The 7 Strangest Coincidences in the Laws of Nature

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The universe seems to be ruled by equations and numbers. But why just these equations and why just those numbers? Is it just coincidence? In this video I have collected seven of the weirdest coincidences in physics.
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#physics #astrophysics #science

[@SabineHossenfelder]

This video comes with a quiz that lets you check how much you remember: quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1714029981265x638941313611119700

[@Thomas-gk42]

Thank you for the quiz.

[@mysticone1798]

Nothing is a coincidence. I applaud Sabine for making such a video on inexplicable "coincidences", but really she has only scratched the surface on the question of the parameters that make our cosmos possible. There are many other "coincidences", all of which TOGETHER make it possible for atoms to exist, for chemical interactions to occur, for stars to ignite at critical mass, for all of the various elements that are needed for life itself to form within the stars. The presence of elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. all derive from these very essential "coincidental" values governing the material plane, without which there might have been NO COSMOS AT ALL, and no intelligent life to witness it. But none of these fine-tuned values are coincidences. Rather, they are the proof of the Intelligent Design of the universe, and confirmation of a creator God, in the broadest sense. Sabine should do another video examining the many other values that reveal our Fine-Tuned Universe. After all, if a Designer does exist that created the universe, isn't it the goal of science to discover who and what that Designer is?

[@peacepoet1947]

The vacuum of space is as wild as the space of electrons around the proton with electrostatic forces. As humans we experience friction, but vacuum of space around an atom doesn't experience the same friction. In my mind, that's very weird!

[@raulvsr]

13/16 i'm noob 💀

[@_John_P]

Number 3 is not a coincidence because G comes from the contributions of all other masses in the universe.

[@stevensavage7442]

I am 178cm tall, or 71 inches. Coincidence?

[@adriang6424]

If you sum the alphabet position of your name (S=19)+(A=1)+(B=2)+(I=9)+(N=14)+(E=5) and the add 4x114 (the number of days to your birthday) you get 506.... the number of videos you posted with this video....Coincidence? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Great video!

[@michaelkohn883]

Wow - mind blowing…. Jesus ,must be real.

[@2ndfloorsongs]

Please don't start a cult; with reasoning like this, you'll be successful.

[@scorpion2.411]

if you sum the alphabet position of the name of the person who discovered that SABINE + 4x114 = 506, you get ADRIAN = 47, and Sabine is 47 years old. It was already premeditated by the universe to make you a top comment 🤣🤣

[@xxxxxx89xxxx30]

@@michaelkohn883 Jesus is real :)

[@rudolfquetting2070]

😅

[@ShadowManceri]

The use of approximate values can create the illusion of coincidence. With a large enough set of numbers, some values will inevitably be similar. This is unsurprising. However, a precise match is far more compelling.

[@solconcordia4315]

The formula for computing Rydberg's Constant is one of the most impressive one showing a very deep connection underlying our cosmic reality.

[@maxieduardoapariciom.3181]

bla bla bla

[@jamesgrover2005]

Every universe that didn't have the coincidences died in a blaze of glory

[@mikeguilmette776]

Nice way to illustrate the anthropic principle.

[@simongross3122]

I think they just faded away :) This is how the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper.

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

Or got stuck in a glory hole. LOL!

[@MykePagan]

When you look for coincidences, you will find coincidences -Umberto Eco, “Foucault’s Pendulum” (paraphrased)

[@axle.student]

It's a bit like the philosophers web, or as Douglas Adams put it "The interconnectedness of all things".

[@homerodysseus4203]

This is why philosophy is in my opinion an integral part of science and math. It seems to be the field that everyone loves to mock, but in the end always has the last laugh.

[@Android480]

Whew thank you, I can stop reading that damn book now!

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

Spoooooooooiler Alert!

[@fredknowles5784]

and the square root of 2 is APPROXIMATLY 1.4!!!!!!!

[@kalzium8857]

I think if you take some numbers and massage them with math enough, you gain other numbers.

[@rawdez_]

lol

[@malectric]

Numerology 😞

[@waveysavey]

Exactly. There are so many significant numbers out there, there's probably an infinite number of weird morphs you can do to them to make it seem like they're related. This video is garbage. Clickbait. She should know better.

[@jameshart2622]

The correct answer. At least, once you add in the human ability to find patterns in noise.

[@malectric]

@@waveysavey In all fairness I don't think she attached any significance to the numbers. ?

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

The chance of all this being a coincidence is not that irrelevant. I just did the math, and it is exactly 1/137. Cheers Sabine!

[@RoganGunn]

Haha what a finely structured joke! 🤪

[@sabinrawr]

I love this!

