Sabine posts
Posts: 449
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These scientists got sued for doing their job
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Truth can be painful, but truth can’t be sued. So sometimes, people who’ve been hurt by truth will try to sue those who dug up the truth. This doesn’t only affect journalists, who often have legal backup from their employer, but increasingly often also scientists, who usually have no legal support. This worries me considerably. What are scientists being sued for, why is it happening, and what can be done about it? That’s what we’ll talk about today.I witnessed this problem first about 15...
New experiment finds weird atomic nucleus with dumbbell shape
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Image an atomic nucleus. What does it look like? Is it round, like, a ball? Yeah, that’s what I used to think they look like. But this group of researchers from China has found one that has the shape of a dumbbell.Atomic nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, and they carry the big bulk of the mass of atoms. The number of protons determines the atomic number and with that, the type of chemical element. Atomic nuclei are known to be able to vibrate and to slightly deform, and some are more p...
Content changes, a brief explanation
I've gotten a lot of question about the recent content changes on the YouTube channel, with the move from the weekly news to daily news.The issue I have, in a nutshell, is the following. I see in my comments, here and elsewhere, that you are asking both for reactions on recent news and for in-depth coverage of more general questions. I am trying to address both. So, we have short, short-notice reactions that we can produce within a week. And then we have longer, in-depth coverage that usually takes several months to produce.Now, as it's...
Carbon Capture, Lithium, & Smaller MRIs
UAE Launches Carbon Capture PlantThe ADNOC carbon capture plant. Image Credit: ADNOC.The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has launched a carbon capture plant in the remote mountains of the United Arab Emirates. The step is part of a controversial attempt by the oil company to lower carbon dioxide emissions without abandoning fossil fuels. The technology, which was previously tested in a smaller pilot project, will suck carbon dioxide from the air and dissipate it in seawater, then inject the seawater deep underground where it is expected ...
Move over LHC: This particle accelerator is just 10 cm long
[This is a transcript with links to references.]You’ve probably heard that particle physicists would really, really like to have a new particle collider, one that can reach even higher energies that the Large Hadron Collider, the currently most powerful particle accelerator in the world. And this new breakthrough which I just read about the other day might make their dream come true. The biggest problem with particle colliders is that they’re big, because that makes them very, very expensive. They’re big because accelerating particles to...
This experiment will measure nothing, but very precisely
[This is a transcript with links to references.]The physics paper that I’m most excited about this week is about an experiment that will measure nothing. But not any nothing, a very specific nothing, that’s the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics. You might think that if you remove all the particles from within a container, then the only thing that’s left inside is space. But that isn’t so. It’s because particles in quantum physics are like waves atop of an ocean. If you take away the waves, you still have all that water! And the water ...
The Best Sleep Advice - According to Science
[This is a transcript with links to references.]You’ve all heard that sleeping problems are called “imsomina” but have you heard of “orthosomina”? “Ortho” is the Greek word for straight or correct, and ‘somnia’ means sleep. The term “orthosomina” was coined a few years ago by a group of sleep researchers from Chicago. It’s when people worry about not getting the perfect sleep, an issue that’s been driven by sleep trackers. And along with that, a lot of sleep-advice has sprung up on social media.For example, if you trus...
Ozone Layer Trouble, One Moon-Crater Too Many, & the Hubble Tension Bites Back
Ozone Layer TroubleLeft: Ozone layer illustration. Right: NASA images a hole in the Ozone layer.A group of scientists in New Zealand says that the ozone layer is not recovering as expected. According to their recent study, the problem is being aggravated by bushfires, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gas emissions. Up to now, scientists thought that the Montreal Protocol had been successful in initiating ozone recovery, but the scientists now say that the change in total column ozone (TCO) is statistically insignificant. Their study raises a ...
Science News Nov 29
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about the leading theories for why Sam Altman got fired from OpenAI, cosmic rays with HUGE energies, evidence of a an overdue supervolcano eruption near Italy, an exoplanet on which it rains sand, Microsoft’s first AI-chip, why spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are so rare, how climate engineering could save the Antarctic, cannibalistic stars, and of course the telephone will ring.Last week we’ve seen a lot of headlines about ...
Long COVID is real, but may be overestimated
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Remember COVID? It’s over, right? Except for some people it isn’t over, and maybe it never will be. Estimates say that as much as one in 10 people who had COVID were still affected more than 3 months later. They got long COVID. But what’s long COVID? What might cause it, how common is it, and what should you do if you think you’re affected? That’s what we’ll talk about today.First things first, what’s long COVID? Long COVID isn’t a single disease, it’s a collection of symptoms. I...
