If you were to / Zoom in / phase-out, move in / focus on this Human / whose cells magnify as you fly through them, and see
Atoms, looming / but you keep shooting past protons, bosons, quarks 'til even a part of a particle's too big / Then
boom / an end to the intrusion / As you hit the resolution of the universe / the strands of its fabric the tiniest fragment / the planck length,
past that, Gravity becomes fallacy, try contrasting that with the galaxies / try to grasp the huge magnitude of the universe it's unimaginable.
But let's try anyway.
If that insane length was one dollar bill / Then to reach the wavelength of the smallest particles Quarks, that are so fundamental
they don't have an inherent size would be the current price you'd gain if you sold Mount Everest made out of gold. That is insane.
if you applied the Midas touch to my mind it'd be quite enough to buy a car to drive And the gluons and 3 quarks combined make a large hadron those guys collide;
a proton / and to magnify to that size would turn that Midas mountain into a diamond / my mind made of that could buy you an island
/ and next we ramp up, from quarks and protons to atoms, atoms the fractions of matter the ones that that grant us our mass, and
if that quark was counted every time you take a / single breath / you'd respire Midas mountains then until your death
/ and if that life / was compressed into one lock of hair / then as we climb / up the rest / of these atomic stairs / then we'd pass
/ DNA / when we get to my red streak and the size of our cells / we equate / to every hair on my head...
[Sometimes you make me feel so small Can't comprehend your size Yet I'm a giant in your eyes]
If we took my head of hair that a cell represents lifetimes of Midas Everest breaths and then you would stretch it out to the skyline, again and again
you'd find circle round the earth 10 times before you meet me... and you. Right here the reach of a human, a meter or two / and if we were to choose
one song to represent those horizons, an MP3 on our device then to reach the size of the earth compared to like our size
that's a terabyte hard drive filled with our files it seems immense And if we compress that collection to one word
to represent our world, then scaling coefficients from the planet to the solar system would let me re-read the whole of deathly hallows awesome.
And then to travel between stars as we take to the skies Would be 10 times every word you'll ever say in your life
And as an analogy of the expanse of galaxies up in space 10 times the total of every word in every book ever made
And to move up to the scale of galaxy clusters would be every word said by everyone in Shanghai, in London Berlin, delhi, LA, Mumbai, Sao Paulo and Moscow Jakarta, Karachi, Dubai, Telford, Tokyo and Stockholm
And then to galaxy superclusters in the large-scale structure with filaments that feel inadequately described as humungous since if we stay with the scale of Earth as a word that equates to all the words everyone alive today will ever say
finally we reach the biggest physical thing we can confirm The indescribable size of the observable universe which would be more than every word that every person ever has said Every word that was ever written and every word that was ever read
[Sometimes you make me feel so small Can't comprehend your size Yet I'm a giant in your eyes. I can't control the scope But I'm not losing hope]
To summarise Every word that every person has ever said in their lives where each word implies enough MP3s to fill a terabyte hard drive Where each song is 10 times the number drives to the horizon that it'd take to ride around the world each time you set eyes on one
where each horizon is a head of hairs and every hair there is the length of a lifetime and each breath in that life is the price of mount everest made entirely by midas
and that finally describes it, and it's increasing in size So each time you listen to this song again it'll be even more difficult to comprehend.
If you were to / Zoom in / phase-out, move in / focus on this Human / whose cells magnify as you fly through them, and see
Atoms, looming / but you keep shooting past protons, bosons, quarks 'til even a part of a particle's too big / Then
boom / an end to the intrusion / As you hit the resolution of the universe / the strands of its fabric the tiniest fragment / the planck length,
past that, Gravity becomes fallacy, try contrasting that with the galaxies / try to grasp the huge magnitude of the universe it's unimaginable.
But let's try anyway.
