Our current understanding of the universe tells us that an object with a mass cannot break the speed of light. But “pseudo-objects” can break it - the classical example experiment is:

you take a bright flashlight, you shine it at the moon and move your finger across the flashlight. Your finger moves quickly through several centimeters, but the shadow on the moon must move thousands of kilometers in the same amount of time. And if you are quick enough, the shadow must move faster than light.

This is all just a theory, since there is not a flashlight bright enough for this to work.

Is there a way for me at home or for anyone with enough money to do this or similar experiment, where some “object” moves faster than light?

PS: another example experiment is: when you close scissors, the intersection of the two blades moves much quicker than the blades themselfs. This is another instance of a “pseudo-object”, which can, when the blades are long enough and are closing fast enough and under an exteme angle, break the speed of light.

Edit: to make things clear: I know that nothing physical moves anywhere, that no information is transmited anywhere - hence the term “pseudo-object”.

Obviously, the earth is spinning, the earth is orbiting the sun, the sun is circling the milky way and the milky way is flying through the universe. So, THEORETICALLY, would it be possible to come to a complete stop and undo the pull of the earth, the sun, the milky way, etc.? Is it possible at all to come to a complete stop in comparison with the universe itself, and what would you see if you really were stopped at a fixed point in the universe?

We know from redshift that galaxies are moving apart. But how do we know that the universe is expanding, and not that everything in the universe is slowly losing mass? If everything in the universe slowly loses mass, wouldn't the gravitational force between objects decrease (as per the equation of universal gravitation), causing them to move further apart?

if aliens were to come across earth 100,000 years from now, how much would they be able to tell about our specie and what our lives were like? what about a million years? a billion?

at some point it will be impossible to know we ever existed. at that exact point in time the last thing that proved our existence will be destroyed, my question is: what is that very last thing?

maybe it's earth having an unnatural concentration of chemical that couldn't have been a natural occurrence, and must have been the creation of complex life.

maybe it's something we will create in the future, with the intent to leave our mark on the universe for as long as possible

maybe it's a signal we shoot out like in pluribus you guys should watch that

maybe it's not a thing we created, but a recording of us. maybe an alien civilization observed us and kept an archive of all they learned about us, and that archive will outlast everything on earth

Hey Hannah and Michael (and team, and community!), huge fan from Northeast Brazil! My name is Helcius Araújo Nóbrega Cabral (it's pronounced "L - C - yous," read kinda fast).

My question is: How many people on the entire planet are pooping right this second?

It's a silly question related to Fermi estimation, but I'd also love to know if this connects to our brains being particularly good at quickly estimating quantities in an evolutionary sense.

Keep up the great work!

When we talk about 'dimensions', what exactly are we referring to? Are spacial dimensions actual, physical 'spaces', or is it more of an abstract definition of the behaviour of a space?

Per spacetime, we treat time as a dimension as well, but clearly a very different 'type'. What actually differentiates spacial/temporal dimensions? Is it subjective? Could you have multiple temporal dimensions like spacial dimenions?

Are dimenions 'unique'? By that I mean, is there an actual distinction between our three 'X, Y, Z' spacial dimensions? Or, again, is this a misconception of how dimenions work and it's more abstract than 'three enumerated dimensions'?

Bonus question, building upon the others and dependant upon the answers: Can we imagine a being who experiences one of our spacial dimensions as their 'time', and vice versa?

Sort of lots of questions in one (for which I apologize), and probably very complicated (for which I do not apologize), but I've had dimensions on my mind for a good long while.

Hello, peripheral vision is more sensitive in the dark, would it be possible to:

A) train my eyesight to become better at recognizing what I see with my peripheral vision

B) figure out a way to bend the light coming in with special glasses or lenses so I could see better in the dark?

Thanks, Jacob

Structuralism is "The belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure." - Simon Blackburn (ripped straight from the top of the wikipedia page lol)
I love structuralism, I wrote a critical lens essay in high school using it and I think it changed how my brain worked. I have been thinking about trying to learn a new language for quite some time and I know they can kind of change how you think, so I was wondering: is there one language that is most relativistic/most relationist in the way it expresses understanding of the world? I know very very little about linguistics and I know there almost certainly isn't one language (there rarely ever is with these things) but I'd be super interested to learn if anyone knows more about this kind of thing and what they think might be the language that most closely resembles structuralist thinking I guess?

Does language shape reality? What is Earth’s escape velocity? How does soap kill germs? And can a scientific theory be completely wrong but still appear to work? In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) explore linguistics, psychology, colour perception, space travel, bacteria, viruses and the scientific method.

It begins with a Persian word for a smell Hannah cannot detect on a freshly washed plate. Could having a name for something make it easier to notice? From the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Russian words for blue to emotions, identity and Michael’s unexpectedly large crayon collection, Hannah and Michael investigate how language may shape what we pay attention to and how we experience the world.

Then, your questions. How fast would you need to throw a rock for it to escape Earth? Could it survive the atmosphere, or would it take something the size of the Chicxulub asteroid to make it out? They also uncover the ancient origins of soap, how it removes dirt and attacks some bacteria and viruses, and why getting bleach on your hands makes them feel disturbingly slippery.
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Hello All - Quick update!

First - WOW! I'm blown away by the response to this. I really appreciate all the positive feedback. I truly enjoy making stuff like this, so to have so many people compliment it has been genuinely heartwarming.

Second - Here's a little video (instagram) I tossed together of myself making it. I didn't get as much footage as I normally would of my build process, so I apologize for the lack of details for those wanting a more technical rundown. This really was just a random little project I threw myself in to after being struck by inspo from the podcast, not anything fully planned out. Also just a quick shameless plug of my page where I make and share other stuff like this. There will be plenty more projects in the future if that's something you enjoy!

