Thanks for another video my son and I can bond over. He finds many videos, about what he likes, to share with me. I like it when I can reciprocate with videos I find. Keep up the awesome work.

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I've been obsessed with what the universe is and how it works since I was 13. I live to understand it better and think about it and while I've taken a fondness to this channel after recently discovering it, these space and physics themed videos will always be my very favorite.

Your animation of the Solar System, in particular the depiction of the Asteroid Belt, brings up another interesting space fact. Despite there being up to 1.9 million asteroids in the belt if you were to stand on one asteroid you would not be able to see its neighbours as they would be too far away to see! It is not the crowded area of asteroids that is popularly conveyed in images and movies. Flying a space ship through it would not be hazardous!

The immensity of space is even more terrifying when you realize that we only see the observable universe. With space-time expanding faster than the speed of light there are stars that we will literally never be able to see because there is literally not enough time in the universe, even if it never ends, for the light from those stars to reach Earth.

Thank you, Simon. Well researched, informative, and interesting. Your entertaining format is both amusing and inspiring. I appreciate learning more about the world and beyond from you and your team. Please keep it coming!👍

Physicist here. Quantum entanglement would make particles change in relation to their entangled partner, but it would not yield useful information. You could see one particle with spin up and then go to the other particle and see the spin down. However, you cannot force the original particle into one state. The ramification of this is that faster than light communication would be impossible. There are things in the universe that go faster than light (like the expansion of the universe, and even entanglement) but it is information that it yields which cannot exceed light speed.

0:35 - Chapter 1 - Quantum entanglement 3:05 - Chapter 2 - The collatz conjecture 6:20 - Chapter 3 - Alien descendance 9:05 - Chapter 4 - False vacuum theory 11:20 - Chapter 5 - The immensity of the universe

For the last one, you didn't even consider that those galaxy estimates are just for the OBSERVABLE universe. Our little pocket of the observable universe may only be 1/1000000 of the entire universe.

Simon you have a wonderful talent in communication. Thank you for making these educational teaching videos. My students actually stop talking and pay attention when you're on the screen 📚

The vastness of space is just incomprehensible. I saw a couple videos talking about it that really did a fantastic job of making me realize I’ll never even be able to come close to comprehending how little I can comprehend the vastness of space. It’s just not on a scale my brain is capable of thinking about it’s so absurdly large. Words don’t exist to explain how gargantuan it is.

There is a theory which states that, if anybody should ever discover just exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced with something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened -- Douglas Adams.

Anyone interested in quantum entanglement, false vacuum, and other related subjects should also be watching PBS SpaceTIme, which goes into these subjects in detail. Not the detail a student who could actually grasp the mathematics would get, but the host actually understands the subjects and can simplify them for a general intelligent audience.

Fantastic video Simon. Always entertaining and informative 👌👏

Loved when you said "documentary" lol I watch Ancient Aliens as a purely entertaining show. They take speculative facts and dubious extrapolation to come to doubtful conclusions that support their view. The phrase "ancient alien theorists say yes" has become a drinking game.

If I recall correctly, the conclusion that quantum entanglement can be used to do faster-than-light communication is, unfortunately, incorrect.

love all your channels mate..keep up the awesome work u have taught me so much in the past couple of years..love from the UK

I’m glad you added the enormity of the universe as one of your mind-blowing theories. I don’t think it’s truly appreciated by a lot of people. I’m not pretending to be some deep thinker or expert, I just believe if you sit down and truly try to comprehend its size you will be really dumbfounded. It’s honestly absurd how vast it is.

Always a well presented, well thought out video from Simon. Instant like!

I love your videos Simon. Your story telling / narratives are fantastic. Your team of writers & researchers do a great job to bring the content to you to determine which stories you create videos from. I watch all your channels and enjoy them all. I love learning and challenging my thoughts / assumptions about the world around us. Love the notifications of new videos.

If Simon talks any faster he’s gonna end up inventing faster than light communication all by himself.

The vastness of the universe is difficult to grasp, but the vastness of the natural numbers is in my opinion even more mind blowing, especially since it's just adding one each time.

While the size of the universe is mind bending, what really blows my mind is, "What is outside of the universe?"

These videos are fun and interesting as always, so thank you for making them!

Some clarification about his mind bogglingly big the universe is. Since there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, there are not hundreds of billions of stars. There are hundreds of billions of hundreds of billions of stars. And, given what we’ve seen about exoplanets, there are consequently hundreds of billions of hundreds of billions of tens of planets.

Wow, Simon! I love these scientific observations that mess with our ideas about the world. Makes me wonder if there is a "world behind our world" and these observations are seeing the intersection of realities . . .

