Sabine posts
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Exploding stars made of dark matter could heat up universe
[This is a transcript with links to references.]85% of matter in the universe is dark matter, astrophysicists say. Which might make you wonder what all this stuff is doing. I mean, some of the matter in the universe has learned to walk and talk, so why is dark matter so boring.In case you’ve been wondering too, astro...
Whatever happened to string theory?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]String theory. It was supposed to be physicists’ crowning achievement, a theory that explains no less than everything, with just one simple and elegant idea: it’s all strings. You and I, matter and space, the most fundamental nature of reality, all a big tangle of str...
Heat Pumps finally make sense
[This is a transcript with links to references.]What does civilization mean to you? To me the most essential part of civilization is shelter. Yes, YouTube comes a close second of course. But on top of the list, I have a safe, dry, warm place to live.And it’s not just me. Residential heating plays a special role in pe...
Yes, AI will eventually become sentient.
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I’m convinced that it won’t be long until a computer program will reach human level intelligence and also become conscious. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Let's have a look at what happened this week that got everyone’s circuits overheated. The re...
Compact Disks make Comeback: Memory could Exceed Petabytes
[This is a transcript with links to references.]What do we want? Better memory.When do we want it? Want what?Joking aside, I have a two Terabyte hard disk and used to think that’s a lot. Then I bought a new video camera and it’s clogged my disk in no time. And yes there’s cloud storage but you know, it’s not ac...
Illogical Chatbots, Bioengineers’ Visions, & Adolescents’ Mental Health
Want Good Maths? Think Like a TrekkieA team from the cloud computing company VMware discovered that the reasoning skills of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT depend on which mood the prompt suggests. In a recent preprint, they report testing ChatGPT, Bard, Meta’s Llama, and Microsoft Copilot. They found that ...
Anti-matter for space-travel?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I got some questions the other week about an article in business insider that says it’s possible to power rockets with anti-matter and the only thing that’s preventing us from doing it is: cost. Really? The business insider writes about anti-matter. Should you buy sto...
Scientists Aarn About AI Collapse
[This is a transcript with links to references.]In the past year or so, we’ve all become used to AI generated text and images and audio and increasingly also videos. There’s been a lot of talk about how terrible this is for writers and artists and so on, but some computer scientists are warning that this AI creativ...
New approach to quantum computing could soon beat IBM
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Last week we had bad news for quantum computing, this week we have the most excellent good news. Thanks for living with me through the ups and downs. The news is that physicists have reached a new record for building a quantum computer out of single atoms. They’ve now m...
Black holes might be layers of shells: New solution found
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I had a prof who used to say that black holes can’t exist because, quote “god wouldn’t separate himself from part of his universe” end quote. Now you might think that this question has been settled for good what with all the evidence we have for black holes. Also ...
Astrophysicists keep finding things that “shouldn’t exist”. I think I know why.
[This is a transcript with links to references.]We’ve seen a lot of headlines in the past years saying there are things in the universe that supposedly shouldn’t exist. You may have been wondering how many things can astrophysicists possibly find that supposedly shouldn’t exist until concluding that maybe somethi...
First quantum measurement of gravity: What does it mean?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]The great thing about physics is that it makes the simplest things mindbogglingly complicated. Take space. What is it? Well space is whatever is between here and there. Not that complicated. But but. Physicists say, space should have quantum properties. Space itself might...
Galactic Waves, Clean Energy From AI, and Seeing Around Corners
There’s a Wave in Our Galaxy…and It Might Have Passed Through UsA diagram illustrating the Radcliffe Wave. The white line represents its current position, with blue blobs representing star clusters. The green and purple lines indicate future positions. The yellow dot is the Sun. Image: Ralf Konietzka et al, Nature ...
I was worried about climate change. Now I worry about climate scientists.
[This is a transcript with links to references.]A few weeks ago, I made a video on climate sensitivity, explaining why I am worried about it. There have now been a few reactions by climate scientists. I’d like to briefly comment on that, and add something which I took out of the first video.Just a brief recap of what...
Test of controversial new quantum propulsion didn't go as planned
[This is a transcript of the video.]The Quantum Drive, a controversial new propulsion system based on the idea of “Quantized Inertia” was launched into space for a test in November. Testing was supposed to start early February, but it didn’t quite go as planned. Let’s have a look. On November 11, a prototype o...
