The Science Asylum

The term "tensor" is often misunderstood. Let's figure out what they are through vector examples like velocity, angular momentum, the stress tensor, and the electromagnetic tensor. Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

There are bunch of videos out there explaining why the sky is blue, but let's go a little deeper into the optics. Why does color matter? What's a vibrational resonance? What's actually happening on the subatomic level?

There are red, orange, yellow, blue, and even white stars, but no green or purple stars. The reason comes down to chromaticity and the optics of black body sources. Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

The Sun's core is 15 million °C (27 million °F), which is hot enough to turn gas into a plasma. But thermodynamics isn't enough to explain nuclear fusion at those temperatures. It needs quantum tunneling!

In physics, it can sometimes help to imagine a challenging problem as easier problem we already know how to solve. What if you're free falling from outer space? What if you're falling through a tunnel drilled through the Earth? Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

The behavior of spacetime is described by Einstein's equation (i.e. Einstein's field equations) from General Relativity. To understand how elastic it is, we need to delve into the main equation of elasticity, Hooke's law, and see how it compares.

Measuring the curvature of a space takes parallel transport and the Riemann curvature tensor (General Relativity). Let's explore this using Flatland and Lineland, an old tool involving lower-dimensional spaces. Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

In special and general relativity, we imagine time as just another dimension of space in something called "spacetime." Unfortunately, this picture leads to questions about determinism and free will. Is that really how it works? What does the concept of spacetime actually say about the universe and about time?

Electric charge is both a spacetime invariant and conserved over time. To understand why, we'll need to dive deep into it's connection to the electromagnetic field through Noether's theorem and quantum mechanics. Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

We like to imagine of gravitational orbits as the conic sections: circles, ellipses, etc. That's only for two-body problems though. Let's take a look at three-body problems (and beyond) using Newtonian mechanics as well as General Relativity. How weird can orbits actually get?

Einstein's general relativity says gravity is spacetime curvature, but what does that mean? Let's take a look at how gravitational time dilation results in an effect that looks a lot like gravity. The flow of time brings mass together.

The cosmic microwave background, or CMB, is the oldest light in the universe. It's a remnant of the hot dense cosmic past. How was it made? What did it used to look like? And, frankly, why should we care about it? Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

Special relativity is full of weirdness like length contraction and time dilation. It's the result of something called a Lorentz transform. It's almost exclusively done algebraically, but it makes way more sense if you do it geometrically. Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

The first 100 people to go to https://www.blinkist.com/scienceasylum are going to get unlimited access for 1 week to try it out. You'll also get 25% off if you want the full membership.

A black hole is matter and/or light crammed into such a tiny volume that nothing can escape. But, shortly after the big bang, the observable universe was that small. How did it escape?! Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

We're made of matter, which means we experience time. But what if we were made of something timeless like light instead? What would the universe be like for us? Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

Biology says life has these seven properties: organization, growth, reproduction, metabolism, homeostasis, response, and adaptation. But is that always true? Are Conway's Game of Life creatures alive? What do physics and entropy have to say about this? Let's find out.

Visuals of quantum orbitals are always so static. What happens when an electron transitions? A current must flow to conserve the probability. What does that look like?!

I try to teach my wife (biologist) about the basics of quantum mechanics: wave functions, Schrodinger's equation, superpositions, and the measurement problem. Brilliant for 20% off: http://brilliant.org/ScienceAsylum

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From Copenhagen to pilot waves and many worlds, interpreting quantum mechanics is difficult. In this video, I try to explain them all to my wife. Let's see how I did.