Atomic Universe

Subsequent to the Hot Big Bang, as the Universe expanded and cooled, atoms formed and, later still, decoupled from radiation.
This lecture will cover the intellectual revolutions in relatively recent history that paved the way to our modern understanding of the formation, existence and interactions of atoms.
A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an...
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[@edysinsimon8646]

I just LOVE your lecture series Professor Blundell. What gets me up very early in the morning, my local time!

[@Badgerr99]

Thanks for another informative lecture

[@jonadams8841]

I like this speaker, her pronunciation, the emphasis on the last consonant, and her brilliance.

[@WildBillCox13]

"There once was a Quantum Computer, Of Copper and Steel and Pewter, A virtual tangle of possible routes, And mutable variable values for truth. "There's only three states," the old man said, "And Schrodinger's cat is scratching its head, If ever we hustle in excess of light, Then Photons are solids, and that isn't right." "No problem is too big to handle, A googleplex RAM I can dandle, My only regret is the luminal crunch, Cause that makes me late, and I hate missing lunch."

[@greg5023]

Dr Blundell has a lovely voice and accent. She sounds exactly like Sarah Pascoe when, on the TV show Would I Lie To You, she explained that she went to Costa Rica because she thought it was in Spain. "They have insects there that we have banished".

[@WildBillCox13]

Shared.

[@vladimirp2674]

Its a pity that more complicated physics is far too hard for understanding to ordinary people... Anyway, the basics of astronomy is brilliant for our knoweldge of how the universe was in fact created...

[@KaliFissure]

There is a classical way of looking at QM phenomena but the math was never pursued in favor of wave theory. If space is viewed as a fluid with inflows, outflows and variable density as well as ALL QM activity as well as gravity can be fairly intuitively modeled.

[@stopitnow7762]

Explain that last part, please. I'm sure they're in the process of rethinking the expansion theory of the universe as I type? Maybe I'm wrong?

[@WildBillCox13]

I've read Lucretius in translation. Phanes flying between objects and the eye . . . photons? Nice work.

[@M.Alexander.Esq.]

Excellent overview of atomic theory! However, hasn't the quantum picture of the world brought us back, full circle, to a continuum consisting of carrier particles?

[@KaliFissure]

“All the things we see…..” if only we could see neutrinos Then we might really understand the universe.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Singularity-point positioning is "atomic-node" log-antilog interference positioning-location condensation modulation cause-effect. When you know this absolute zero-infinity truth of pure-math elemental e-Pi-i sync-duration resonance, you have a frustrating feeling that you are like the fish in the water, but don't have the way to describe what you feel but can't see. BBT has to be junked, judiciously so as to retain the absolute mechanism of universal coherence-cohesion information crystallisation, cubic coexistence in the spheroidal 2-ness in 3-ness time-timing field.

[@kidmohair8151]

or Just because you'll be "uncomfortable" seeing it, by definition, means it *is* there

[@kidmohair8151]

3.14......22...3

[@kidmohair8151]

just because it isn't there doesn't mean you can't see it or ...

[@grantofat6438]

That sounds about right.

[@shadetreader]

Truly, we don't need to break the laws of physics to tackle the problem of climate change-- we need to break the stranglehold that capitalism has on our laws and culture.

[@nHans]

I wouldn't give too much credit to Democritus as far as the atomic theory of matter is concerned. He-like Aristotle-was a philosopher, not a scientist. Most philosophers of that era believed that you could arrive at the truth just by superficial observation, and then, "thinking it through." (Archimedes was a rare exception-he actually performed experiments to confirm his hypotheses.) So, given the question _"Can one keep dividing matter indefinitely?",_ there were only two possible answers-"Yes" and "No." Aristotle stuck with the more popular "Yes" camp; bored Democritus founded (or wandered into) the other. Both camps provided nothing more than "thought experiments" to support their respective viewpoints. No detailed observations, no repeatable experiments. Just unfounded assumptions. And-as was the norm-plenty of rhetoric. I seriously wonder if Democritus' _atom_ matches what we today call atoms. More likely it's the elementary fermions of the Standard Model. QFT and String Theory would've blown his mind-all their minds. What about space-time itself-is it continuous or quantized? The equations of both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics require it to be continuous. But Planck Length and Planck Time suggest otherwise. If it turns out to be quantized, does Democritus still get the credit for it?

[@grantofat6438]

"Why should we believe in something we can't actually see?" Ask someone religious.

[@calmeilles]

Sadly disappointed. As a follow on to the last lecture 33:30 minutes of discursive and sometimes digressive introduction before actually reaching the point seems excessive.

[@ArtDocHound]

Democritus rules.

[@Silly.Old.Sisyphus]

she implies that ALL conspiracy theories are fallacies... that can only mean one thing: - she's part of the conspiracy !

[@louisgiokas2206]

I generally like her lectures, but this one is hard to take. She is talking to a roomful of, what I think I can safely assume, are reasonably well-educated people. Then she starts out with stuff that, quite literally, would have been considered basic for me in second grade (and that was a long, long time ago). I mean that literally. In second grade I was given a book to read about nuclear energy which went over much of this.