If that insane length was one dollar bill / Then to reach the wavelength of the smallest particles Quarks, that are so fundamental
they don't have an inherent size would be the current price you'd gain if you sold Mount Everest made out of gold. That is insane.
if you applied the Midas touch to my mind it'd be quite enough to buy a car to drive And the gluons and 3 quarks combined make a large hadron those guys collide;
a proton / and to magnify to that size would turn that Midas mountain into a diamond / my mind made of that could buy you an island
/ and next we ramp up, from quarks and protons to atoms, atoms the fractions of matter the ones that that grant us our mass, and
if that quark was counted every time you take a / single breath / you'd respire Midas mountains then until your death
/ and if that life / was compressed into one lock of hair / then as we climb / up the rest / of these atomic stairs / then we'd pass
/ DNA / when we get to my red streak and the size of our cells / we equate / to every hair on my head...
[Sometimes you make me feel so small Can't comprehend your size Yet I'm a giant in your eyes]
If we took my head of hair that a cell represents lifetimes of Midas Everest breaths and then you would stretch it out to the skyline, again and again
you'd find circle round the earth 10 times before you meet me... and you. Right here the reach of a human, a meter or two / and if we were to choose
one song to represent those horizons, an MP3 on our device then to reach the size of the earth compared to like our size
that's a terabyte hard drive filled with our files it seems immense And if we compress that collection to one word
to represent our world, then scaling coefficients from the planet to the solar system would let me re-read the whole of deathly hallows awesome.
And then to travel between stars as we take to the skies Would be 10 times every word you'll ever say in your life
And as an analogy of the expanse of galaxies up in space 10 times the total of every word in every book ever made
And to move up to the scale of galaxy clusters would be every word said by everyone in Shanghai, in London Berlin, delhi, LA, Mumbai, Sao Paulo and Moscow Jakarta, Karachi, Dubai, Telford, Tokyo and Stockholm
And then to galaxy superclusters in the large-scale structure with filaments that feel inadequately described as humungous since if we stay with the scale of Earth as a word that equates to all the words everyone alive today will ever say
finally we reach the biggest physical thing we can confirm The indescribable size of the observable universe which would be more than every word that every person ever has said Every word that was ever written and every word that was ever read
[Sometimes you make me feel so small Can't comprehend your size Yet I'm a giant in your eyes. I can't control the scope But I'm not losing hope]
To summarise Every word that every person has ever said in their lives where each word implies enough MP3s to fill a terabyte hard drive Where each song is 10 times the number drives to the horizon that it'd take to ride around the world each time you set eyes on one
where each horizon is a head of hairs and every hair there is the length of a lifetime and each breath in that life is the price of mount everest made entirely by midas
and that finally describes it, and it's increasing in size So each time you listen to this song again it'll be even more difficult to comprehend.Where do particles come from? - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2024-06-22 | Professor Ed Copeland discusses the origin of particles - including talk about inflation, re-heating, the Big Bang, and oscillons. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
New paper by Ed and collaborators... Formation and decay of oscillons after inflation in the presence of an external coupling, Part-I: Lattice simulations: arxiv.org/abs/2406.00108
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Telescope with a Mercury Mirror - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2024-05-09 | Professor Meghan Gray discusses the 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope in India - and does a demo. More links below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Beware of Biosignatures - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2024-03-29 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses a recent paper about biosignatures and the search for extraterrestrial life. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Searching for Extraterrestrial Life (and the Drake Equation) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2024-02-28 | Astronomer Dr Emma Chapman discusses SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the Drake Equation, and other stuff about the hunt for intelligent life beyond Earth. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Extra filming and editing in this video by James Hennessy
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9A Serendipitous Star (and most distant star) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2024-01-07 | Dr Emma Chapman discusses Earendel (WHL0137-LS) - a distant star discovered by sheer luck, More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Gravitational Wave Background - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-11-28 | Oliver Gould & Swagat Mishra discuss groundbreaking findings in the field of gravitational waves. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Collaboration: nanograv.org
Oliver Gould and Swagat Mishar are physicists at the University of Nottingham. More about the School of Physics and Astronomy at: http://bit.ly/NottsPhysics
Some relevant papers: The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...951L..11A/abstract The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...951L...8A/abstract The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...951L...9A/abstract The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Constraints on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from the Gravitational-wave Background - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...952L..37A/abstract Chinese PTA - inspirehep.net/literature/2672606 Parkes PTA (Australia) - inspirehep.net/literature/2672611 European PTA and Indian PTA - inspirehep.net/literature/2672722
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Is Boffin a Dirty Word? - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-10-22 | We discuss a campaign to stop scientists being called "boffins". More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Featuring University of Nottingham scientists Phil Moriarty, Martyn Poliakoff, Emma Chapman, and Oliver Gould.
http://www.bradyharanblog.com Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Attosecond Lasers (2023 Nobel Prize in Physics) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-10-09 | The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 goes to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter". More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Discussing the prize in this video is Ed Copeland, Mark Fromhold and Ioan Notingher from the University of Nottingham.
Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran
http://www.bradyharanblog.com Additional animation and editing in this video by Pete McPartlan
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Interesting Physics of Robert Oppenheimer (not the bomb) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-08-22 | Robert Oppenheimer did a lot of interesting physics before the Manhattan Project and atomic bombs. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Bad Science and Room Temperature Superconductors - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-08-15 | Professor Philip Moriarty takes issue with a paper by scientists claiming to achieve room temperature superconductivity. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Making of a Quantum Metal Song - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-06-06 | Behind the Scenes creating Shut Up and Calculate with Professor Philip Moriarty. Joined by David Domminney Fowler and other guests.
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9A Curious Problem with Red Galaxies - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-06-01 | Professor Mike Merrifield on a new paper about Red Galaxies - and why that may cause a rethink about galaxy formation. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Is there a Black Hole in our Solar System? - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-05-09 | We discuss the idea with one of the paper's co-authors, Dr James Unwin... plus black hole enthusiast Dr Becky Smethurst. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Black Holes and Dimensional Analysis - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-03-31 | Featuring Professor Ed Copeland with a look at dimensional analysis and how it can be used on black holes, among other things... More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9ChatGPT does Physics - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-01-23 | We put chatbot ChatGPT to the test with some physics questions. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9My First Paper (Meghan Gray) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2023-01-13 | Professor Meghan Gray discusses her first academic paper - pointing a telescope at Abel 2219. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Biggest Possible Black Hole - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-11-28 | Dr Becky Smethurst discusses Ultra Massive Black Holes - more information and book links below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9A Cosmological Wish List for the JWST - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-10-27 | Professor Ed Copeland - a cosmologist - shares his wish list for JWST discoveries. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Hidden Variables (extra) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-10-12 | A bit extra from Professor Ed Copeland from our 2022 Nobel Prize video. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Quantum Entanglement and the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-10-11 | Some of the Sixty Symbols Professors discuss the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Featuring Phil Moriarty, Mike Merrifield, Ed Copeland, and Tony Padilla - all from the University of Nottingham's School of Physics.
The Nobel Prize was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science". More at: nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/summary
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Spooky Action at a Distance (Bells Inequality) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-10-04 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses Bell's Inequality, and what Einstein dubbed "Spooky Action at a Distance". More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Panic Paper (JWST) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-08-24 | Mike Merrifield discusses a new paper about early data from the JWST - and why it is not cause for panic! More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9My First Paper (Michael Merrifield) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-07-01 | Professor Mike Merrifield - a mainstay on our channels - shares his first academic paper from 1989. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9New Way to Scan Brains - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-04-06 | Professor Matt Brookes shows us a new wearable brain scanner being developed at the University of Nottingham. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9A Briefly Famous Star (and calibrating the JWST) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-03-20 | An unassuming star is thrust into the spotlight during calibration of the James Webb Space Telescope. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Black Hole Mergers and Multi-Messenger Astronomy - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2022-02-03 | Professor Ed Copeland discusses latest happenings at LIGO - and how it is shedding light on mergers between Black Holes and Neutron Stars. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Fingers Crossed for the James Webb Space Telescope - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-12-16 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses the James Webb Telescope, which is due to launch soon. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The King Model - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-09-21 | The recent passing of astronomer Ivan King leads to discussion of "The King Model" for exploring the motion of stars in so-called "globular clusters". More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Ivan R. King - 1927-2021
This video features Professor Mike Merrifield from the University of Nottingham - twitter.com/AstroMikeMerri
Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran Additional editing and animation by Pete McPartlan
http://www.bradyharanblog.com
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Bullet Cluster (of Galaxies) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-09-01 | Dr Maggie Lieu discusses The Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-56), among other galaxy clusters. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Dr Lieu is based at the University of Nottingham. Her website: maggielieu.com
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9NEWS: Seeing Behind a Black Hole - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-08-17 | Discussing a new paper about seeing the back side of a supermassive black hole in the galaxy I Zwicky 1. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Incredible Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-08-02 | Legendary physicist Steven Weinberg is discussed by Ed Copeland and Tony Padilla, from the University of Nottingham. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Bent Jets from Black Holes - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-06-02 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses why the jets from some galaxies can be bent into so-called NATS and WATS. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Untangling the Cosmic Web - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-05-07 | Discussing how we understand and study the architecture of the Universe... Featuring Dr Meghan Gray from the University of Nottingham. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9NEWS: Whats up with Muons? - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-04-12 | Professors Ed Copeland and Tony Padilla discuss latest results in particle physics from Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Note from Tony: "I say the magnetic moment of the muon is 2. That's not technically true. The true value of the magnetic moment depends on the mass and stuff. The 2 is the g factor, which is the dimensionless measure of the magnetic moment."
