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Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

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Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#41

Post by itcrowd »

wesammikhail wrote: post #34
ken wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my advisors in college said "The proof takes about 10 years of graduate mathematics to understand".

Is there really no intuitive way to communicate the answer to that question without needing 10 years of grad math? I find that to be somewhat hard to believe

No, there is no intuitive way to communicate it. The theorem has taken >350 years to prove, which makes it clear that the proof is not some intuition that was somehow missed by hundreds of people for centuries.

Fermat's Last Theorem (book) by Simon Singh is the source to check out if you're interested in the details of how it eluded mathematicians and a general idea of how the problem was solved, without getting too technical. It's a great story well told.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#42

Post by monktastic1 »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #24

Quantum entanglement. How do they know it's happening?

Have you studied Bell's Inequalities at all? There are various YT videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f72whGQ31Wg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd-tKr0LJTM

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#43

Post by raverbashing »

wesammikhail wrote: post #34
ken wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my advisors in college said "The proof takes about 10 years of graduate mathematics to understand".

Is there really no intuitive way to communicate the answer to that question without needing 10 years of grad math? I find that to be somewhat hard to believe

Well, the answer is "simple": It's because the modularity theorem was proven (or better, the Tanyiama-Shimura conjecture was proven)

But why that solves the problem? Because it connects two branches of mathematics (modular forms and elliptic equations) in a way that proves that equations of that form cannot exist (where the exponent is > 2)

Though there probably is an easier way of explaining it, it is strongly suspected that Fermat got the wrong idea there.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#44

Post by gus_massa »

dvdkhlng wrote: post #30

Wave-particle duality (of e.g. light)

The usual misunderstanding is that light is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle, but that is wrong. Light is always a weird thing, that you have never seen before in macroscopic objects, and you need to use some math to describe.

In some experiments the weird mathematical thing can be approximated as an almost classical particle. That approximation simplifies the calculation a lot, and sometime you can get some result intuitively. But it is never true, it is only a very good approximation.

In some experiments the weird mathematical thing can be approximated as an almost classical wave. That approximation simplifies the calculation a lot, and sometime you can get some result intuitively. But it is never true, it is only a very good approximation.

Try to read again everything you have read about the subject, but every time the text says "here light is a wave/particle" use a red marker to rewrite that sentence as "here light can be approximated as a wave/particle".

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#45

Post by raverbashing »

dvdkhlng wrote: post #30

Wave-particle duality (of e.g. light)

That is "less of an issue" when considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory and Second Quantization

Basically: particle are the quanta of waves. So it's not really a duality in the end.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#46

Post by freeone3000 »

pgt wrote: post #33

Gravity wells. I only realised in my 20s that the only reason satellites can orbit the Earth without crashing into the ground is by going sideways really, really fast. So as they inch closer to the ground, they also travel parallel to the ground fast enough so that they stay approximately the same height from the ground.

This is Newton's Cannonball. Honestly, I've found the best way to learn more about orbital mechanics is with a simulator - Kerbal Space Program is a fun version.

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#48

Post by sciolizer »

lpellis wrote: post #37

Bell's theorem. It somehow proves that quantum physics is incompatible with local hidden variables, but I could never see an understandable explanation (for me at least) of just how it works.

Yudkowsky's explanation[1] is the first one that worked for me. I later found Quantum mysteries for anyone[2] helpful. The latter has less soap-boxing.

1: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AnHJX42C6r6deohTG/bell-s-the...

2: https://kantin.sabanciuniv.edu/sites/kantin.sabanciuniv.edu/...

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#49

Post by DavidSJ »

freeone3000 wrote: post #46
pgt wrote: post #33

Gravity wells. I only realised in my 20s that the only reason satellites can orbit the Earth without crashing into the ground is by going sideways really, really fast. So as they inch closer to the ground, they also travel parallel to the ground fast enough so that they stay approximately the same height from the ground.

This is Newton's Cannonball. Honestly, I've found the best way to learn more about orbital mechanics is with a simulator - Kerbal Space Program is a fun version.

What other subjects would simulation enlighten people on?

Re: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

#50

Post by ramraj07 »

mynegation wrote: post #11

Why tardigrades are so hardy, how their biology is so different? How immune system and medications work. Why some plastics are recyclable and others are not.

I've been mulling making a youtube channel with ten minute videos on immunology; what would be a good starter video that might interest someone like you? I thought I'll do something about antibodies as drugs!
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