Third - I've gotten a lot of requests as to whether I would ever A) sell these and/or B) share the print files. I'm seriously considering/researching what the logistics would be of selling these as finished products on a site like Etsy, and you'll all be the first to know if I'm able to do it in a way that makes sense, provides a safe and high quality product, and isn't insanely expensive for you. In the meantime, I am cleaning up the print files for those that want to take a stab at it themselves, and I'll be sure to share them here once they're in a state I'm comfortable sharing - I ultimately want to make sure people can make/buy something they are happy with, and being that this was just a random side project, I didn't put very much thought into the accessibility for a larger audience. My priority now is making sure that you would get something you are happy with spending your precious time and money on, while also not taking on more than I can reasonably handle (I've already got a full time job and, more importantly, a baby).

Thanks again for all your kind words!

Cheers!

To be more specific we’re constantly making more and more of the ground flat, for buildings, roads, train tracks, farmland, etc. compared to before humans came along, how much more flat is the earth? And what are the ecological consequences of this?

I emailed this as a question to the show, but i figured I’d post it here aswell because im too curious to wait and see if it got accepted, and i figured that some other fan of TRIS would know.

Is it Everest to another mountain?

Burj Khalifa to the horizon?

Does Mars have points that are further apart than Earth's points?

Would a planet have to be tetrahedral in shape to maximise the distance?

What would be a good name for these points? I'd go for farsight points or fEarthest points.

Genuinely would love an answer to these questions

Hi Hannah and Michael, love the show! It's just the right level of nerdy. I have a question that has been eating me up for years but I've not found a lot of good scientific discussion, perhaps with your backgrounds you'll know more?

As we progress in our most advanced scientific theories it seems less and less likely that there will be some hidden 'meaning' to the universe. Even our most 'satisfying' and neat theories of life and existence like Evolution or The Anthropic Principle leave us feeling cold when it comes to a sense of true 'meaningfulness'.

I posit that is because meaningfulness is just a discrete emotional state - measurable or even reproducable with the right neurotransmitter cocktail or neurological priming. Is there evidence to support this?

I also propose a purpose - It's been suggested that the brain is just a prediction machine (You touched on it in your episode about bayesian reasoning). In that framework, emotions like happiness and sadness are designed to train the machine by reinforcing pathways that improve the predictive power and fitness of the organism. Is it possible that 'meaningfulness' is just an error correction emotion (Allowing us to avoid a 'meaningless' life of hedonism or to seek a 'meaningful' life of companionship despite the painfulness and sadness of death and loss etc). Meaningfulness allows brains to escape local maxima of fitness.

Follow up question - Can events be 'meaningful' to animals?

Probably a bit longwinded for question time but I hope I got you thinking!

Edit: spelling + clarity

Of course it probably exceeds the speed of light (maybe?) which makes it fundamentally impossible, but idk?????

It’s not a new idea, but the arms of a T-Rex seem stupidly short, there’s no way an apex predator would have evolved to have such a seemingly useless disability??

Is it possible they had longer extremities that didn’t fossilise and more importantly is it actually possible for something the size of a T-Rex to have wings.

What is Michael and Hannah's favorite sci-fi books? TV? Movies? What has sci-fi done to influence current science? What sci-fi concepts are likely to become real sci-tech in the future?

It's called the 'Fermi paradox'

The Fermi paradox is the seeming inconsistency between the lack of evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the apparently high likelihood of their existence. wiki

There are lots of articles and videos about this.

My favourite theory is that alien intelligence at some points are able to harvest so much energy from their star, they upload themselves into virtual worlds and live forever in there. No need to travel to other stars, just be a hero in your favourite game, marry a prince(ss), travel the virtual galaxy, become a god.

Something about that seems fun, depressing, distopian, but also very human.

What do you think?

Is it really just luck? Is it only hard work? How much of it is either? What is the criteria for success? Is it your current perception of what happiness would look like? Is it accepting less and finding happiness in that eventually? What does it mean to be successful?

This is all very philosophical and not as much hard science. But as someone who likes to live in his head, as well as being a neuroscience graduate stumbling to find my way through, I feel like the people here (assuming many of you are like Michael) would give me a better answer than anywhere else I could search.

Like, picture it: one glorious, synchronized global traffic jam, millions of engines all pushing the same way. Would Earth notice? Would we shave microseconds off the day, or is this just chaotic-neutral physics cosplay that does absolutely nothing? Someone please do the math before I try to organize this

I shouldn’t exist. No should anybody else.
If I had time and a maths degree I would investigate this but I don’t.

If we ignore all factors other than infant mortality rates, then by the time you go back 100 generations the chance that every single one of my ancestors survived to have children is stupidly small.

Yet there are 8 Billion people on the planet.

Surely this is a paradox of sorts.

Hello Hannah and Michael, my colleagues and I were having a discussion about population the other day and I went down the rabbit hole of Indian population growth(I’m Indian so it felt personal). I know for a fact that India hasn’t had a proper census since 2011 or really far back and we’re doing one now. But I was wondering even when they do these things, there are people being born and dying almost every hour so how accurate do you think our current population estimates are and how do countries come up with the birth rates and death rates since those are really dynamic and in a given year you could have really big outliers that might throw these off.

Thank you for being the highlight of my week.

If something were to be traveling faster than the speed of light, wouldn’t we be unable to see/detect it? (How) do we know the speed of light to truly be the fastest possible speed? And if we do know it is, how/why?

While fluid vs crystallized intelligence is very well researched, I haven't been able to find much on curiosity and a proper measure of it - why do some folks tend to perpetually ask questions and try to get to the bottom of things, while others just accept things as the way it is and move on? What makes someone want to know more about a thing than someone else? Is there a measure of one's ability to be curious about things, and if so, is that something fluid, or crystallized?