Rewrite the textbooks: New type of magnetism confirmed
[This is a transcript with links to references.]As everyone knows, there are three different types of magnetism. So I was a bit surprised to learn of a new, third type of magnetism. Didn’t we already have three? What’s new? I had a look. The magnets that we all know and like are what physicists call ferromagnets. ...
Do we create reality with our mind?
[This is a transcript.]Do we create reality with our minds? I got this question on twitter the other day and after rolling my eyes about it for some while, I decided it’s actually a good question. You might think the answer is obviously “no”. But it’s not that simple. Let me explain.To some extent the question ...
Energy Conservation: Does Violating it explain Dark Energy?
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I got quite a few questions about a paper that supposedly revolutionizes our understanding of the universe by throwing out energy conservation. The questions came in two varieties. Can you do that, isn’t energy always conserved? And isn’t energy conservation violated ...
Hydrogen might self-renew, reservoir found in France
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I’ve been very critical of the so-called hydrogen economy. But I’ve recently reconsidered my position because of an interesting development. A few months ago, Scientists drilled a hole in southern France to measure methane levels but instead they found hydrogen. Indee...
Bad News for Quantum Computing: Another advantage gone
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Sometimes people ask me why I’m now doing science news. It’s so that you can fully appreciate the drama of scientific discovery, in which one result contradicts a previous one and the next one finds a flaw in this other one. I think the entertainment-value of science ...
Chinese Maglev Breaks Speed Record
[This is a transcript with links to references.]News from China say the Chinese have broken their own, and the global, speed record for magnetically levitating trains, which you might know under the name hyperloop. Let’s have a look. I find news coming out of China generally somewhat difficult to interpret. In this c...
Small Thorium Reactors are Coming to Europe
[This is a transcript.]Phasing out nuclear power is the dumbest thing the Germans have ever done. Each time I say this on twitter, people come and tell me that Hitler did a few things that were even dumber. I disagree. Hitler wasn’t dumb, he was evil, he knew full well what he was doing. I’m not at all sure the cur...
AI played wargames. It wasn't reassuring.
[This is a transcript with links to references.]A group of researchers had artificial intelligence play wargames, and that gives us a good idea for how we could all die. Let’s have a look. Last year in June, the United States’ Department of Defense released its new strategy for the adoption of artificial intellige...
Scientific Fraud is on the rise, and it will get worse
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Science has a big problem and it’s been getting rapidly worse in the past two years or so, to no small part because of recent advances in artificial intelligence. Fraudulent papers are getting published more than ever, and the fraudsters are getting increasingly aggress...
We might finally know what time crystals are good for: Nobel Prize possible
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Time Crystals sounds like something from Hogwarts, but it’s actually solid-state physics. Maybe not quite as mysterious as the name suggests, but nonetheless interesting. A team of physicists has now built the most robust time crystal ever and even figured out what thes...
The recent Toyota emissions scandal is just the tip of the iceberg
[This is a transcript with links to references.]A lot of climate targets are lip confessions. But some of those confessions get written into law, and that can create some, hmm, interesting tensions between what governments and companies say they’re doing and what the data say they’re doing. In the past weeks we hav...
Human-level Artificial Intelligence likely by 2050, Experts say
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Artificial Intelligence is changing the world rapidly, and many of you have asked me to comment on the threat that AI poses for human civilization. Well thanks for your faith in me, but feel like I’m not the right person to ask. I think you’ll get more out of me telli...
Americans Surprisingly Rational about Climate Change, German Study Finds
[This is a transcript with links to references.]I am fascinated by science deniers. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, it’s just amazing to see how badly the human brain can malfunction. Of course, it’s not just a brain problem, it’s also a social problem. In particular, the fraction of climate ...
Physicists find that ageing is reversible -- in glass (sorry)
[This is a transcript with links to references.]One of the reasons I am doing these science news episodes is that sometimes there’s a news item which touches on a really deep question, but it’s so technical that no one dares talking about it. This new research is such a case. It’s an experiment that looked at the...
Universe might be full of singularities, and they could make up dark matter
[This is a transcript with links to references.]Ok, I have seen a lot of weird ideas for what dark matter could be, but this one surprised even me. A team of researchers proposes that the universe might be filled with singularities and those could make up what we call dark matter. I had a look at the paper. This new pa...
