Sabine

The 3 Best Explanations for the Havana Syndrome

[Transcript of the video.]

In late 2016, United States diplomats working in Cuba began reporting health problems: persistent headaches, vertigo, blurred vision. They were dizzy. They heard sounds coming from nowhere. The affected diplomats were questioned and examined by doctors but the symptoms didn’t fit any known disease. They called it the “Havana Symptom”.

More cases were later reported from China and Russia, Germany and Austria, even from near the White House....

Gift Store

Science without the gobbledygook now has a gift store where you can get T-shirts, stickers, mugs, socks and so on with images and quotes that you will recognize from our channel. We make a little money with everything you purchase there, so that's an easy way to support us and also do some Christmas shopping :)

2021-11-17 06:26:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on November 20

I'm quite used to reading headlines that don't make sense, and I guess so are you. However, sometimes I come across a headline that doesn't make any sense, even though it should. And that really annoys me! This has been the case with the Havana Syndrome. So we looked into it and hope on Saturday it'll all make a little more sense.

Why can elementary particles decay?

[This is a transcript of the video.]

Physicists have so far discovered twenty-five elementary particles that, for all we currently know, aren’t made up of anything else. Most of those particles are unstable, and they’ll decay to lighter particles within fractions of a second. But how can it possibly be that a particle which decays is elementary. If it decays doesn’t this mean it was made up of something else? And why do particles decay in the first place? At the end of th...

My new book is now available for pre-order

In the past years I have worked on a new book, which is now available for pre-order here. My editors decided on the title "Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life'...

Upcoming on November 13

Yes, I know my channel is a wild mix of topics, but I promised myself that I wouldn't let it get boring! So on the coming Saturday, we're back to particle physics and I answer a question that I must have gotten hundreds of times. How can it possibly be that elementary particles can decay? If they can decay, doesn't this mean they were made up of something else? And why do they decay in the first place?

2021-11-10 17:07:53 +0000 UTC View Post

How Bad is Plastic?

[Transcript of the video:]

Plastic is everywhere, and we have all heard it’s bad for the environment because it takes a long time to biodegrade. But is this actually true? If I look at our outside furniture, that seems to biodegrade beautifully. How much should we really worry about all that plastic? Did you know that most bioplastics aren’t biodegradable? And will we end up driving cars made of soybeans? That’s what we will talk about today.

Pens, bags, cups, trays...

Upcoming on Nov 6

It's often hard to find reliable yet brief information about matters relevant to science policy and environmental protection. For this reason, one of the things I hope to achieve with my YouTube channel is to make it easier for you get a super-quick overview on what scientists say on certain topics -- with references where you can check the numbers for yourself. On the coming weekend I'll talk about plastic: Why worry about plastic pollution? How much do we know about the health effects from ...

The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser, Debunked

[This is the transcript of the above video.]

A lot of you have asked me to do a video about the delayed choice quantum eraser, an experiment that supposedly rewrites the past. I haven’t done that simply because there are already lots of videos about it, for example Matt from PBS Space-time, the always amazing Joe Scott, and recently also Don Lincoln from Fermilab. And how many videos do you really need about the same thing if that thing isn’t a kitten in a box. However, hav...

Upcoming on Oct 30

Yes, I have some favorite topics, and not so surprisingly it's those that I work on myself. So this weekend I'll talk about quantum mechanics again, and this time pick up a topic that I have gotten a lot of requests for: The delayed choice quantum eraser.

Does Kirk Die When He Goes Through the Transporter?

[Transcript of video. Posting this here to make it easier for Patrons to leave comments and suggestions.]

Does Captain Kirk die when he goes through the transporter? This question has kept me up at night for decades. I’m not kidding. And I still don’t have an answer. So this video isn’t going to answer the question, but I will explain why it’s more difficult than you may think. If you haven’t thought about this before, maybe pause the video for a moment and try to mak...

Upcoming on Oct 23

This weekend I'll talk about a topic that I took out of my new book, not because it wasn't interesting, but because I just can't seem to make up my mind on it. What happens with Kirk when he goes through the transporter? Does he die and a copy of him is built up elsewhere? Or does he just change location? I'm not going to answer this question because I don't know the answer. I don't even know what would answer the question. However, I want to explain why I find the question so intriguing.&nbs...

Upcoming on Oct 16

So Captain Kirk flew to space! What a time to live in. I came to physics through science fiction and naturally I've always been fascinated by space travel. Where would we go and how would we get there? I am not terribly excited about populating Mars though. But it turns out that the idea of "terraforming Mars" has given rise to some quite interesting research that I hope you'll find as amusing as I.

2021-10-14 04:57:28 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on Oct 9

I find it fascinating what ideas people once believed in, and how we moved past them. Telepathy, astrology, animal magnetism, homeopathy, multiverses... those are all now understood as pseudoscientific. Or at least they should be. As a scientist I mostly fight pseudoscience. But in my upcoming video, I'll try to convince you that pseudoscience is actually good for us. Because only by trying to get rid of that what doesn't work do scientists get better at recognizing what does work.

2021-10-06 16:35:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on Oct 2

As I told you in December last year, one of my plans for 2021 has been to cover a larger variety of topics in my channel. Of course this brings the problem that I will be talking about subjects somewhat outside my own research. Luckily, thanks to your support, I now have a fact-checker to work with who helps me sort through the literature and contact experts on those questions that a literature search doesn't answer. And so on Saturday I'll take on a question that many of you have requested: ...

