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In briefSabine Hossenfelder reads a confidential email and uses it to explain her worries about academia and incentives in theoretical physics research. She ties it to her earlier Nature Physics comment on research quality.
In briefStuart Armstrong of the Future of Humanity Institute gives an Oxford physics talk on what exploratory engineering suggests about the Fermi paradox. He argues that von Neumann probes and Dyson spheres are plausibly buildable and asks what traces advanced civilizations would leave.
In briefThe first of Richard Feynman's 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell, 'The Character of Physical Law', covering the law of gravitation. Feynman traces the history from Kepler and Newton to the universality of the inverse-square law. The recording is an older one with weak audio.
In briefNileRed attempts to make transparent wood, inspired by an AvE video, by removing lignin and infiltrating the wood with resin. It is a long, detailed walkthrough of the chemistry and the practical difficulties.
In briefJoe Scott takes a serious look at space sunshades as a climate fix, asking how big they would need to be, what they would cost and whether they would work. He draws on Roger Angel's paper and launch options.
In briefA Veritasium video on the asteroid threat, with UCLA's Dave Jewitt explaining detection efforts and how different asteroid sizes compare in damage.
In briefVeritasium explores how synchronization arises spontaneously in nature, with metronomes, fireflies and bridges, drawing on Steven Strogatz's work on chaos and complexity.
In briefA clip from Joe Rogan Experience #928 in which Rogan, with Arian Foster, explains why he abandoned his belief in Moon landing conspiracy theories. He describes how doctored training photos fueled doubt before he learned more of the physics.
In briefA 12-minute clip from Joe Rogan's podcast in which former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman describes working for Elon Musk at SpaceX. He discusses Musk's engineering breadth, his Mars-focused decision making and the stress of the job.
In briefA clip of Richard Feynman contrasting the Greek and Babylonian traditions of mathematical reasoning. It compares the axiomatic approach of mathematicians with how physicists use mathematics.
In briefA PBS Space Time episode asking whether our universe could sit inside a black hole. It covers what physicists think happens inside black holes and the arguments for and against this idea.
In briefVeritasium explains the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, drawing heavily on Sean Carroll's book. It walks through the Schrodinger equation and why wave collapse may be unnecessary if the universe keeps splitting.
In briefA SpaceX concept animation showing the planned fully reusable Falcon 9, with both first and second stages performing vertical landings.
In briefA PBS Space Time episode on fuzzballs, the string-theory proposal for black holes that replaces the singularity with a tangle of strings. It explains why black holes seem to both have to exist and break known physics.
In briefPBS Space Time considers whether life could be based on silicon instead of carbon, comparing the two elements' chemistry and why silicon is the most plausible alternative.
In briefMIT Media Lab shows an imaging system capturing a trillion frames per second, fast enough to film light pulses travelling through objects in slow motion.
In briefSabine Hossenfelder explains how special relativity leads to the block universe, in which past, present and future all exist equally, and asks what that means for whether the past still exists.
In briefA US Chemical Safety Board video explaining how sugar dust explosions at the Imperial Sugar plant in Georgia killed fourteen workers in 2008.
In briefA two-minute clip recorded on a Kennedy Space Center tour showing a Space Shuttle thermal tile that can be held by hand while its surface is extremely hot. It demonstrates the tile's remarkable insulating properties.
In briefTen minutes of ultra-slow-motion footage of bullet impacts filmed at about one million frames per second by Werner Mehl of Kurzzeit. It includes hollow points in ballistics gel and impacts on glass.
In briefBen Krasnow of Applied Science uses an antique 4x5 view camera to make high-resolution photolithography masks in a home shop. He photographs a poster-sized printout onto litho film to get features around 20 microns.
In briefRamesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a technique that captures a trillion frames per second, fast enough to show light itself moving through a scene. He discusses possible uses such as cameras that see around corners or inside the body.
In briefBrady Haran interviews Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, for Sixty Symbols. It is part of a three-video set along with the observatory's telescopes and its meteorite collection.
In briefNileRed tries to make a ring from pure purple gold, a gold-aluminium intermetallic that is brittle and hard to work with. The 53-minute video follows the chemistry and many failed attempts before he produces a finished ring.