[@michaelwhittierpearson]

Maybe you really wanted to say "Cheers Sabine!" and thought it would look awkward. So you prefaced it. That's what I'd do

[@LuigiHuana]

got another good one for you Sabine 1.28 (Charm mass) /173,1 (Top mass) = 0.00739456961... which looks something like 0.00729927007, or as men of culture say: 1/137 (Fine-structure constant) looking at the errors, it is not far fetched :P

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

@@LuigiHuana Yeah, crazy, huh... It's like we live in a stable and geometrically consistent world... no, wait... that'd be too weird, eh!

[@kirkp_nextguitar]

The universe gives us many cherries to pick.

[@ethericlimerick2992]

Well said!

[@victorkrawchuk9141]

Perhaps another coincidence is that if you calculate the Schwarzschild equation with the estimated mass of the universe, you get a Schwarzschild radius that isn't very far off from 1/2 the estimated diameter of the universe. Do we all live inside a black hole?

[@Toxicpoolofreekingmascul-lj4yd]

Of course we do. Each new black hole is a new universe. An eternal chain of creation.

[@paulomartins1008]

Isn't that just telling you that you cannot escape the universe if you travel at or under the speed of light?

[@DANGJOS]

​@@paulomartins1008 That's an interesting thought

[@rawdez_]

@@paulomartins1008 this. less fun than "living inside a black hole" though

[@rawdez_]

@@Toxicpoolofreekingmascul-lj4yd black holes are just Universe's shredders. you can obviously count their insides as "universes" themselves. but those universes have quite horrible conditions to be in.

[@keithsquawk]

Some bloke caled 'Pratchett' had an idea about this "“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

[@outtakontroll3334]

a man of deep intuition, was pratchett

[@phtamas]

Happy Terry Pratchett day! (Coincidence?)

[@simonfarre4907]

@@phtamas Whoa.

[@skop6321]

​@@phtamas Uh, huh . . .

[@sabinrawr]

​@@phtamasOmg... Happy birthday to The Man Himself!

[@JoeBlowUK]

Seeing the Fibonacci sequence crop up so many times in nature is quite a coincidence.

[@antonseoane9092]

It's not a coincidence, it comes from logarithmic growth

[@macronencer]

Closer to home (as it were), two of my favourite coincidences are: 1. pi seconds is approximately a nanocentury 2. a foot is covered by sound in a millisecond and by light in a nanosecond

[@martifingers]

Is that light in vacuo and sound in air?

[@europaeuropa3673]

One thing I've learned about science is when a politician uses the words "the science says" it has nothing to do with real science.

[@josephmartin1540]

THE most fundamental law of physics being that the universe is humorous, carry on smiling with your brain! A most beautiful video!

[@GeezerBoy65]

Sabine is pulling our legs with this episode. It should have come out on April 1st.

[@edus9636]

Exactly my thought!

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

It's her point.

[@jadusiv]

I’m surprised you didn’t discuss the anthropic principle, survivorship bias, and string landscapes. They explain a lot of this perfectly well. Particularly things like the metastability of our vacuum.

[@frankcl1]

Wouldn't we survive with a stable vacuum?

[@jadusiv]

@@frankcl1 Sure, but it’s quite possible there is no such thing as a stable vacuum. Instead, we’re here because it lasts a very long time and is metastable. A certain degree of stability is required in the string landscape for life to emerge.

[@milanstevic8424]

But if we are to talk about metastability (and anthropic principle), then we have to talk about the multiverse (or metaverse). This is where theoretical physics massively overlaps with philosophy, because anything beyond our observable and measurable universe is untestable by definition.

[@user-uf4rx5ih3v]

@@jadusiv Either that, or our measurements are wrong and the vacuum is actually just stable. The thing is, our error intervals for some of these are actually relevant to make the entire calculation wrong. The errors propagate both from measurement, as well as calculation.

[@simonnorburn3518]

​@@user-uf4rx5ih3v -+Well assuming you are using the strong anthropic principle which makes us the sole observers (or at least one of us equipped with the tools that we all are needed to invent for (choose your gender pronoun here)) to observe, then none of this is coincidence, it is necessary. A side argument about determinism might require the ratios to be slightly "off" the calculated values to prevent external events (i.e. facts of co-incidence) interfering with the observers’ structural integrity.

[@vincenttolve9756]

I am old now and never was that bright to begin with so it is eminently understandable that much of what Sabine says is profoundly opaque to me. What is difficult to understand is why I watch regularly and wonder at the complexity of what seems simple to a simpleton.

[@Thomas-gk42]

If you would be a simpleton, you wouldn´t watch this channel and listen to Sabine😊

[@SabineHossenfelder]

Sorry for the opacity, but to be honest when it comes to these coincidences I'm not sure I understand why many physicists think they are relevant. Then again, maybe I am thinking too simple...