Upcoming on Sep 25

In the past weeks we've talked a lot about new developments in physics, but let's not forget the basics! Upcoming this weekend, I answer two questions that I get a lot: Where did the Big Bang happen? And: Is the Cosmic Microwave Background a frame of absolut rest, and if so, doesn't this contradict Einstein.

Upcoming on Sep 18

So this Saturday will be a little different, because we're planning on two videos! The one video is from my recent trip to London where I met with Rohin Francis who some of you may know from his channel MedLife crisis. Rohin is a cardiologist and he shot some physics questions at me, and I got to ask him medicine questions in return. This video will run at 6pm CEST. At the usual time slot we'll have a video about an anomaly in neutrino oscillations that has received very little attention (and...

Upcoming on Sep 11

Last year I made a video about black holes in which I talked about the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems. I remarked that I think Penrose should really have gotten a Nobel Prize for it. Imagine my surprise when I heard he'd indeed won the Nobel Prize! This year I speculate about who is due for the prize next, and I am guessing Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger for what I would call the 2nd quantum revolution. Maybe the coolest thing to have come out of this is quantum teleportation. And that'...

Upcoming on Sep 4th

First of all a warm welcome to the new Patreons! Your support helps me to pay the videographer and the factchecker with whom I work on videos whose topics are not in my own research area. Without your support I wouldn't be able to keep the channel up.

This weekend we will talk about a topic that is close to my own research, cosmology. The current standard model of cosmology rests on the "cosmological principle" - the idea that the universe looks, on the average, the same everywhere. Al...

Upcoming on Aug 28

This week I have been traveling, the first time since pre-COVID! A video will come out of this hopefully soon. But this weekend I want to tie up some lose ends in my quantum mechanics series, namely the question just why quantum mechanics is weird. And there is no better way to illustrate this than the bomb experiment. 

Upcoming on August 21

As you saw last weekend, I tend to overthink seemingly simple explanations... The problem is, a lot of superficially plausible ideas don't make much sense if you look at them a little closer. As a result, people sometimes end up with a rather fuzzy understanding of what is really going on. This weekend, I'll pick up one of those plausible sounding ideas, namely that "everything vibrates". In my video I'll explain in which sense this is correct. 

2021-08-18 11:48:50 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on Aug 14

Science communication is difficult. One thing that I see a lot is that physicists settle on an easy-to-understand explanation that, unfortunately, doesn't really explain anything and leaves people more confused than enlightened. One such explanation is that dark energy is created by quantum vacuum fluctuations. On Saturday I'll do my best to clear up this confusion.

Upcoming on August 7

Some technologies come and go, but others go and come. One technology that's been around for a long time, fell out of view, but is now coming back again is supersonic or even hypersonic flight. Is it all just hype? Or will we really see super-fast airplanes in the near future? How much do we need to worry about the supposed arms race between the United States, Russia, and China? We looked into it for you, and on Saturday you'll hear our 15 minute summary.

2021-08-04 05:31:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on July 31

Last year I was thinking about where my YouTube channel should go, and one of the most important points on my list was that I don't want it to become boring for myself. So this is why you've seen a larger variety of topics this year than last year, and it's been a lot of fun!

Still, I don't want to drop the ball on topics that I talked about two years ago, so on Saturday I look at the question "what is a particle?" and "what is space-time?" and if our best answer is "math", then do...

Upcoming on July 24

I haven't told you for some while what I've been up so, so this weekend I tell you something that recently annoyed me. A few months ago, I was asked to write an opinion piece for Physics Magazine, run by the American Physical society. After I'd written this and the editor had cleared it, a second editor killed it. On Saturday I tell you what was in the opinion piece.

Upcoming on July 17

We have already talked a few times about how to make sense of headlines in physics, about quantum hype and data anomalies and alien discoveries that weren't. This week I want to talk about a topic that you have probably seen popping up in the media many times: The fifth force. What's so special about the fifth force? What is it and what, if anything, can we do with it?

Upcoming on July 10

The activity of the sun has periodic ups and downs and we have just begun a new cycle. Solar activity is projected to peak around 2025. In this week's video we will look at the risk of solar storms. What is a solar storm, how dangerous are they, and what can we do?

Upcoming on July 3rd

I am working on a new book that will cover all the most exciting topics in the foundations of physics (according to my own biased opinion). As it goes, there is always extra material that doesn't fit into the book, and one of those topics that I only touch on very briefly is the question whether we can create universes in the laboratory. That's why I'll talk about this in my video on Saturday. The book is loosely scheduled for next year early summer; more about this soon.

2021-06-30 06:01:47 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on June 26

I have always been fascinated by extrasensorial perception in science fiction and fantasy novels, in particular telepathy. What would a world look like in which telepathy was real? Well, you may say, the question is moot because it isn't real. But it may not be long until we have the technology to send and submit thoughts directly from our brain. In this weekend's video I talk about how far along the research on "mind reading" has come in recent years, thanks to artificial intelligence.
2021-06-23 15:05:51 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming on June 19

Space is big and they're many fascinating things out there to talk about, but this week we'll be talking about a space topic that isn't all that far away from home: Asteroids. Or more specifically, asteroid mining. Even more specifically, asteroid mining with bacteria. Yes, bacteria. I know this sounds crazy, but turns out it isn't.