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Donut-Shaped Planets - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-04-09 | Professor Tony Padilla on life on a "donut planet" - leading to discussion about how the Earth and Moon formed. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9A New Image of THAT Black Hole ⚫ - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-03-26 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses a new image revealing polarised light (and the magnetic field) around M87's supermassive black hole. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The G-Dwarf Problem - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2021-02-04 | Professor Mike Merrifield from the University of Nottingham discusses some new research into star formation. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Why Starlight is like Rain - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-12-20 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses the stellar aberration and the acceleration of the Sun. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Burping Black Holes - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-11-17 | Dr Becky Smethurst is back, talking about how supermassive black holes grow. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Becky is currently based at the University of Oxford. Find out more about her work - both outreach and research - at: rebeccasmethurst.co.uk
Papers from this video: Supermassive black holes in disk-dominated galaxies outgrow their bulges and co-evolve with their host galaxies: arxiv.org/abs/1705.10793 Secularly powered outflows from AGN: the dominance of non-merger driven supermassive black hole growth: arxiv.org/abs/1909.01355
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9How Smooth is a Neutron Star? - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-11-06 | Featuring Professor Mike Merrifield from the University of Nottingham talking about neutron stars and pulsars. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Nobel Prize for Black Holes - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-10-20 | The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded for work on black holes - as Tony Padilla and Mike Merrifield explain. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Death of The Lecture - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-07-28 | Is the traditional lecture dead? Professors Mike Merrifield and Phil Moriarty - both from the University of Nottingham - have differing views. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9NEWS: The Runaway Star - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-07-21 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses a unique white dwarf star. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Cracking a Black Hole Paradox - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-07-09 | Researchers may have used wormholes to solve the so-called "Black Hole Information Paradox", as Tony Padilla explains. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Timeslicing Galaxies - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-06-07 | Professor Mike Merrifield discusses a different way to look at galaxies. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The Corona Supernova - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-05-11 | Professor Mike Merrifield on SN 2020jfo - a potential target for backyard astronomers during the pandemic lockdown! More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Details of the discovery: https://wis-tns.weizmann.ac.il/object/2020jfo
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9The (Professional) Backyard Astronomer - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-05-06 | Professional astronomer Michael Merrifield tries his hand at some backyard astronomy during the 2020 lockdown. More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓
Mike Merrifield is an astronomer at the University of Nottingham. Mike tweets at: twitter.com/AstroMikeMerri
Papers from this video Dwarfs Gobbling Dwarfs: arxiv.org/abs/1112.2154 Cospatial Counterrotating Stellar Disks: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1992ApJ...394L...9R/abstract Disentangling the stellar populations in the counter-rotating disc galaxy NGC 4550: arxiv.org/abs/1210.0535
Email list: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9Physics in a Lockdown - Sixty SymbolsSixty Symbols2020-04-30 | Professor Philip Moriarty talks about doing (and studying) physics during the pandemic lockdown. Phil's blog is at bit.ly/2VPmQOR and see more links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