I appreciate your approach to provide information on your channels without interjecting your opinion or interpreting elements for your audience.

Simon, the fact that you went through the close of the this video without quoting Douglas Adams definition of space means you are hereby banned from using the term "maths" for the next 30 days! Keep up the good work!

The most mind blowing fact of all: Simon has so many channels that he works on his KZfaq videos for 36 hours a day.

Something I read that really blew my mind about the size of our universe is this: when the milky way and Andromeda eventually collide and form "Milkdromeda", it's unlikely that any actual collisions between stars or planets even occurs, simply bc of the vast distances between them. That blew my mind!

I first learned about quantum entanglement from Mass Effect. It was how they explained how Commander Shepherd could talk to people in different parts of the galaxy instantaneously. They had the same quark. So when they would send digital information to the quark on their ship it was the same as sending it to the quark back on Earth. It's literally the same quark. It blew my mind.

If the universe is so big, why won't it fight me?

I like the idea that the universe is like the rear of an old CRT style TV screen...whereby there's a point behind it from which all emanates...we are merely a spec of dust stuck to the rear lining of the screen itself with everything else spreading out across the surface in every direction around you

What would be more mind boggling though? A universe that goes on forever or one that had a distinct "end". We would be just as mind blown contemplating questions like "Why is it the size that it is?" "Whats beyond the end?" "What is the end made of?" "What is it expanding into?". Both a finite or infinite universe are equally incomprehensible.

What I heard about the false vacuum thing is that if part of the universe started to collapse to a more stable state, the wave of universe destruction would propagate at the speed of light.

I understand the collatze theory as you explained, what I don't understand is why people think it means something. I'm not saying it doesn't, just that I personally don't understand it. As for the alien descendance, the possibility can be proved if we're able to detect the DNA of any life we find on Mars. This won't prove that life originated here or on a meteor, but that it is possible for life to begin after arriving from space.

Hot damn! Kevin made the Collatz Conjecture interesting! Now, Simon, when will you let Kevin write a Biographic for Danny?

How this man doesn’t have his own TV show, is beyond me. Great narrator!

You have JUST the right amount of snark in your presentation. You can appreciate irony when you see it and smile or chuckle when telling the rest of us. I think I saw you break down and laugh once...ever...and it was over something worth laughing about. And yet, when stuff gets serious, it's presented with an appropriate tone and gravitas.

Isn't being worried about things we can not control a big part of what existential dread is?

I’d love a brain blaze version of the same title…but 5 basic facts that would only blow the minds of flat earthers….but presented as though they really are astonishing news to Simon, Danny, and Sam

The first time I was really given a sense of scale for the solar system (let alone the Universe!) was a website called 'if the moon is a pixel'. The premise is what it says on the tin - a to-scale render of the solar system, starting at the sun. It was truly mind-boggling how long I was scrolling before I reached Mercury and how tiny it was. The distance between Mars and Jupiter blew my mind.

My mind is now "BLOWN"... Thank you for the seads of my further venture to learn more Simon!

It's definitely an interesting video that I enjoyed watching! I'm just left wondering why there is a Mandelbrot set in the thumbnail which is never mentioned in the video?

What I would like to know is if Simon in our universe furiously gesticulated, would a negatively charged Simon in another universe be equally compelled to wash his hands?

This is the first time I've heard anyone actually call tardigrades "water bears". 🙂 They are always "tardigrades, also known as water bears" or something similar. Are they really also called water bears if people don't call them that?

On the faster that light communication with quantum entanglement: I've read that this is impossible. Basically you can say giggle one particle and the other jiggles the opposite way. But the person looking at the other particle doesn't know *when* to read the giggles to make sense of them. It ties in a bit to relativity (perceived time is not smooth) and I think the impossibility of knowing the one-way speed of light is a factor too. Essentially it's impossible to sync two clocks up over a large (in astronomical terms) distance without having a connection of some kind (via radio signal), which defeats the point of communicating over a distance without a connection.

I remember the moment, as a child of about 10, that the size of the universe hit me. I realized I can't wrap my head about infinity. (I still can't). Scarier yet, if it's not infinite, what's beyond it and is that space infinite or wrapped around itself. Then the anxiety hit me. Ok, I def sound crazy now lol. Is there a name for this fear of infinity? I think there is and I think I might have even seen it on one of Simon's great videos! BTW, loved this one.

You should look into Dr. Erik Verlinde, and his theories about the universe being a black hole... etc..

Really good stuff. Brilliant, thank you for sharing.

