January Video -- Favorite Unsolved Problems in Physics

Good video 🤙

I'm with you concerning preserving knowledge in a library. However, I believe that after roundabout one generation one would need to try out some of the ideas in the books, otherwise they will make less and less sense and what does not make sense is less prone to be conserved.

One thing I will say about the magnetic monopole thing (and I do not understand this, but my professor who spends all his time doing big bang cosmology does, and I trust him). It seems like in inflation magnetic monopoles should have been formed. Maybe this is more a problem with inflation than with Maxwell's equations. The concept is that inflation is the only time they could be created so we can't make them in a lab. Again I don't know a lot about it, but I am pretty sure it's a thing.

Great video overall. I really liked your framing of what it means to be an "unsolved problem" in science. "Questions for God" is also a great name for the types of problems you were describing. I also agree that the little ones are often most interesting. With that in mind, I just want to mention my favorite example (that I'm pretty sure meets the definition) is the Flyby Anomaly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyby_anomaly)

The part about the importance of skepticism in science reminded me of a quote I've always loved (though I can't remember where its from) which is: "Trust those who seek truth. Doubt those who claim to have found it"

I was today years old when I found out our sun is non-binary

I really liked the video, but I have to comment about pecorino! You already got some comments about it, but to give more context, what you are thinking of is pecorino romano, which indeed is more of a grating cheese and the most known outside Italy. A popular one in Italy though is pecorino toscano which is not nearly as salty or firm, so you eat it sliced like a cheddar though it doesn't melt well. It goes great with a crusty white bread. Overall "formaggio pecorino" can denote any Italian cheese made with sheep milk, and many regions have a version or more.

a bonus collier fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinsha_site#/media/File:Stone_snake_artifact_found_at_Jinsha_site.jpg

heres the diagram of your video https://www.svpwiki.com/imagesRussell/AMP_VOLT-modified.jpg

I really want to work, “ …if we had our grubby little paws on a magnetic monopole…” into casual conversation. Alas, the opportunity hasn’t presented itself yet.

I like that your videos are conversational and you have a quiet enthusiasm. Another great video!

Good video! I agree that "quantum gravity" per se is not an unsolved problem, because it's not necessarily the case that gravity is a quantized force. But reconciling the Standard Model with General Relativity IS an unsolved problem. We don't have a theory that is capable of describing situations in which gravitational effects are on the same scale as the other forces (a situation that we know existed in the early universe and probably exists in black holes). I'm also a bit puzzled by your saying that magnetic monopoles don't make sense. Certainly it's true that we have no evidence of them (and yes, the fact that magnetic monopoles imply charge quantization does not mean that charge quantization implies magnetic monopoles). But it is a perfectly coherent idea. The existence of magnetic monopoles would not imply that the electron could be "cut" in two. Since we have never observed a magnetic monopole, clearly all magnetic phenomena we encounter are not generated by magnetic monopoles, but in the usual and familiar way by electric charges. There are perfectly reasonable extensions of the SM that include magnetic monopoles, though obviously if there's a magnetic-electric charge symmetry, it's a badly broken one, since magnetic monopoles have to be extremely rare if they exist.

A) It sounds like the black hole jet application on Earth would essentially be the Death Star, I hope to be dead before we figure that out B) You could re-sequence the videos into Antimatter, Antimatter and Empire, and Second Antimatter -- I like that because the third video would be Second. I always found that somehow enchanting

I really liked how you introduced this and I think your way of looking at an "unsolved problem in physics" is so good.

The All-New Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of Antimatter Part 3 (in Shocking 2-D Technicolor) -- might be too long ? So maybe: The All-New Return of the Revenge of Antimatter Part 3 (in Shocking 2-D Technicolor) -- still too long? ; )

Imo abiogenesis isn’t an unsolved problem in biology, but not because it’s well understood, but because it’s (imo) impossible to answer. Cause how would we solve it? It’s almost impossible that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of all life was the first thing to ever live, so we can’t deduce the properties of pre-LUCA life from anything we observe today. Likewise, if we did abiogenesis in a lab that wouldn’t prove anything either, because we have no way of knowing if life emerged from just one mechanism (*unless* whatever you made quickly assembled into something with LUCA-like properties but “quickly” might mean millions of years).

If you hypothetically wanted like a theme song for your channel, what would it sound like? I am a musician, and would love to throw something together.

I love this video! I have to say, when you briefly considered making a series of introductory Physics lectures, I was very excited at the possibility. Many years (decades?) ago I completed my BSc. in Physics, but so many of my lectures were so dry and boring (and often incomprehensible) that I feel like I missed out. Whenever you explain things, they are easier to understand and interesting. So please keep this in mind!

Antimatter 2: Quantum Boogaloo

This is my favorite Unsolved Mysteries episode, but where is the trenchcoat?????