[@thepuma2012]

well i only understand a bit of one of those 7.... i dont know what the rest is all about

[@CodepageNet]

​@@SabineHossenfelder coincidences that are precise down to x place after the decimalpoint are most likely really not coincidences but some inherent underlying connections that we currently do not understand. ie, we should try to figure out what's going on.

[@rawdez_]

@@SabineHossenfelder pretty sure its what you've said recently - many physicists are just writing papers for grant money. and thats it. so making things up works for them

[@malcellison8831]

If you take the Cosmological Constant, divide it by 10 to the 14th, add the weight in grams of all the Cod in the Atlantic and multiply by the number of beams in the Eiffel Tower, you get a figure which is equal to the number of atoms present in the bodies of all the Koalas in Western Australia. Coincidence?

[@keithsquawk]

An obvious sign of some sort of higher intelligence - or 'God did it' ? 🙂

[@jeremywilliams5107]

The problem is that these things are commutative: when the Koala population rises, you get some pretty weird effects on the Eiffel Tower. Also the cosmological constant, which is why it's so difficult to measure.

[@fanlb769]

@@keithsquawkGod fine-tuned the universe for koalas!1!

[@MrKOenigma]

Very good, I thought I was the only one who noticed this 😂😂

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

That has always bugged me too!

[@truthpopup]

The speed of light is nearly 300,000,000 meters per second. The meter could have been defined in terms of the speed of light, but instead it was defined as 1/10,000,000 of the quadrant of the Earth’s circumference running from the North Pole through Paris to the equator. Coincidence?

[@antykom1]

I am always smiling when somebody is using the size of the universe as a known factor in the equation. It is unbelievable how smart scientists are.

[@NomadSupreme911]

This all went over my head. Albert Einstein had a head. Coincidence?😂

[@sMVshortMusicVideos]

Ditto, I can usually hang, but not this time. Maybe you can make us a sacred (special) numbers and formulas for dummies.

[@MrKOenigma]

​@@sMVshortMusicVideossomething is coming up, I don't know where she is leading us. But I'm eager to find out

[@BadManaManXXi]

You have a head? I have a head. Coincidence?

[@jimmyzhao2673]

@@sMVshortMusicVideos co-authored by Deepak Chopra.

[@Disgracefoold]

@@BadManaManXXiI have a head, too! What are the odds of that???

[@JundArbiter]

I for whatever reason strongly desire long form videos on each of these, and also on the 1/137

[@rangjungyeshe]

Surprised you don't mention the Dirac Large Numbers Coincidences, which can also be related to the quantum vacuum state, but may also have an anthropic explanation

[@dannypope1860]

Yes… There are lots of theories and even more numbers… some line up in imaginary ways

[@Techmagus76]

1) nearly a number not impressed 2) nearly a number not impressed 3) funny as we do not know the size of the universe. Even about the shape we are not sure. conclusion: interesting but i find it even more interesting to focus on one and discuss ideas why it might be no coincidence and the take/view of a sceptic physicist on those ideas.

[@DaMonster]

I think it's worth noting that (2) isn't nearly a number, it's actually within the margin of error. I think there is an explanation for it, but it probably won't be groundbreaking.

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

Science channels also need views and interactions to keep them making more, like the ones you mentioned. But I just suppose it.

[@georgelionon9050]

3) its not unitless! that "coincidence" has a unit attached to it, so certainly nonsense.

[@2perspectivevideos312]

Thought exactly thr same thing. A bit disappointed by this video.

[@Artopiumcom]

Is it me, or is Dr. Hossenfelder talking directly to the scientific community, and we're just here with our popcorn?

[@georgesheffield1580]

You figured it out ,join the party .

[@andersjjensen]

Most of these are pretty well known facts. The problem is to root out which are coincidences and which are fundamental relations. There have been many others, that started diverging as measuring of constants got more and more accurate.

[@axle.student]

Yeah, it was all a bit opaque so I wasn't sure where or who that was directed at lol

[@EdwardCurrent]

The experts already know these things, but what's great about her videos is we feel like she's talking to experts and not dumbing anything down...as opposed to the Fermilab guy, for instance.

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

Don't tell everybody, it's just too fun to watch...

[@javahaxxor]

Great video. What a mountain of knowledge there must be behind noticing just one of f these "coincidences"

[@mr.pavone9719]

"My cat's breath smells like cat food" -Ralph Wiggam, PhD.

[@denysvlasenko1865]

The "coincidence" I find worthy of attention is the Koide rule. A lot of free parameters in SM are particle masses (Higgs couplings): nine out of 19. Koide rule (and a few other curious "coincidences" with other masses) hints that masses are not free parameters. They can be predicted by a better theory.