Excellent fun 👍, like an alternate theory. Good delivery .... subscribed

Using QE as a communication tool has been bandied about for some time now, and from a fundamental understanding seems possible. Although, you would have to physically deliver one end of the communication channel (device) to it's destination, which could take a while. Being able to instantly control and communicate with an exoplanet rover would be kinda awesome!!

With the final segment, you could've added that because 'everything' (contextually speaking) is moving away from everything else at an ever increasing rate, and at some point in the future, galaxies will be so far from each other that we'll never be able to see the next 'closest' galaxy even with levels of high technology that can't be imagined.

The implications from the twin slit experiment always blew my mind in half

The last one is just nuts. The idea that you could go from one end of the universe to the other without likely hitting anything is truly astonishing.

I think one of the best arguments against panspermia is how quickly life started on earth after it cooled enough for it to become possible. It happened shockingly fast. The oldest stromatolites are 3.5 billion years old, and these are built by quite complex photosynthesizing cyanobacteria, found in fossils as far back as 3.8 billion years. There is no way these are the first life, as they are extremely complex, to the point of being capable of photosynthesis and complex metabolic activity. It seems that pretty much as soon as the planet was able to support life it was supporting life. Sure, it's possible that we got hit with one of those lucky life-containing meteors within a few hundred thousand years after the planet cooled off, but it seems more likely to me that life, at least on the microbial level, is just actually pretty likely so long as the proper conditions are met, and that when you have the right soup of stuff in the right conditions, it almost inevitably comes together into something that can start reproducing and evolving. We can't recreate this, of course, both because we neither know what the soup contained nor what the necessary conditions were, and because we don't have the time to wait around to see if a given combination of soup + conditions is right. A few hundred thousand years may be a flash in the pan on geological scales, but it's still longer than we can plan out an experiment for. Just the fact that life seemed to start so fast here though seems, to me, to indicate that life just sort of happens when the conditions are right for it to happen, and probably usually just dies out just as quickly because the whole universe is trying to kill us. We were lucky enough to come into being on a planet with pretty good conditions in a fairly stable region of the galaxy during a fairly stable time in the history of the universe, and if we weren't, then we wouldn't know any better because we probably would have been snuffed out as barely formed sacks of protoplasm less than a billion years after the earth got slimy. Life being common but fragile and hard to sustain seems more likely than life being so rare it only forms once and so hardy that it can travel all over the universe frozen in space rocks.

I was sad that in the last theory (the size of our universe) Simon didn't talk about the cosmic event horizon; the distance at which we would never be able to detect other galaxies because the universe is expanding faster than the distance the light from those galaxies would have to travel. Also the theory that our universe could just be the event horizon of a 4D black hole. Trippy and fascinating theories.

Not a math geek, but I do have a mild fascination with it, and this is my first time hearing about the Collatz Conjecture. I can't speak for anyone else, but that is genuinely mind boggling.

I don't understand why the Collatz conjecture is such an issue. An even number will either start off as a power of 2 and reduce down via repeated halving, or eventually halve into an odd number, at which point 3x+1 makes it even again, and the halving continues. Until you find me an odd number that remains odd after 3x+1, that's proof enough for me that the conjecture holds.

PSA : as far as the panspermia theory, as of 2022 all 5 dna building blocks have been found in meteorites!

The math problem is like trying to reach the final fraction of Pi. Seems kinda pointless to try.

Good video! Should have touched on negative numbers in the Collatz conjecture though. That makes it even more crazy!

In addition to what you said about the size of the universe, it is almost certainly larger than we can EVER know. Why? Because what we can observe is necessarily limited by the speed of light, therefore there can be things beyond what we can observe because the light from those objects still hasn't had time to reach us yet.

Interesting video as always. Of course, here's the obligatory pronunciation correction, because there's always at least one, Brain Boy. "Coelacanth" is pronounced "SEE-la-canth".

One of my kids had a pair of identical twins in his soccer team. These two kids I am sure were quantum entangled. They always knew where the other was on the field and seemed to be able to pass the ball between themselves without even looking.

01:40 DID YOU KNOW: Quantum entanglement originating in Australia is technically titled _"Dinkum Enfanglement,"_ (previously _"Bunkum Entrapment.")_ 02:14 Quantum Cryptozoography: _Doppleganger / Doppelgangbanger._ 12:40 In the context / at the scale of The Universe, wood is astronomically rarer than diamond.

In the whimsical land of Far Far Away, Shrek and Donkey discovered a connection that transcended friendship. Amidst their adventures, a deeper bond formed, defying societal norms. Their unconventional love story unfolded quietly, a tale of acceptance and understanding. Far from the conventional fairy tales, Shrek and Donkey navigated their feelings in a world that had yet to grasp the diversity of love. In the end, it wasn't the castle or the dragon that defined their happiness, but the genuine connection they found in each other, proving that love knows no boundaries, even in a swampy fairy tale realm.

