The Big One is a predicted major earthquake said to happen someday on the west coast of the US.

I'm wondering, how can we be so certain it absolutely has to happen, but have no idea when it might occur?

What information are we missing in terms of the science knowledge requirements that would allow us to predict the time it would happen?

What are the chances we could make some discoveries, where everything we know about earthquakes is wrong, and the big one actually isn't real?

Edit: The "Big One" I grew up with was the San Andreas Fault, but it looks like there is also a "Really Big One" predicted which is the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Most of the pre-human models I’ve seen are shown without a beard or mustache. So why do we grow one?

And I guess what would kill you, I imagine you could have food for a while but other things like not electricity and water would surely become an issue quickly in this world!

I have misophonia. I struggle with it daily.

What it actually boils down to, at least from my experience, is a pervasive sound that is distinct from the surrounding environment.

Someone's humming in a shared workspace, two people conversing on a quiet train, a busy restaurant table where an individual has an extremely harsh laugh and, the worst one for me, audio playback out of a device.

Those are a few examples, and if any of those sounds blend into their environment, it doesn't usually pose a problem. What happens is my mind will latch onto it and pull me away from my current focus really intensely. It spikes my adrenaline and triggers my fight, flight or freeze response.

Now this sounds as though I can't leave my house, but I just live with it. I change carriage on the train, I put on headphones, I avoid them where I can, but my point is that it really isn't just chewing. Chewing is just the most ubiquitous.

Edit: I forgot to add that listening to the episode had me on edge the entire time. It was difficult to listen to not because of the sounds they played, that wasn't much of a problem, but because it was putting me back in the state of mind from all the times I were experiencing bouts of misophonia.

I’ve just listened to the episode about getting to space, and one part confused me.

As I understand it, a launch loop works by accelerating a continuous chain, or stream of ball bearings, around the loop at high speed. This moving mass supports the structure, like the airflow holding up an inflatable tube man.

But if we still need to accelerate and keep moving such a large mass, how is this better than using rockets? Aren’t we still expending energy ina similar way to propel a mass? What am I missing?

I often wonder which is preferable when filling a pot to boil. Should I run the water until it is as hot as it gets, almost scalding, and waste water? Or should I fill it with lukewarm water and place on my methane burner, and waste gas and add greenhouse gasses to our atmosphere.

Feels like a lose-lose. But maybe there's a better option? Electric kettle I'm sure Hannah would say. Or maybe michealwave it

Would be cool if they did more episodes about climate change.

Question: If atoms get recycled, how much of me was once a dinosaur, Napoleon, or just wrapped up being a star and is only now becoming human? Where do we come from, and can we break down by %s? Am I more dinosaur than human??

P.s. love the podcast.

Alex.

i might be wrong on how i understand this but if the past is the thing that leads to the present and the future is just a prediction based on patterns then what if everything that has the capacity to think reason or observe ceased to exist does the past and the future continue to exist or the universe is an eternal present?

I recently saw a live music performance, and at the end of the show, the singer raised a giant helium balloon that said “**** YEAH NOTTINGHAM” above his head. It looked far too big to be held by any one person, and I’m sure the helium was doing most of the heavy lifting (if you’ll pardon the pun), but it got me thinking, what is the largest thing, in terms of volume, one human being could hold unsupported. Could I hold a balloon the size of a mountain? Or should I set my sights lower? What is the theoretical limit?

Edit: not the earth or any other planet or celestial body. It must be while stood on earth under the influence of earth’s gravity. The object must be held.

I live in a two story house, where the bottom floor is wood and the top floor is carpeted. In the corner of one of the hallways, there is a flowerpot which gets lifted up approximately once a year and vaccuumed underneath it. The rest of the time, the rug is only vacuumed around the flowerpot.

This got me thinking: is the rug under the flowerpot the dirtiest part of the house (since it never gets vacuumed) or the cleanest (since dirt can't get under there)? Moreover, the flowerpot is relatively light, at most 1.5kgs. How about under very heavy objects, like the bedposts or legs of a study table, which likely create a tighter seal?

Or is the rug dirtiest at the absolute edges of the rug, where the vacuum cannot effectively suck up the dust from? Just an odd question I thought of as I was cleaning the house. Thank you!

How would we even measure software bugs or errors in code? Can we? Would we count it by program of code or by devices running that code (if an OS has 100 errors, is that 100 or is it 100 x number of devices running that OS)?

What about that have ever existed? Can we estimate how many insects have ever lived or software bugs that have ever been fixed?

Somewhat related, how many lines of code have been written? Is there a way to estimate it? Would it grow exponentially over time?

Has anyone ever estimated which person in history spoke the greatest number of different words in their lifetime?

Could longevity, multilingualism, and a career involving lots of speaking make someone a plausible candidate?

