Electric Forest 2019

Been getting a lot of asks about “NASA finding a parallel universe” or whatever and let me break it down.

It’s 90% sensationalism. ANITA, a detector in Antarctica has recently picked up some strange signals. The signals indicate that a very high energy particle (the neutrino) had passed through the earth without interacting with anything, something unexpected of a high energy particle.

So, here come the weird ideas. Scientists try to come up with ways of modifying our understanding of physics to make these detections more plausible. SOME of these require bizarre beyond the standard model ideas, like the one in the news. However there are much more likely answers, such as a common function of how physics normally works (won’t go into details here, but here’s a paper on it https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.01737) or simply a systematic explanation, like the signals bouncing off weird features in the ice and distorting the signal. Here’s another article: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.091102

Conclusion? The news relies on article clicks and outrageous claims get those clicks.

One 7-year-old boy has succeeded where legions of fans have failed: he has persuaded George Lucas to change his vision for Star Wars.

Colin, a young Star Wars fan, hopes to become a Jedi Knight when he’s older, but he also wants to get married and start a family—something forbidden by the Jedi Order, according to Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith. Probably dissatisfied with his parents’ guidance to “just become a new kind of Jedi” or to “stop watching those prequels and watch the real Star Wars,” Colin went straight to the source with a succinct letter to Lucasfilm:

Colin received the following response:

…as well as a bunch of cool Star Wars merchandise:

More at avclub.com

Been getting a lot of asks about “NASA finding a parallel universe” or whatever and let me break it down.

It’s 90% sensationalism. ANITA, a detector in Antarctica has recently picked up some strange signals. The signals indicate that a very high energy particle (the neutrino) had passed through the earth without interacting with anything, something unexpected of a high energy particle.

So, here come the weird ideas. Scientists try to come up with ways of modifying our understanding of physics to make these detections more plausible. SOME of these require bizarre beyond the standard model ideas, like the one in the news. However there are much more likely answers, such as a common function of how physics normally works (won’t go into details here, but here’s a paper on it https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.01737) or simply a systematic explanation, like the signals bouncing off weird features in the ice and distorting the signal. Here’s another article: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.091102

Conclusion? The news relies on article clicks and outrageous claims get those clicks.

I made a playlist of short stupid funny videos because I get asks sometimes about my favorite videos