Erdos is pronounced roughly like "air dish" btw. Edit: really appreciate you talking about mathematics.

Communication faster than light is not possible with quantum entanglement either. If both partners of communication would have an entangled particle, neither of them would know if the other has already looked at it's state. Without this information you can't get any information out of the revelation of the state.

The possible decay of the universe to a stable state that doesn't include us, or the just mind-boggling immensity of the universe, etc., things that seem to scare most people, don't scare me a bit. I actually find them very, very comforting. I LIKE that we are infinitesimally small cogs in the machine. Limits our ability to throw a spanner in the whole works, like we've done here in our lil solar system.

I've often showed people the different sizes of stars, and they express amazement. And then I tell them to try to Fathom the space between all the stars now because it's infinitely larger.

Just one thing - that "colocanth" of yours is pronounced "seal-oh-canth". Thank you otherwise for a very thought provoking video. Now to decide how many of those 100's of billions of planets in the 100's of billions of galaxies sustain life.... 🙂

Using quantum entanglement for communication is as of our current understanding, probably impossible. We have no way of manipulating information on an entangled state. We can only measure it, once one side is measured, we can determine the other side. The nature of a quantum measurement is random. Even if we could force the outcome, in any way. Unless we can compare the results as instantaniously as the quantum entanglement operates, our transfer of information is still limited by the speed of light.

Sir your ability to speak intelligently on multiple topics is amazing. Thank you.

In the quiet of the night aboard the USS Enterprise, Commander Riker and Captain Picard found themselves in the captain's ready room, enjoying a rare moment of relaxation. The stars outside the window formed a mesmerizing backdrop, a reminder of the vastness of space they explored together. "Jean-Luc, do you ever tire of this endless journey?" Riker asked, his voice soft, almost reflective. Picard looked up from his book, a slight smile playing on his lips. "There are moments, Will, when the solitude of command can weigh heavily. But then, I think of the crew, of the friendships we've forged, and it all seems worthwhile." Riker nodded, understanding the sentiment all too well. "We've been through so much together. It's those bonds that keep us going, I think." The captain set his book aside and leaned back in his chair. "Indeed. It's not just the exploration of the unknown that drives us, but the connections we make along the way." There was a comfortable silence between them, one that spoke of years of mutual respect and camaraderie. Riker walked over to the replicator and ordered two glasses of Saurian brandy, handing one to Picard. "To friendship," Riker toasted, raising his glass. "To friendship," Picard echoed, clinking his glass against Riker's.

I think strange matter could have made this list. It is theoretical matter made of strange quarks possibly comprising the cores of neutron stars. It too is metastable but could be the catalyst to causing the False Vacuum theory to precipitate. In essence it is a type of matter that would convert anything into itself and cause a chain reaction throughout the universe, ending everything as we know it. Or not.

The size of the Universe part is just insane. Everything you just said applies to the part of it we can see. I've seen videos on KZfaq saying it is possible that the rest of the Universe beyond what we can see is so many times larger that it would be like comparing a light bulb to The Moon.

The "One-electron universe" theory blew my mind. There's a beautiful simplicity to it. Not sure how it holds up today (given the advances in quantum theory)?

This is a kind of bravery I can wholeheartedly support! :)

So, in theory, we could build remotely a telescope, just by teletransporting particles, and the get real time view from that telescope across the universe to know hoy it looks just now.

Simon, You neglected to mention just how far apart the planets in our own solar system are. It's one thing for Columbus to cross the Ocean and arrive at a place that was physically like Europe. It's a whole different matter(literally) on Mars which lacks the gravity and Bacteria and trace elements from which we and all other life on Earth was created. We are of Earth and most likely will be until the sun goes Nova or another meteorite solves all our problems. Meanwhile, while we are here with all due respect to Mr. Musk, he isn't Columbus and a supply chain to Mars over loooong distances is very unlikely, we can't even control the supply chain plaguing the world right now! Serendipity aside, perhaps he should spend his billions on helping humanity here and now! Cheers, Frederick "Rik" Spector

Glad to hear the Collatz Conjecture was mentioned. I described this to my then 13 year old son who almost instantly replied with, "Dad, that only works with a negative" Its a great theory though!

I'd love to hear Simon read Douglass Adams Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy...

You should partner with vsauce

I miss VSauce 😢

Love all your videos. Thank you so much!

3n+1 & n/2 seems pretty silly to try and "prove." As long as we're turning odd numbers even and dividing by 2, we will eventually reach a number that is 2^n which ultimately resolves to 4, 2, 1. Why are people trying to prove/disprove it?