[@frun]

Koide rule=descartes circle theorem

[@AlejandroRivero]

viavca.in2p3.fr/presentations/koide_formula_beyond_charged_leptons.pdf here I did a good collection of bibliography

[@PaulRoneClarke]

IIRC a teacher split their class into groups, gave each group a copy of Moby Dick. Then told each group there was a hidden code in it. Written in the text. letter spacing, line numbers, transposition of letters.. whatever was needed. The code was hidden somehow. They should try as many ways as possible to find the code and extract the meaning. He made up some topics and gave each group a different topic. Claiming they would find meaning in Moby Dick on that topic...if they could crack the code of the book. Almost all the groups returned at the end of the project sure they had cracked the code and found that meaning. Some were amazed by what they thought they had discovered. The story goes that several refused to believe the teacher when he said he had made it all up. His point was that, with a big enough data set, where you are allowed to extract meaning in whatever manner you like with no rules, you can read almost anything into anything.

[@jerotoro2021]

I'm still hung up on the fact that the top of the great pyramid at Giza is 29.97924°N and the speed of light is 299,792.4 km/s, it's exact. Egyptians didn't use degrees or meters, which makes the coincidence even more wild.

[@Duke_Romilar_III]

Since we can only perceive the observable universe, and have no real idea of what's not observable, how can scientists even estimate the "size of the universe?"

[@thstroyur]

Size of the _observable_ Universe

[@Duke_Romilar_III]

@@thstroyur- that's like standing on your roof and drawing conclusions about the whole planet, based on what you can see from there...and we wonder why there's this "cosmology crisis". The more we discover, the more we find that observations don't relate to the "accepted" theories and formulas.

[@thstroyur]

@@Duke_Romilar_III That's drawing conclusions from what data is available. Alas, I do agree that's a fundamental limitation of cosmology - which prevents it from being a full-fledged science

[@axle.student]

You make an interesting point here and touch upon something that irks me in all descriptions of the universe. We only see a past light cone of the universe in both space (distance) and time (past). There is no "NOW" universe for us to see. When I here the universe (observable?) is "This Big Now" it is illogical. Either it is the observable universe in terms of m/s or it is a universe that is of unknown size. In the same context I hear about people (scientists) making a 3D map of the universe. This is also illogical as we have no "NOW" 3D awareness of the universe. At best we have a past histogram of shells (Outer layers of the sphere) stretching back in time and out in space. In some sense all we have is multiple 2D representations "In Time". I guess it is a kind of pseudo 2.5/4D.

[@ethericlimerick2992]

@@axle.student You are correct sir! Now draw a 4th dimensional picture of a black hole with pencil and paper!

[@usuallyscott7907]

OK, OK, OK: I didn’t understand even one of these coincidences… Coincidence? No… Thank you for the videos…

[@alexshapiro9841]

Your mom has the same mass as all of food missing from Africa. Coincidence?

[@VikingTeddy]

Oh c'mon. If you take this charge, multiply it by pi. Then take the square root and substract the energy of the universe, add plancks constant, divide by Einstein birthday in binary. You get almost the mass of a proton! That's gotta be a coincidence right!?

[@ninablessing9350]

😂

[@Tailspin80]

No, I didn’t. Ignorance?

[@silentwilly2983]

The 'coincidence' that recently really blew my mind when I learned about it is that gravity can be derived thermodynamics..... I think the explanation is that the teen simulating us in the basement is lazy and lacks creativity and reuses code.

[@mikeguilmette776]

Sometimes I wonder . . .

[@MurderMostFowl]

Not the laws of nature per se, but I always found it extremely interesting that proportions of the distance and ( to a lesser extent ) the orbit of the moon from the earth and thst of the sun has a “goldilocks” relationship. It is just the right distance away from the Earth to nearly precisely block out the sun at a simple and regular frequency.

[@63MGB1]

Yeah, almost like someone is messing with us...lol.

[@theunderstatement]

The moon is very slowly moving away from earth, and was much closer in the past. In the future, around 600 million years from now, there won’t be full eclipses any more.

[@NeonVisual]

Physicists hate this one simple trick..

[@danoconnell1833]

...but they can't stop you from using it.

[@aaaaa5272]

...but they can't stop you from using it.

[@noob19087]

...but they can't stop you from using it.

[@milanstevic8424]

...stop from it you can't but they using.

[@Laughing_Cat_Meme]

...they stop using you but can't from it.

[@johnjameson6751]

By the size of the universe, I assume you mean the observable universe. Any correlation involving such an arbitrary quantity is going to be coincidence.

[@EinsteinsHair]

And is "size" a length or a volume?

[@raginggerman5377]

Not if we actually are at the center of the universe and the end is right beyond where we just can't see it. I bet the CIA knew all about it all along.

[@dennisconley5068]

As a retired chemical engineer, I collect science coincidences while studying physics. I can verify your first 2 but the others, I don't have all the info to confirm. i.e. On 3, is the size of the observable universe a mass or a diameter? Dr. Becky detailed her coincidence with the microwave background very well and it was easy to verify. I have found several other parallels between folklore and science as well.

