting worse, but here’s a new thing to worry about. It could interfere with the earth’s magnetic field, which is our major protection from the highly energetic particles of the solar wind. Space debris, aka space junk or orbital debris, comes from stuff like defunct or decommissioned satellites or spent rocket stages. It already poses a significant challenge to the sustainability of space activities. And as more junk accumulates up ...
This new semiconductor could revolutionize computing
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Researchers at the Georgia Institute for Technology have found a new semiconductor that’s a really good candidate for making computers faster and smaller than ever. Let’s have a look. In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the brains behind Intel, noticed that the number of transistors on a microchip was doubling roughly every two years. It’s become known as “Moore’s Law” and it has roughly remained valid until a year or two ago when Nvidia declared Moore’s law dead.The problem is that by now...
Solar arrays better than trees for climate, study finds
[This is a transcript with links to references.]What is better, planting trees or covering the same area of land with solar panels? A group of geoscientists from Israel just looked at this, and they say that solar panels come out way ahead. Trees breathe carbon dioxide, which makes planting trees a fairly obvious and technologically simple way to mitigate global warming. Trees and other vegetation take up about 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, and they use it to grow. They create what’s known as “biomass”, that’s basically ...
Will the world end? A physicist's reply.
[This is a transcript.]Will the world end? Someone asked me that on twitter. You might think I’m not the right person to answer that question, but hear me out. The world as we know it depends on the laws of nature continuing to do their thing. Gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces and so on. If they stopped working tomorrow, the world would quite literally end.Take for example Pauli’s exclusion principle. It’s a law of nature that says that two fermions can’t be in the exact same state. Electrons are fermions, and the exclusion pri...
They correctly predicted a Nobel Prize winning discovery. And no one cared.
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Imagine you make a prediction for a discovery that wins the Nobel Prize. Your prediction turns out to be correct, and no one cares. This is what happened to these two physicists. I am talking about a prediction from 2009, when Mikhail Shaposhnikov and Christof Wetterich calculated the mass of the Higgs-boson. The Higgs-boson is one of the 25 elementary particles that physicists collect in the standard model of particle physics. It was the last of those particles to be discovered, in 2012 at the La...
More Space Debris Trouble, A Very Big Ship, & The Microbe of the Year
Satellite Debris Could Interfere with Earth’s Magnetic FieldSpace debris illustration. Image: ESAWe have heard that space debris is accumulating and posing a risk to satellites up there, but it turns out the problem may be worse than we thought. According to a new preprint that just appeared on the arXiv, the debris might pose a risk to Earth’s magnetic field even if satellites burn up upon reentry because, well, just because they burn up doesn’t mean the stuff they’re made of disappears. The author, Dr. Sierra Solter-Hunt, estimates th...
Why is nuclear power so expensive?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]There are a lot of bad arguments against nuclear power. For example, that it’d just be too simple a solution to climate change, we need to make the transition difficult and painful. That’s not a good argument because it’s not actually that simple to prevent further global warming, even with nuclear power. But there are two good arguments against nuclear power: it’s too expensive, and the power plants take too long to build. But are they true? And if so, why is it that nuclear power is so s...
Nuclear Power Comeback Update: Poland Authorizes Small Modular Reactors
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Nuclear power is on a roll. In its latest success, Poland has authorized the construction of 24 small nuclear reactors at six sites across the country. And a good thing, too, because electricity production in Poland is one of the most carbon intense in the world, with still almost 70 percent of the electricity coming from coal.Nuclear power is back in fashion in many countries because of its potential to decarbonize even energy-intense industry quickly. The Japanese who shut down their nuclear pow...
You are now accelerating: What it means that gravity is not a force
[This is a transcript.]This video is all about Albert Einstein, yes, that guy again. Einstein is famous for his theory of general relativity. It’s taught us that gravity is not a force. And that’s probably the most misunderstood physics fact, ever. Like, even physicists get it wrong, all the time. Gravity is not a force. And since there’s no force pushing down on you, that means you are currently accelerating upward. Unless you’re watching this from the ISS, in which case please say hi to the moon. How does gravity work if it’s not a...
Life could have begun in an interstellar gas cloud
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Scientists have long speculated that life didn’t begin on earth but in space. According to a new preprint, life could have come from intergalactic gas clouds, so let’s have a look. The oldest confirmed traces of life are biostructures called stromatolites, that’s layers of rock which contain remains of single-celled organisms. These organisms are believed to have been either algae or some kind of bacteria. Scientists have dated them back to about 3 point 5 billion years. Earth itself is abo...
The experiment that could save physics
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Physicists at the University of Warwick in the UK are starting to build an experiment that could just save physics. Let’s have a look. Research in the foundations of physics has been stuck for about 40 years, ever since the development of the standard model was completed. The big questions that were open then are still open: What is dark matter, how does a measurement work, and how does gravity work together with quantum physics? Physicists have tried very hard to answer these questions, but no...
Is there science behind a fossil fuel phaseout?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I though, I have a talent for pissing off climate scientists, but I have to bow to Sultan Al Jaber who had climate scientists fuming for saying that there’s no science behind a fossil fuel phase out. He is, of course, entirely correct, which raises the interesting question whether fuming climate scientists emit carbon dioxide, and if we need to phase that out. But first some background. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is the minister of industry and advanced technology of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE...
Particle physicists make wishlist. I'm underwhelmed.
[This is a transcript with links to references]Particle physicists in the United States have tried to come up with a strategy to revitalize their research area, and their ideas are… somewhat underwhelming. But let’s have a look. Last week, a panel of scientists named the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, or P5, signed on to a list of policy recommendations for the US Department of Energy and the National Science foundation. And since 5 is such a nice number, they’ve come up with 5 priorities.Their highest priority, after con...