6G, Unstickable Glue, & Blinking Masterminds
Move Over 5G, 6G is Arriving SoonImage: Department of DefenseThe U.S. government is already planning the transition to the 6th generation of mobile networks, 6G. Its predecessor, 5G, is currently being rolled out all over the world. 6G is supposed to bring us even higher bandwidth. While the best 5G network might allow you to download a 36 Terabyte folder in an hour (at 10 Gigabytes per second), a 6G network might allow you to download the same file in seconds.5G already uses very high frequencies. They’re in the range of a few GHz, which is ...
Science News Nov 21
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone to yet another exciting week of science news. Today we’ll talk about why Mars glows green, an amazingly cool way to make magnets hover, a study which found that a supposed piece of alien tech isn’t alien tech, surprising absolutely no one, plans to use the entire moon as a gravitational wave detector, progress with D-wave’s quantum computer, why Saturn’s rings will temporarily become invisible, wires that learn, energy from indoor lights, and of course, the telephone will ...
Is Science Dying?
[This is a transcript of the video.]Is science coming to an end? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. This may sound like old Sabine has finally gone completely crazy. Fair enough. But I believe my worries aren’t quite as crazy as they sound. Though I guess that’s exactly what a crazy person would say, wouldn’t they. Crazy or not, I think it’s worth discussing: Why might science end, and is it happening? That’s what we’ll talk about today.In 1996, John Horgan wrote a book called “The End of Science” in which he made ...
Super-Misconduct, Cloud Seeding, & What's Up With ASMR
A Super-Misconductor?The supposed superconductor. Image: University of Rochester.Nature – the world’s most read, respected, and prestigious science journal – has retracted yet another paper about the supposed discovery of a high-temperature superconductor. This paper in question had been published earlier this year. It reported the discovery of a material that was superconducting at room temperature, albeit at 10,000 times atmospheric pressure. To add insult to injury, the newly retracted paper comes from the same research group of Ranga ...
Science News Nov 15
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we have an update on the biggest astrophysics drama of the year, that’s an observation which seems to be ruling out the most popular alternative to dark matter. Then we have a group of geologists who claim that parts of the moon are stuck in the mantle of earth, a new and quite plausible explanation for the sudden dimming and brightening of the star Betelgeuse, plans for a smaller and more energy-efficient particle collider, the first full co...
I think net zero plans are bonkers, here's why
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Net Zero. Everyone is talking about Net Zero, everywhere, all at once. But Net Zero what? What does this even mean? Is it a reasonable goal? How far are we on the way? And do we have any chance of reaching it? That’s what we’ll talk about today.First things first, what do we mean by net zero? Until recently the term had no official definition, but in 2022, the International Standards Organization blessed the world with this clarification: Net Zero is the “condition in which human-caused resi...
A Bold Bird, Cotton on the Moon, & Super-Silk
Bold Bird Survives Five Rounds with Typhoon FaxaiStreaked Shearwater Seabird, Japan. Source: lin-sun-fong/iNaturalist/A graduate student biologist at Tohoku University in Japan who fitted a streaked shearwater seabird with a tracking device found a surprise in the data. The bird had taken a ride in typhoon Faxai in September 2019 and went around five times. On its ride, the bird covered a distance of more than 1,000 km (about 621.3 miles) in 11 hours. While the streaked shearwater seabird usually flies at a max of 60 km/h at altitudes under 100...
Science News Nov 7 2023
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone to this week’s science news! This week we have new evidence that the dinosaurs were killed by the aftermath of an asteroid impact, then we have a look at the biggest universe simulation ever, talk about a lost continent that’s been found, roman ruins in spy footage, a new record for a single photon camera, an asteroid that might contain chemical elements which are not in the periodic table, super lightning bolts, solar glass, and of course, the telephone will ring.A new study ...
Physicist reacts to quantum memes
[This is a transcript.]I know I said I wouldn’t do reaction videos. But, ah, I keep seeing these terrible memes about quantum mechanics. It’s quite possible that you don’t want to know what I think about them, but I’ll tell you anyway. In this totally unfunny video, I’ll rate the 10 most popular quantum memes. Are they any good? That’s what we’ll talk about today.As usual, I’ve been overthinking this, so I’ll give each meme three ratings and will place them on this little triangle. One rating is for accuracy, that’s how well...
Peak Oil, Augmented Forests, & Energy from Feathers
Peak Oil is Here AgainIEA 2023 projection for global oil demand in million barrels per dayAccording to the International Energy Agency, we are on track to see fossil fuel use peak before 2030. In their recent World Energy Outlook, they say that clean energy supply is now sufficient for global demand for fossil fuels to falter and enter a terminal decline. While the share of coal, oil, and natural gas in the global energy supply has been stuck around 80% for decades, they say that by 2030 it’ll go down to about 73%. Then again, peak oil has be...
