The Sleepy Science Podcast

Lightening, ... Thunder, Lightening, ... Thunder. August in Ontario is awesome for natural displays of destruction and beauty. Everyone knows that light and sound travel at very different speeds, so when you see a flash of lightening, you can count until you hear the thunder to see how far away the lightening occurred. Roughly 3 seconds for every KM. But how does a flash of light create a deafening boom? It all has to do with plasma. Plasma occurs when you have a high energy reaction that...

In this episode, I'm reminded of the first attempts mankind made at a viable space vehicle. Laika was sent into space on a one way mission, her vitals were monitored to see if there were any adverse affects for mammals while experiencing micro-gravity. This was a one way mission. Sad song, but oddly comforting. Singing in my engine room, on my way to our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri.

Tonight, I'm going to tell you about the Thesis by Louis De Broglie. He was a duke, Duke De Broglie. In 1924 he submitted his thesis to a panel in Paris and they couldn't make sense of it. As a result, he almost failed his exam. But, they decided, upon reflection, that they ought to send the thesis to Einstein to have a look at it, because it was in his wheelhouse. Einstein wrote back and said that it was the first glimmer of light in the darkest times of quantum physics. De Broglie ought to...

It's that strange time of day, right before sunset. Golden hour. You find yourself in a meadow. Surrounded by wildflowers. The sun bathes everything in a golden glow. Creating long shadows, and stark contrasts across your field of view. The sky remains blue. They say that sunlight is actually white. But as it passes through our atmosphere the blue get's filtered out, and causes the sky to light up. The diffusion of blue is so great that it obscures our view of the stars during the day. But...

Did you ever lay on your back beneath the stars and imagine you were on the roof of the universe. Like you were perched above the great expanse of spacetime itself and could fall into the void at any moment? I do that sometimes... and sometimes with the vaulted ceilings in museums. Often to a point where I get vertigo. This concept of up and down, past and future, movement it all its forms. I sometimes wonder if I were seeing myself in all the dimensions that exist, would my appearance...