There's a mysterious dark patch in the Milky Way, and it's weirder than we thought.
[This is a transcript with links to references.]The Brick is a boxy cloud of opaque dust at the centre of the Milky Way, which has confused scientists ever since its discovery 30 years ago. It just got even weirder.Astrophysicists originally thought that the Brick was just full of dense gases, which would absorb light. But then it should also have been full of young stars born from this dense gas. Yet those are nowhere to be seen. In reality, the Brick is closer to a nunnery than a maternity ward.According to the new paper by an international t...
Quantum Computers cross 1000 qubits threshold. What does this mean?
[This is a transcript.]IBM just announced they produced the first quantum processor with more than 1000 qubits and I got a lot of question about what this means, so let’s have a look.Last week, IBM revealed the IBM Condor processor which has 1,121-qubit. This is up from 433 qubits in its previously largest chip and in line with the quantum roadmap that IBM has set for itself.Qubits are the operating units of quantum computers. If you manage to entangle them, you can use them to perform certain calculations dramatically faster than on conventi...
Complexity: The biggest gap in modern science
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Complexity. It sounds very sciency, doesn’t it. Everyone loves to talk about complex problems and complex systems, but no one has any idea what it means. I think that understanding complexity is THE biggest gap in science today. What do we even mean by complexity? What do we know about it? And what’s the problem with trying to explain it? That’s what we’ll talk about today.Before we talk about complexity, let me tell you about something very simple, a special offer from our sponsor galaxy ...
Climate change to force people indoors earlier than expected
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Today I have some really bad news. So, you know, grab a cup of tea, or maybe scotch. Ready? A new study says that climate change will make big parts of the world uninhabitable much faster than expected. And I think they’re making a very good point. Have you ever wondered why, if our body temperature is about 37 degrees Celsius, do we not find that same temperature comfortable as room temperature? It’s because to work properly, the human body needs to cool. We constantly produce energy to powe...
First transatlantic flight with sustainable fuel. Is this the future of flying?
[This is a transcript.]Last week, Virgin Atlantic chartered the world’s first-ever transatlantic flight powered by sustainable aviation fuel. Their Boeing 787 flight from London to New York was powered by a mix of waste oil and biofuel and intended to test the performance. Sustainable Aviation Fuels, SAF for short, are a catch-all phrase for several different types of fuels. What they have in common is that they chemically resemble kerosene but that they cause much lower carbon dioxide emission as the usual stuff that’s derived from fossil ...
Black Hole Singularites "Faith, not science!" Prominent Physicist Claims
[This is a transcript with links to references.]This is the maybe most surprising development in theoretical physics I’ve seen for a decade or so. A well-renown physicist is saying that there’s a mistake in a proof that dates back half a century, and black holes might not actually contain singularities. The physicist in person is Roy Kerr, who is famous for his contributions to General Relativity. He was the first to understand how to mathematically describe rotating black holes in Einstein’s theory. Prior to this, physicists only know ho...
String Theory gets Competition: A New Attempt to Solve Physics' Biggest Mystery
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Every scientific discipline has its holy grail, and the holy grail of physics is definitely quantum gravity. Quantum gravity is Einstein’s unfinished revolution, the missing unification of General Relativity and Quantum Theory. String theory is the best-known contender, and this week have a strong newcomer. You see, the issue is that Einstein’s theory of General Relativity doesn’t have quantum properties. So if we take a particle and do an experiment that tests its quantum properties, like ...
NASA succeeds with first deep space communication test
[This is a transcript with links to references.]NASA has succeeded in a first test of its new deep-space communication technology, which you might one day use to check in on your son, who recently moved to Mars.The test was conducted between a device abord the recently-launched Psyche mission and the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. The Psyche spacecraft is on a journey to the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Currently, it’s about ten million miles away from Earth, that’s a bit more than 40 times the...
Bitcoin mining is good for the energy transition, scientists say
[This video seems to have upset some people. I'm not entirely sure why. First, this is totally a real paper that you can read yourself. Second, it's not like I support this idea. I merely found it an interesting argument. Probably even makes sense from a financial perspective.]According to a new study from researchers at Cornell, bitcoin mining could be used to power our transition to green energy. No, they’re not joking. At least I don’t think so.Yes, Bitcoin mining has a bad reputation for eating up a lot of energy, but it has one...
Social media doesn't affect your emotional life, study finds
[This is a transcript with links to references.]A study just out from researchers at Durham University in the UK has found that reducing social media use doesn’t have much of an effect on people’s emotional life one way or another. The question whether social media impacts mental health has been hotly discussed among psychologists and sociologists in recent years. One hypothesis has it that going off social media reduces stress and improves well-being. The other hypothesis is that social media is in some sense addictive, and discontinuing ...
They found a reliable way to create antibubbles
[This is a transcript with links to references.]You’ve all heard of bubbles, but have you heard of anti-bubbles? Me neither, but it’s a thing, as I just learned from this recent paper. Bubbles are thin, closed membranes of liquid surrounded by gas both inside and out. An anti-bubble is just the opposite, a thin, closed layer of gas with liquid inside and out. They’re known to sometimes exist in liquids, but they usually last just a few milliseconds, so unless you have very sharp eyes, you’ve probably never seen one. But researchers from...
This drone saved 6 lives
[This is a transcript with links to references.]The Swedish Karolinska Institutet near Stockholm has tested drones for delivering defibrillators in response to emergency calls, and the results of their trial are very promising.In a recent paper they released the results of their test program. It ran in collaboration with the company Everdrone from April 2021 through May 2022 and covered an area near Stockholm where roughly 200 thousand people live.If someone in that area calls 1-1-2, that’s the European emergency call, and reports a suspected...
