A short a cappella tribute to experimentalists. It is sung while performing three simple experiments with household items: Mentos dropped in diet Coke, a tea bag emptied and burned, and a ping pong ball floating in the air stream of a hair dryer.
If you’ve seen footage from the International Space Station or any of the space shuttle missions, you know that astronauts float around as they orbit the Earth. Why is that? Is it because the gravitational force on them is zero in space? (Or nearly zero?) The truth is that the strength of the gravitational attraction is only slightly less than it is on Earth’s surface. So how are they able to float? Well, they aren’t floating – they’re falling, along with the space station. They don’t crash into the Earth because they have a huge orbital velocity. So as they accelerate towards the Earth, the Earth curves away beneath them and they never get any closer. Since the astronauts have the same acceleration as the space station, they feel weightless. It’s like being in a free-falling elevator (without the disastrous landing).
Director of Photography: Stefan Smith
Camera Assistant: Raa Perajeev
Boom Operator: Maha Sivalingam
Production Coordinator: Adrian Tan
Production Assistants: James Peniata, Pratheep Ramachandran
Force is a central concept in physics. By analysing the forces on an object, its resulting motion can be determined. But what exactly is a force? The word force is used in everyday language in a variety of contexts, only some of which reflect the scientific definition of force. In this video, people at Victoria Park in Sydney are interviewed on their ideas of force and the forces that act on them.
A song about Gravity set to the tune of John Mayer’s Gravity.
Gravity is working with me
And Gravity, keeps me on the ground
All mass attracts all other mass
a force proportional to mass one and two
and inversely to the distance between them squared
Oh, gravity is working with me
and gravity, makes apples fall to ground
Oh twice the mass has twice the pull
but the force on each is still equal
It keeps the moon and the satellites
going round
Oh twice the mass has twice the pull
but the force on each is still equal
It keeps the moon and the satellites
going round
Oh gravity, the force that makes weight on me
Woah, gravity, now general relativity (how can that be?)
The force between us all is
The force between us all is
The force between us all is
Gravity between us all is
Gravity between us all is
Gravity between gravity between us all is
Well an atom’s made of protons, neutrons, and electrons
the first two in the nucleus, the third around it
it’s mostly empty space, but it feels solid in any case
The elements are all the different types of atoms
they differ by the number of protons in the middle.
Hydrogen has only one, but Uranium has a ton
It’s just chemistry that you and me are made of these atoms
Well atoms bond together to form molecules
Most of what’s surrounding me and you
Water, sugar, things yet undreamed of of of of
Look around you, see the combinations in a eucalypt tree
Mendeleev’s periodicity
gives us sand and water and the air above ove ove ove ove
It’s just chemistry that you and me are made of these atoms:
Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, make up the world’s life forms
Do do do you, do do do do
but do you wonder how
matter forms something strange
when there’s a chemical change?
Where did these atoms come from? They were fused in stars
Light elements combine releasing light from afar
Fusion in the sun, creates Helium
I guess what I be saying is you gotta use your reason
To open up your mind and see the cause of the seasons
-How do we know what’s true? The scientific method shows you
It’s just chemistry that you and me are made of these atoms
Atoms bond together to form molecules
Most of what’s surrounding me and you
Water, sugar, sand and you’ll find things undreamed of
So Argon, Neon, Xenon
There’s no need to overstate
‘Cause we are of course
This, of this, of this, we’re made: atoms
This is the first Veritasium science video. It addresses one of the most fundamental concepts in science: the idea that all things are made of atoms, tiny particles that are in perpetual motion. They attract each other when a little distance apart and repel when squeezed together.
This is a must-see, from Citizens Against Government Waste. Regardless of your political leanings, you must admit this is a realistic scenario, some would say inevitable, unless the U.S. federal government takes a radically different approach to spending and borrowing real quick.
There is the trend, though history for things to get more complex, as culture, technologies, political structures and mechanisms get more complex. Therefore China “owning us” may be more a more complex, unclear and abstract scenario than historical instances of one nation conquering another, but a very real ownership nonetheless.
In a new series on the Discovery Channel, Hawking explains “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans”.
