Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Sometimes, being an expert in one scientific field doesn’t translate to another. But then there’s Luis Alvarez, a particle physicist who helped expand our knowledge of the world by investigating everything from atomic bombs, to Egyptian pyramids, to what actually killed the dinosaurs. This video was inspired by Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs, a new book by Alec Nevala-Lee. If you’d like to check it out, head to bookshop.org/lists/scishow-recommended-reading. Made in partnership with The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Sources
Collisions by Alec Nevala-Lee (2025); publisher: wwnorton.com/books/collisions
britannica.com/topic/Fat-Man
energy.gov/science/doe-explainsmuons
sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-volcano-pyramid-physics
https://home.miracosta.edu/kmeldahl/articles/blows.pdf
nature.com/articles/285198a0
newscenter.lbl.gov/2010/03/09/alvarez-theory-on-dinosaur
web.archive.org/web/20111209132114/http://www.nd.edu/~cneal/CRN_Papers/Schulte10_Sci_Chicxulub.pdf
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Sometimes, being an expert in one scientific field doesn’t translate to another. But then there’s Luis Alvarez, a particle physicist who helped expand our knowledge of the world by investigating everything from atomic bombs, to Egyptian pyramids, to what actually killed the dinosaurs. This video was inspired by Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs, a new book by Alec Nevala-Lee. If you’d like to check it out, head to bookshop.org/lists/scishow-recommended-reading. Made in partnership with The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Sources
Collisions by Alec Nevala-Lee (2025); publisher: wwnorton.com/books/collisions
britannica.com/topic/Fat-Man
energy.gov/science/doe-explainsmuons
sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-volcano-pyramid-physics
https://home.miracosta.edu/kmeldahl/articles/blows.pdf
nature.com/articles/285198a0
newscenter.lbl.gov/2010/03/09/alvarez-theory-on-dinosaur
web.archive.org/web/20111209132114/http://www.nd.edu/~cneal/CRN_Papers/Schulte10_Sci_Chicxulub.pdf
----------
Support us for $8/month on Patreon and keep SciShow going!
patreon.com/scishow
Or support us directly: complexly.com/support
Join our SciShow email list to get the latest news and highlights:
https://mailchi.mp/scishow/email
----------
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: David Johnston, Cye Stoner, Jp Lynch, Bethany Matthews, Chris Curry, J.V. Rosenbalm, Alan Wong, Toyas Dhake, Reed Spilmann, Garrett Galloway, Friso, Lyndsay Brown, Jeremy Mattern, Jaap Westera, Matt Curls, Eric Jensen, Chris Mackey, Adam Brainard, Piya Shedden, Steve Gums, Alex Hackman, Kevin Knupp, Chris Peters, Kevin Bealer, Joseph Ruf, Jason A Saslow
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
SciShow Tangents Podcast: scishow-tangents.simplecast.com
TikTok: tiktok.com/@scishow
Instagram: instagram.com/thescishow
Facebook: facebook.com/scishow
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/scishow.bsky.social
#SciShow #science #education #learning #complexly
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