[@gambit633]

A more interesting question is... If you take all the mathematical constants in both physics and astronomy and apply any combination of half a dozen different mathematical functions like additions / divisions / square roots to any group of them (be they related or not) and define a simple 'match' (being being any decimal number that looks interesting up to 5 digits like 0.666661 ) then.... what is the probability of there being zero coincidences found?

[@danielvest9602]

Those floating equations really mess with KZbin compression algorithms. Each time they are on the screen you turn into a blob of pixels.

[@therealpbristow]

It's not just KZbin. 99% (rough guess) of video compression is done using motion estimation to track things and record the motion vectors (very little data needed) instead of having to redraw that thing from scratch in every frame. But throw in 2 or more moving things that are translucent, and... which motion is it supposed to follow? The algorithm gets very confused, so the fall-back mechanism just sighs and has to resort to encoding the "instructions" for redrawing the relevant bits of each frame after all... But it has to do that while keeping within a tiny bit-budget, so the instructions end up very imprecise. Result: Messy splurge. =:o/

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

Coincidence???

[@badhombre4942]

Just last night I was thinking about the Universe...coincidence?

[@NachtmahrNebenan]

I'm an old white man and last night I thought about ancient Rome - coincidence? Oops, wrong thread here…

[@richardatkinson4710]

I think Dirac’s Large Numbers Hypothesis is even more intriguing.

[@Rome101yoav]

That was so fast! Really would love to see you making a video about 1-2 of these and really dig into them, theorizing what could it mean and what scientific ideas there are about it.

[@JK_Vermont]

Another one that gets brought up is that the fine structure constant α is "almost" 1/137. However, the current accepted value per NIST is α = 7.2973525693 x 10^-3, in which case 1/α = 137.035999 which most decidedly is *not* 137. In fact, α is about 0.026% smaller than 1/137, which is comparable to 22/7 being about 0.04% larger than π , and nobody takes seriously the idea that π is 22/7. Anyhow, I think there are probably a few cases for these and other "coincidences": 1. Humans instinctively wanting to find patterns and order. 2. Indications of deeper physics. 3. Anthropic principle. 4. Brute facts. Whether we will ever figure out which is an interesting science question, and whether we even _can_ is a an interesting epistemological question.

[@aaaaa5272]

regarding 22/7, keep in mind that 7 is a prime, which 22 is not.

[@Olivia4eva]

youtube.com/@Olivia4eva?si=88movN_uLHmuPKgu

[@Olivia4eva]

youtube.com/@Olivia4eva?si=lEIaMogAZfPbAfT3

[@charlesbrowne9590]

22/7 is the second in a sequence of rational approximations of π using continued fractions. It is possible to show that this sequence of approximations to π is most efficient at minimizing error while simultaneously minimizing the denominator. So 22/7 is not coincidentally approximate to π, but is derived from π.

[@JK_Vermont]

@@charlesbrowne9590 Sure, but Archimedes came up with the 22/7 upper bound using geometric methods well before anyone was messing about with continued fractions.

[@st0rmrider]

I thought the game was that you have to drink a shot every time you say Einstein

[@sabinrawr]

I'll drink to that!

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

Einsh-tein. Which is prolly how his mother meant it...

[@Laszer271]

Perhaps the greatest coincidence is that we are all here, living in a time in which we can watch your videos. What are the chances of that, really?

[@martifingers]

100%

[@MahdiSahranavard-hg8ev]

Thanks for great teaching.. Clear British Accent is very nice to understand physics. Thanks

[@JZsBFF]

00:01 Someone taught me that equations and numbers are actually our way to describe/understand the universe, in the way that a painter uses color to describe the subject of his attention. It's pretty pretentious to claim that the universe is ruled by OUR equations and OUR numbers.

[@TomSkinner]

I think everyone pretty much agrees. It's just a manner of speaking. All know that these are mathematical models that closely resemble reality but aren't reality itself. But it is odd that they can work so well.

[@JZsBFF]

​@@TomSkinnerYou're right, it's odd but that might very well be coincidental. Some painters are better than others but even the best painting/piece of art isn't reality. I suppose that 's pretty good analogy. As far as we know our closest theories might be no better than a first grader sticking a random number to his first sum; ie Newton's gravity vs Einstein's spacetime.

[@e_mcsqrd]

Absolutely LOVE your videos! I look forward to them daily!

[@arnesbeganovic]

What i find interesting is that Coulombs formula for force between two charges is the same as Newton's formula for gravity between two objects. The interesting part is that there is a particle that is responsible for charge, but gravity is just a curvature of space time. It is not the force and somehow you can use "same formula".