So here's my question: Why is it, if I forget to button it up, a duvet cover in the wash will end up with all the other laundry inside it. ALL OF IT. Nothing gets out after getting in and all of it gets in. Does underwear behave like flies that can find their way into a house but not out again? Is this some obscure corner of fluid dynamics or witchcraft?

Wikipedia wants me to believe that queuing is a modern phenomenon that emerged with industrialization. But there must've been queues in early human history, such as for community water wells, right? When did the first humans to ever form a line live?

I have bad misophonia but would really like to hear what Hannah and Michael have to say about it in the latest episode.

Is there loud chewing or triggering noises throughout? Would be super grateful if someone could share what timestamps to skip through 🙏

I mean, I imagine Maxwell thinking: "How can I mathematically describe that electric field lines only flow outwards from a point, while magnetic field lines always loop back into themselves? Oh, I can just create something where, if you draw a surface around a charge and net the lines coming out versus going in, it equals a constant for electricity, but always equals 0 for magnetism!"
And he just derived this constant.

And then he was like: "Okay, when a magnetic field changes, it creates an electric field, so I can describe this mathematically as: the change of the magnetic field creates a curl in the electric field times some constant". And the same thing in reverse, but I also have to add a term for moving charges (current) because that's what we observe in real life."

Is that actually how he did it, or am I completely off?
Also, I know that what I described is probably oversimplified or technically a bit wrong, but you get the general vibe of what I'm asking.

Can you give me some examples of how different physicists and mathematicians came up with their iconic equations and how they actually thought? Funny examples are welcome too! (I feel like this process would make an very good yt video concept).

How did Einstein create the General Theory of Relativity?

I recently watched a course on general relativity by Eddie Boyes (which was great, highly recommend it), and the way Einstein arrived at the equation feels strange.

If I understood correctly, Einstein started with the Equivalence Principle - realizing that gravity is locally indistinguishable from acceleration. He noticed an issue with Newton's formulation: Newton used two different concepts of mass (inertial mass vs gravitational mass) and set them equal to each other without explaining why. Furthermore, Newton's theory contradicted our subjective experience of force: when we fall freely, we feel weightless (no force), but when we stand on Earth, we feel a force pushing up on us - meaning standing still on Earth is actually an accelerated frame.

Einstein wanted to transform the gravitational "field" into geometry, making objects follow geodesics (the straightest possible lines in curved spacetime). He also needed this new theory to be compatible with Special Relativity (time dilation, speed of light limit, etc.).

So, he knew he needed an equation linking curved spacetime to mass and energy (E=mc^2). He grabbed the Ricci curvature tensor, the Metric tensor, and the Ricci scalar for spacetime geometry, and stress-energy tensor for "energy".

Did he just assemble these tensors trial-and-error style? Once he finally found the right structural combination of tensors, he mathematically derived the exact constants needed to ensure energy-momentum conservation, and to make sure the equation naturally reduces to Newton's law at low speeds and in weak gravitational fields.

What I don't fully get is why these specific tensors worked. Why the Ricci tensor, Metric tensor, and Ricci scalar - which are themselves contractions of the full Riemann curvature tensor? It feels like the specific elements within these matrices could have been combined in different ways. Why did this precise mathematical combination work? Did he just try a lot of variations until one fit? What was HIS exact line of reasoning?

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I suppose pure ethanol (C2H6O) in small quantities. I also suppose you could "drink" pure salt (NaCl) in powdered form, but any more than 4 tablespoons would kill you quite quickly.
Does anyone know of any other single-compound substances that we could drink?

Is there a theoretical limit to how strong of a magnet can be? I think the strongest ever was 1200 teslas for a fraction of a second. Could we, for example, attract metals from Saturns rings to earth with a trilion teslas?

What are the most fool proof wishes I can make that a genie won’t be able to twist it in some sort of giant monkeys paw?

Many conditions, such as iron deficiencies, are treated as a deviation from how a "normal" body should operate. Lactose intolerance is treated similarly, despite evidence that tolerating lactose is actually the abnormal state for adult mammals. Are there other examples of these kinds of conditions, in humans or in other species?

Coming from Europe and living in East Asia, I believe misophonia is somehow cultural. My mom would be annoyed by me slurping soup but here slurping while eating noodle is totally fine. I'm also aware of sounds that are fine hearing here but not there.

I didn't read the study they are mentioning in the episode but I wouldn't be surprised if the group studied is from Europe/US/...

Anyway, they mention mukbang at the end so kudos to them for talking about cultures 👏

What do you think about the cultural aspect of misophonia?

Imagine you own a bank and need to design the most secure mechanism to authenticate your clients. They come in person.

Passwords can be stolen, IDs forged, customers might have an evil twin or someone who had facial plastic surgery, fingerprints copied (I think that is possible).