My own thoughts are that it would be extremely hard to predict what intelligent aliens’ intentions might be, therefore it is safest to not have contact with them at all. That means, as Hawking also pointed out, not advertising our presence in the universe. In my opinion, sending out information out into space to meet these hopefully altruistic, nice aliens, as in the Pioneer 10 plaque, is naive and stupid beyond description. How do we know these aliens are going to be nice or even neutral? How do we know they wouldn’t wipe us out on contact? There is no way to know, therefore wisest to assume the worst. In the Army, they have a concept called “radio blackout”, where everyone turns off radio transmissions so that an enemy cannot find your position by triangulation. Could it be that other alien civilizations come to this same conclusion – that they can’t trust anyone else out there, and therefore enforce a permanent, planet-wide radio blackout? That would be one explanation of why we haven’t detected alien radio transmissions.
I also agree with Hawking’s point that just by statistical reasoning, any alien civilization more advanced than us, especially those with the ability of distant space travel, would be advanced to an extreme compared to us – likely by millions of years. I like to be an optimistic person, but resistance/defense would be absolutely hopeless. We would not be able to outsmart or defeat them with any weapons system, tactics or ideas we might have. Jeff Goldblum is not going to save us by uploading a virus. But the fact that we haven’t been destroyed already may mean no alien civilization out there is likely planning on it.
When I say “alien civilization”, the actual surviving lineage from a given planet may be a second or more generation life form or a system of AI-driven robots, that may have killed off or enslaved the original intelligent beings of the planet. In fact, even if the original aliens were still in control, they’d likely send robots on any deep space missions, rather than themselves. Of course we are doing this already, with Mars rovers, etc..
Would they know we are here? I suspect advanced alien civilizations would develop science and computer modeling to the point where they accurately can determine where in the universe life is most likely to develop.
Another point where I would side with Stephen Hawking is that animals on other planets would have surprisingly similar bodily arrangements/features as earth animals. I would go so far as to predict intelligent aliens would have a general human-like form, maybe not too unlike the “grays” type that has evolved in the popular imagination. My reasoning is the principle of convergent evolution – that is, that adaptions to very similar environmental/niche conditions produce similar adaptions.
That being said, life may be possible in other strange realms within the universe – that is, other combinations of conditions where life is possible and even likely. Could some form of life exist inside of stars or black holes? If life did exist in sets of conditions that were nothing like an earth-like planet, these principles of convergent evolution may not apply, and the form, behavior and chemical makeup of these life forms could be radically different.
I’ve noticed most theoretical physicists don’t theorize about evolution and life very well, but I have to say, Stephen Hawking does pretty good!
Wow, one of the hottest searches on Google currently is “nys unemployment” and all manner of terms relating to it, such as “new york state unemployment” and “nys dept of labor”. Is there any sudden cause or is New York state’s big government approach and insulting attitude toward business owners finally scaring them from the state or at least scaring them from hiring?
For sure, these are crazy times, and New York state is suffering at least as much as most other states. Economists, regardless of their school of thought or political leanings seem to be saying the same thing – that we are experiencing a “jobless recovery” (okay, some say this is a false recovery and we are in another depression). They say that some jobs, especially in manufacturing, are gone forever. Now, anyone who has railroaded their children or themselves into a blue-collar job as your only option in life has always been wrong, but now it may condemn you to permanent or long-term unemployment.
Could it be that we are finally reaching a scary point in history of “The End of Work“? I saw this book on bookstore shelves years ago, and it made me think – will a large percentage of the population eventually have useless skills and capabilities not worth a livable wage to the economy? This would create a dependent class, which would be inevitably supported by those who did have marketable skills and capabilities.
Economic and technological evolution are inevitable, but a government that does not discourage legitimate business activity will minimize the chaos and human suffering of the transition.
Chatroulette or “Chat Roulette” is a website, supposedly developed by a 17 Russian boy, that randomly brings ups webcams of the other site visitors from anywhere in the world. It is interesting because it is so random and uncontrolled, and sometimes scary for the same reason. You might randomly meet someone from Chile, Morocco, Germany, Ukraine or some one within a few hundred miles. The downside is that, since it is totally anonymous, some people exhibit the less admirable ranges of human behavior, displaying body parts and activity normally censored.
Assuming it’s true that it was developed by a 17 year old though, it is impressive brainstorm. ChatRoulette is a novel concept that could certainly be improved to minimize offensive displays and provide website ad revenue to the site owner.
So, the bottom line is, if you are an adult, curious, with a tolerance for absolutely anything you might see, go for it. But don’t let you kids on this site at all!
Visit at your own risk!: ChatRoulette.com