[@jan7356]

Finally! The Koide Formula. It would be so amazing if you could make a whole video about this anomaly and additional similar anomalies, for example there is also a remarkable one with respect to quark mixing angles, but I also think others. Those anomalies are highly significant as the formulas were found at a time when the measured precision of the constants that are part of the formula was much lower. But they still hold up. This makes the probability that the are just curve fit less than 1%.

[@AlejandroRivero]

The wikipedia page already mentions most of the known things, for the rest you can visit physicsforums long thread "what is new with Koide formula"

[@tomilixxx]

Another thing that comes to mind is the correlation of the zeros in the Riemann zeta function vs. the function describing the energy levels of the atom.

[@PrimordialOracleOfManyWorlds]

great video of the universal constants. you forgot the fine-structure constant, 1/137.

[@ludwitch1097]

That is what I thought.

[@SabineHossenfelder]

The fine-structure constant, contrary to what its name suggests, is not constant, it's energy-dependent. Never understood why people think there's something special about it.

[@PrimordialOracleOfManyWorlds]

@@SabineHossenfelder there is so much media content on 1/137 that it influences the masses. if you can prove that 1/137 is not a constant, please make a video about it. i always loved your insights.

[@thstroyur]

​@@PrimordialOracleOfManyWorldsWhat she means is that it's a 'running coupling', according to QED: 1/137 is roughly the value for low-energy experiments - but it increases with said energy. That's renormalization for you...

[@gingerestkitten]

@@thstroyur what’s sad is I have seen well respected high energy physicists (the likes of Brian Cox) and theorists (other Brians) prevaricate about how interesting it being almost 1/137 when they know better.. we shouldn’t really stand for this. I would welcome a video on this nonsense from Sabine but if you’re in need of immediate satisfaction then @acollierastro has a few choice rants (with worked problems :)

[@larryhaverkamp6031]

That's a good one, Sabine, that the chances of all this being a coincidence is exactly 1/137. Ha, ha! If the Universe has a sense of humor, it is laughing now!

[@timdavison1568]

Add all these coincidences together. Take away the number you first thought of. What you are left with is a research grant proposal.

[@yeroca]

I hadn't heard of any of these except for the vacuum decay issue. I learned that from Katie Mack's book "The End of Everything"

[@guest_informant]

In case you're interested there's a new podcast with Katie Mack and John Green, a sort of Beginner's Guide to the Universe.

[@yeroca]

@@guest_informant Interesting! Thanks for the tip, will check it out

[@andersjjensen]

PBS SpaceTime also did a good primer on it.

[@Thomas-gk42]

Sabine interviewed Astro-Katie in her book "Lost in Math". Thanks for the hint.

[@Random3.142]

The wobbly line hypothesis. If there's a wobbly line ~ anywhere in the equation then it's a coincidence.

[@ethericlimerick2992]

What if it contains something timey whymey? (Apologies / Bygones)

[@dimguy_yaslushayu]

Presenting physics as art is an inspired move. Thank you for sharing. The CC symbol looks like a barless A, a pair of walking legs or a spear tip in the negative space. In Pagan tradition this begins a love story between the Corner and the Line.

[@Kim_Miller]

I knew none of this stuff, but what I will remember is that Pringles make Einstein's head unstable.

[@StabilisingGlobalTemperature]

The sun and moon appear to have the same diameter. What is the chance of that?

[@philsharp758]

That is an interesting coincidence. As the Moon is moving away from the Earth total eclipses will be a thing of the past.

[@velisvideos6208]

Exactly, and we are here now. What does that imply?

[@heisag]

@@philsharp758 Aye, i guess that will make the future brigther.

[@philsharp758]

@@velisvideos6208 I would contend that a Cosmic Intelligence is involved with a sense of humour. In accord with our current understandimg of the formation of the Moon, millions of years ago the Moon was much closer to Earth. That in this present epoch with sentinent beings noting that the angle subtended by the Moon and Sun is identical is an act of Providence. And discovery of the Babel Fish will prove this beyond doubt.

[@TiagoCavalcanti-ji6hu]

@@velisvideos6208 Coincidence???

[@secondlook]

These are all so fascinating and insane and I have absolutely no skill to do anything useful with them

[@larryroyovitz7829]

I love when people say "almost" when talking about coincidences or conspiracies. 😎

[@billirwin3558]

When you put fertile numbers next to other fertile numbers, you get more numbers? Coincidence? I stubbed my toe on an old hard drive full of numbers this morning? Coincidence?

[@daveh7720]

"I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't _trust_ coincidences." -- Garak, _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_

[@Thomas-gk42]

😊

[@tabuleirocmd]

Cauliflower growth patterns adaptes to building construction as the Parthenon in Athens or the Gothic Cathedrals, create a powerfull uplifting athmosphere which shows that we are also sensitive to these universal laws, questioning therefore the chaos theory en vogue some years ago. Thanks for another great Video!