I'm not completely with you on this one. I mean yes, there is a pattern that separates problems crackpots work on and problems scientists work on. There is also very clear separation between the approach of witch doctors, sorcerers, dilettantes vs. professionals, scholars and doyens. The formers think they must be better than everybody else and must beat the entire universe with the sheer power of their mind while the latters know this is about being patient, collecting data, building on existing results, developing simple yet profound understanding until a very simple and clear way shows up that makes the whole problem tumbling down. I don't even want to complain about the video, this was a sane and balanced opinion. I also don't want to encourage anybody to lose his sanity. But when I read Newton spent most of his days with suspicious alchemy and religious texts and Eddington wrote a (very bad) book about 1/137 and Dirac developed the (very ridiculous) large number hypothesis, I don't have a bad feeling for them. Gosh, those guys were always ready to meet Godzilla in the ring! They were always ready to ask the wrong questions, to use the wrong methods and to get the wrong answers.

hbomber has affected the entire internet HAHAHA

I didn't know your day job involved space weather! That's pretty cool, as I'm starting my PhD in simulating space weather pretty soon. You've made me somewhat scared of academia but I'm glad to know options outside it exist as well The video was also very enjoyable! Your definition of an unsolved problem made a lot of sense to me, and the discussion of jets reminded me of gamma-ray bursts, which are kinda related. They are one of my personal favorite unsolved physics problems

This was a really fun video! I hadn't heard about blue stragglers before. I would probably really enjoy hearing about other 'solved' problems. I would probably get a kick out of hearing about your day job or maybe even other physics phd day jobs outside of academia. my specialty is psychology so i kinda know about non-ac jobs in that realm but not really other fields. I'm looking forward to the Temperature video selfishly bc i recommended the inventing temperature book and it has more history on how physicists 'solved' temperature over the centuries. but i never got past the first three chapters so i'm rooting for you to read it and tell me about it lol

My AP physics class was awesome. All calculus all the time. It made first semester college physics very odd: why is this all algebra? Where are the integrals? 🤔 It’s the same problem with the gridded computation artifacts. We are making a continuous problem discrete and that makes things odd at the seams. All of us computer scientists are waving our hands asking “what did you think would happen? Give us more memory/CPU/magic AI beans and we can make this problem happen less often!” 😉

What if Gravity isn't weaker? What if it's the regular strength and it's the other forces that are just really over powered. (joke)

"Favorite Unsolved Problems in Physics". Me: Fantastic topic. Love to see what you say. "Number one Globular Clusters" Me: Yesssssssssss!!!!!! Why aren't people always talking about globular clusters.

The origin of life (Abiogenesis) isn’t the same as missing links. Dawkins also has some great early writings on why there will always be missing links. Because species are really continuous and the discrete boundaries between them are simplifications to make theory building in evolution easier. But in reality there will always be intermediary species unless we had a complete database of every organism that ever lived. But Abiogenesis is an unsolved problem in Biology. There are some good theories and experiments where they simulated the environment of the young Earth and showed how complex organic molecules could spontaneously emerge. But there isn’t a really solid theory that everyone agrees on yet.

I think the video about the eye might have been Dawkins. He spends a big part of one of his books going through the history of the evolution of the eye, from a few cells that just respond to light to lenses and all the other complexity of eyes of complex organisms. He has a few YouTube videos on this, here’s one of them: https://youtu.be/Nwew5gHoh3E?si=8l2-gCoj7kty1nMa

acolierastro might be referring to this video of Richard Dawkins or similar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29gvNp3FXyo. At the time of the aforementioned Dawkins video "Intelligent Design" was a prevalent belief in which people claimed that an eye couldn't happen through evolution, because there couldn't be a halfway eye. Eyes had to come into being all or nothing. And therefore eyes had to be created by God. I wish I were kidding. I like how Dawkins has dealt with that intelligent design assertion about how animals have eyes.

IMHO a schism has arisen in physics that is akin to the difference between astronomy and astrology, or between alchemy and real chemistry. I don't like the phrase "flood the zone", but there is a zone of popular physics flooded with all kind of dubious science such as multiverses. Every time I make a choice I spawn new multiverse? I don't think so.

Antimatter 4: The Search for Antimatter 3?

I feel so spoiled because this and the Teach Yourself Physics topics were things I'd suggested, and both videos were even better than I knew they'd be! My resolution this year is to finally pick physics back up where I left off in college, starting with going through the entirety of that Serway/Jewett textbook and Prof. Shankar's PHYS 200/201 courses and making sure I my fundamentals are rock solid. Anyway you're the best, that's all!

"How do we use that on Earth?" https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Particle_Projector_Cannon

About lectures: Acerola is doing "intro" into realtime graphics problems/applications/"lectures". His style certainly is "out there" but I like the general concept. He also tries to start at high school level, but lectures should give you new concepts to explore (mostly math) anyway. So pointing to further reading when something happens that is a bit left field can be good. This is one I particularly liked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dr-tRQzij4 and it isn't too complicated.

Is this the Dawkins eye evolution video you were thinking about? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E

"My cousin, the son of Antimatter", "why dont we ever talk about Unclematter?"

The Antimatter Ultimatum?

You perfectionists crack me up. My son talks like this also.