Science News Nov 01
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone! Science never rests and this week we have quite a selection of news. It looks like the sun’s magnetic field will flip earlier than expected, the moon is 40 million years older than anyone thought, a group of geologists have found that Earth’s core is leaking, we’ll have a look at the tiniest particle accelerator ever, why airline pricing is such a mess, hear what the International energy agency has to say about the condition of our electric grids, how physics improves prote...
Ozempic and Wegovy: All You Need To Know
[This is a transcript with links to references.]In 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration approved wegovy a drug with the active ingredient semaglutide that helps people lose weight. In contrast to pretty much all previous weight-loss drugs, this one actually works. And it’s taken the world by storm. According to Komodo Health, the number of prescriptions for this and similar drugs for weight-loss purposes has increased over two thousand percent from 2019 to 2022 in the USA. The demand is so high that Wegovy is now on the FDA’s Drug Sho...
Earthquakes, Marsquakes, & Wine vs Beer
Earthquake Warnings from Unused Seafloor Cables(a) Map of detected earthquakes (b) Data used to detect the quakes. Image: Jiuxun Yin et al., GeoScienceWorld (2023)Researchers at Caltech have used 50 km of existing submarine optical fibre cable between the U.S. and Chile to detect earthquakes. This technique, called Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), exploits the shifts of tiny flaws in optical fibres as seismic sensors. Over the four days of measurement, they recorded three small on- and off-shore earthquakes with magnitudes near 3. The team f...
Science News Oct 24
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about why coin flips are not fifty-fifty, starquakes, the most powerful solar storm ever, space debris, IBM’s new brain-inspired computer chip, an exoplanet collision, a new tectonic plate, projections for AI power consumption, and of course the telephone will ring.A coin flip is fifty-fifty, right? Not quite. A pretty big group of physicists just put out a pre-print on the arXiv saying that coin tosses aren’t entirely fair.Thi...
How does quantum mechanics give rise to parallel universes?
[This is a transcript.]Physics is fascinating because, well, because of many reasons of course, not least that it works. But one reason is certainly that it gives a touch of plausibility to ideas that otherwise seem like pure fiction, strange objects that you think shouldn’t exist: Wormholes, invisibility cloaks, or birds. But the physics idea that has captured imagination the most are probably parallel universes. The “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics has it that anything which can happen, does happen, in another universe...
Spongebob 2.0, Asteroid Dust, & Ping Pong Balls
This Is What Happens When You Let an AI Design a RobotImage: Matthews et al., PNAS ( 2023)Researchers at Northwestern University asked an artificial intelligence (AI) to design a robot that could walk across land. The result is not exactly what you’d expect. The AI first came up with a spongy block that would deform when water was pumped into it. This robot could jiggle but not walk. In the next iteration, the AI found a shape that would make the sponge hop and shuffle. Nine iterations and twenty-six seconds later, the robot could hop effecti...
Science News Oct 17
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. This week we’ll talk about three new laws of nature, one of which supposedly shows that we live in a computer simulation. We’ll have a first look at intergalactic filaments, talk about building roads on the moon, whether chatbots understand what they chat about, a new type of qubit with a low error rate, sound waves in crystals, how to deflect lasers with nothing but air, dunes on mars, the first hurricane prediction market, and of course, the te...
Is time-travel possible?
[This is a transcript with links to references.] We just talked about time travel next month, but it’s been a while, so let’s give this a closer look. What does physics say about time travel? Is MIT really building a time machine to find dark matter. Is time travel possible? That’s what we’ll talk about today.This video comes with a quiz on quizwithit dot com. So listen closely, and at the end you can check how much you get right.If time travel is possible, where are all the time travellers? Maybe the 21st century is just too boring. Or...
Space Littering, Exascale Computing, & Einstein’s Tea Leaves
Dish Gets Served with a Hefty Fine for Space LitteringThe U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fined Dish, a satellite TV company, $150,000 for violating space safety regulations. Due to technical problems, the company had to leave its EchoStar-7 satellite in a lower orbit than agreed. It’s now posing a collision risk to other spacecraft, and the FCC reprimanded the company for a "failure to properly deorbit." This is the first time a law for the prevention of space debris has ever been enforced. More here.Europe to Get It...
Science News October 10
[This is a transcript with links to references]Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about a new candidate for a cosmic string, the mysterious shrinking of planet Mercury, a nuclear clock, the first quantum engine, a simulator for human diseases, whether we can find new physics with spinning black holes, AI that wants to help find aliens, how to compute with photons, and of course, the telephone will ring.Astronomers might have found evidence for a cosmic string. A cosmic string is a hypothetical giant thread of p...