[@MrMikeIppo]

I thought you were going to be back to talk about the Anthropic principle when I read the title of the video. I am happy you did not. Awesome video S.Hossenfelder!

[@TheGhost152]

This just makes sense, this is clearly optimization of the engine used by the simulation we're living in. If it weren't for these optimizations our thinking and movement would have taken much more time!

[@alieninmybeverage]

I'm still just mad at statisticians for using the word "correlation," which should be most similar to "interdependent," instead of using "coincidence," which means occupying the same space/time and/or with accidental/incidental agreement.

[@DefaultFlame]

It's because they want to be paid, and correlation sounds a lot more important than coincidence, hence making statistician a job instead of just fancy numerology. Hence why mopping the floor is "surface engineering designed to minimize obstruction between travelling system (feet) and the traction interface (floor)."

[@michaelhorning6014]

Correlation means correlation. It doesn't imply, suggest, or hint at causation. So you're mad at them using correct language.

[@Lolwutdesu9000]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present not knowing the difference between correlation and causation.

[@IzudeDarkwolf]

​@michaelhorning6014 except it does it speaks to a shared causal factor/s despite the subjects not directly effecting one another.

[@paulomartins1008]

As elegant as what you said sounded the thing is that statistical objects do not occupy space-time, they are abstractions. To see this from a philosophical view point, consider that even mundane objects like marbles are very hard to define strictly ("can it be made of stone?", "does half a sphere suffice?", "is the sun a marble?"), so any potential object of which to derive statistics is already itself hard to define rigorously. Now, consider actions, which in language systems are verbs, and incidentally consider a verb that relates one or more objects (or subjects), and ponder the question of how rigorously you can define said verb in such a way that it describes unequivocally the relation between the aforementioned objects, that are themselves unambiguously defined ("what does it mean for two objects to collide?") Having said this much, it becomes clear that statistical objects described through quantified relations only appear natural because of our familiarity with mathematical abstraction itself, and "incidence" despite its practicality would miss the point, whereas "relation" having a particular meaning in statistics, logic, and algebra points to a clearer notion of abstraction away from the object of study.

[@lesmotley6839]

My dog's name was Jimmy jazz, coincidence?

[@thePronto]

"...just about..."; "...approximately..."; "...virtually the same as...". None of those descriptions seemed to work with my maths teacher...

[@yclept9]

Koide's formula, take the masses as areas and their square root as radiuses. The area of the three particles is 2/3 of the area if the radius were of the three particle radiuses lined up and added. Sounds like geometry. So they're not lined up, they're in some other configuration.

[@Taomantom]

Most excellent break down. One a note: in an infinite multi-verse universe there is a non-zero chance all factors will inevitably produce the right circumstances...if you believe in that sort of thing.

[@rawdez_]

we just happen to exist and we only can exist in a universe with these constants. also vacuum degradation from unstable higher energy levels could've been what we call "the big bang". so probably the Universe "evolved" into what we have now. hence all "coincidences" were inevitable to happen.

[@derickd6150]

Sure but there are a range of "right" circumstances if all you mean by "right" is that we exist to observe it. So why did we get this particular set of "right"? Why are we in the top right sliver of meta stable instead of the bottom left sliver of meta stable or just in the stable region? Believing in a multiverse doesn't remove all these questions. There is still stuff to ask

[@rawdez_]

@@derickd6150 particular set of "right" is just random and there's nothing behind that. no hidden meaning. no creator. and multiverse have nothing to do with that. >Why are we in the top right sliver of meta stable if it was any different physics would also be different and we wouldn't exist to ask silly questions))

[@bishopdredd5349]

Maybe like evolution, things evolved into these circumstances.

[@derickd6150]

@@rawdez_ you see you didn't even read what I said. These KZbin physics gurus. There's no reason to think that if we were in a different sliver of META STABLE we wouldn't exist to ask such questions. Maybe you're right that there are no reasons for such things... Or maybe they are indicative of better theories that result in cleaner pictures. I get the feeling you just REALLY want to say everything is random and you have all the answers. Case closed. Well it's not closed and it won't be a for a long time

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video.

[@RobinCrusoe1952]

Such complexity built upon just 10 numbers. Positive or negative. Real or imagined.

[@mikemondano3624]

Yes, they are all coincidences since a coincidence is _the fact, condition, or state of coinciding._ The question is whether they are random, causally connected, or accidental coincidences.

[@brothermine2292]

"Coincidence" has another definition, which is the one that's relevant in Sabine's context.

[@mikemondano3624]

@@brothermine2292 It always means two things coinciding.