Something that is very mundane but also kind of mind blowing: I went hiking in the Alps with a few friends and kept an eye open, looking for pieces of raw iron. I eventually managed to find one that's like an inch in length and half an inch each in width and height. This is very mundane, depending on where you are, you will find many such pieces of iron in the ground or on the surface. Where this becomes kind of mind-blowing (at least to me): That piece of iron was, at some point in an unfathomably distant past, part of a star's core for millions of years. It got hurled into space by some major event, maybe the star exploded, maybe it collapsed into a white dwarf that then collided with another white dwarf... the point is: At some point, a chunk of iron was torn from that star's core, hurled through space and after millions, if not billions of years, it hit earth, got lodged deep inside the crust and then, through unfathomably slow processes slowly re-emerged on top... where I picked it up. A piece of a star, billions of years old. And it's sitting on my desk, right in front of me, as I type this.

Sometimes I like to take a moment and think about how - in a hundred years or so, let alone a couple thousand - we'll look back on "quantum theory" and "general relativity" the same way we look back at pre-heliocentric views of the universe, or astrology. Like, "aww how quaint, humans used to believe in things like space-time, four fundamental forces, particles, etc." 😂 Well, if we survive til such times.

04:32 ... You should get the reward. I think that you just proved the theory when you explained it. Any odd number multiplied by three will be an odd number. Plus one makesi it even, then it boils down to one again. By the way 4-2-1 is a great French dice game played with three die.

That was the best explanation of quantum entanglement I have listened to.

You know Perelman could have just taken the prize and gave that other dude half if he felt so strongly about it.

The particles aren't really spinning like a spinning top. They have spin as a property, but it related to magnetism not actual spinning - it is kind of more complex than that... And one thing more - quantum entanglement does not allow for FTL communications. The entangled particles does not communicate between each other in any detectable way - they are parts of one quantum system that behaviors non-locally, i.e. its properties does not change with change of its size or distance between its parts.

I didn't know it had a name, Panspermia, but that's basically what I've figured out since I was a little kid on how life is transferred planet to planet. The star explodes a planet near it with life on it explodes shoots bits of DNA into the vacuum of space ,lands on another world with a star close enough, mixes with water and Life starts again.

Great list, fast paced fun to watch, however, I detect one fatal flaw...there is no such thing as empty space. Any theory that is based on the belief that space is very empty, is liable to implode or 'collapse'!😉

Interesting video as usual - thanks. However, could I suggest that if you really want to investigate something mind blowing, why not do one of your "Mega-project" videos on the granite and diorite boxes of Serapeum at Saqqara. Now they - the boxes (and how the hell they did it) is truly mind blowing. One thing for sure - it wasn't done by the ancient Egyptians. It's a topic worthy of your time and talents, if you're prepared to go in with an open mind.

Here's a 6 one for you. There is a very strange dip in the cosmic background radiation (a sort of picture of the universe when it was born), called the Cold Spot. It shouldn't exist, but it does. For now there are just a few ideas of why and nothing conclusive, but an interesting theory is that it's caused by an imprint from another Universe into ours.

The size of the universe thing is cool to think about as well but imagine aiming at something, say a star. More than likely you'll never actually make it to the star because all you'll ever see is the light that it produced billions of years ago and is most likely burnt out and collided into itself. The idea that the light from it will live longer than it itself is so cool, like we could be seeing a star that was created at the beginning of the universe and all that's left of it is it's remaining light. It's so impossible to fathom, fuck it's cool

Well quantum entangled systems require either of the particles to be undisturbed on a quantum level. The analogy of the dies would not work as once you shake a dice you are externally affecting its quantum state breaking the entanglement. It's a complicated version of newtonian conservation of momentum, when a stationary object breaks into two dynamic identical halves, their total momentum will cancel out meaning they will have the exact opposite linear and rotational velocities. Without any external forces acting on these halves they will continue to maintain this relation unless some external momentum is injected on either side which on quantum level can even be the act of observation as photons also carry momentum. The crazy thing would be the fact that no particle has a certain value for any measurement, there is always a probability of it having any possible value but even through this uncertainty the entangled pair always give opposite values. This is conservation of momentum at the very quantum scale.

The last one didn't touch on the most mid boggling part of space. If it infinitely large, that changes everything we know about who you are. Everything has a finite pattern. Your cells, atoms, everything. The chances of you being the same person in another galaxy are very, very, very small. But put infinity on the other side of that equation and suddenly there are an infinite number of you doing the exact same thing you are doing right now. Infinity breaks everything.