[@sabinrawr]

The phrase is "just a coincidence", implying that there is no deeper relation. The phrase is often shortened in colloquy, given that of there were some causal or dependent relation, that relation would then be the fact to express because the coincident nature would be trivial and moot. For example, the value of τ is defined to be 2π, or τ=C/r as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius. Thus, the fact that τ/2=π may well coincide (it does), but colloquially it would not be referred to as a coincidence if the underlying definition is known.

[@axle.student]

There is a Physical as well as a Philosophical interpretation. It's the Philosophical interpretation that can become a little ambiguous :)

[@richardatkinson4710]

Or (Jung/Pauli synchronicity) acausally connected.

[@AnnNunnally]

Perhaps they could be solved by using the DaVinci code.

[@fibber2u]

Now you are talking about stuff I can understand.

[@ChaineYTXF]

Ouch.. I was hoping to never have to lay eyes on that book title ever again...

[@paperburn]

All three of my sisters think I am a blithering idiot ...Coincidence?

[@redargylesocks]

I love that there are still mysteries in physics. We might still know more. Bend your brains to these problems, physicists! Understand! Calculate! I believe in you!

[@lelouchvibrittania5172]

Another interesting coincidence is the fine structure constant. The deeper you go into the hyperfine levels of hydrogen, the powers of the fine structure constant pop up.

[@carlbrenninkmeijer8925]

Oh, this makes us sleepless. I like Plank's magic "rule" the most By the way, I also like numbers that have no units.

[@therealpbristow]

I can't stand unitless numbers. It seems like a great way to accidentally lose track of the meaning/dimensionality of the numbers you're working with, and thereby end up combining them in completely invalid ways... Which is what some of these "coincidences" seem to be, at least at first glance. But I'm a bear of very small brain... I need my metres-per-second and my kg-metres-per-(second)^2 and whatnot, to stop my spherical cows acquiring negative curvature. (Trust me, it's not pretty when that happens! =:o[ )

[@fkeyvan]

unitless numbers are harder to discover but they play a fundamental role. I think there could be more unitless numbers still to be discovered that could shine light on these coincidences.

[@michaelwhittierpearson]

Sorting, sifting, dreaming about the the coincidences to answer Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder's question about whether they point to a deeper meaning, and if so, which ones do . . . is a worthy topic for grad students . . . personal motives intensify the quest

[@davidconlee2196]

I knew all those coincidences. Knowing coincidences is one of my gifts.

[@velisvideos6208]

My wife's birthday is 1 May, Mayday, arguably the greatest celebration of Spring in our climate and also a national flag day. Coincidence? If so, a very lucky one since I have never yet forgotten her birthday. Consequently we are still married after 40 years which is pretty close to a parsec divided by the cosmological constant. Another coincidence?

[@danzigvssartre]

If you have a Jungian therapist, they will tell you this is a synchronicity. The universe is meaningful.

[@fuggles4159]

One coincidence I've noticed over the years, is that as I get older, the people of the the world get stupider.

[@jeremywilliams5107]

Simple statistics - plot the average maturity curve and the expected lifetime curve against age, and you'll also find a correlation with shoe size. No kidding.

[@waltsullivan8986]

We olds have already made most of the easy mistakes, so when we see youngs doing things we now know is stupid, the youngs look stupid, but they are just unexperienced.

[@antoniopena8101]

This is the Conjecture of Total Knowlege. It says that the Total Knowledge in the planet is constant, but population increases.

[@SiqueScarface]

My take on this is: With less and less effort to tell something to the whole world, the signal-noise-ratio is ever decreasing, and we are approaching 1, when there is no difference anymore between signal and noise.

[@stefaniasmanio5857]

Because the smart-iness is constant… and people grow up constantly…

[@paxdriver]

I'd love to see a video on each going through the different ways we've tried to reconcile these coincidences but failed. Ideas of why these occur would be a great way to encourage thought and developing/testing hypotheses

[@duncanedwards8258]

Another weird thing is that if I bang the feeding-plates together loudly, both my cats come-in for their dinner. Coincidence? Seriously- one of my fave videos of yours thankyou :)

[@Vondoodle]

Phew - that chart

[@MitchellPorter2025]

If I had the means, I'd make a video series response to this, discussing each coincidence in turn. There's so much interesting fundamental physics involved, and I'd also discuss the explanations that have been proposed over the years, and whether there are any physical arguments for or against pure coincidence in each case.

[@CTCTraining1]

I was amazed at the vacuum longevity figure... I deduce it wasn’t produced by Dyson.

[@guest_informant]

This sounds a lot like the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy 🙂 "Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were both presidents of the United States, elected 100 years apart. Both were shot and killed by assassins who were known by three names with 15 letters, John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, and neither killer would make it to trial. Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, and Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. They were both killed on a Friday while sitting next to their wives, Lincoln in the Ford Theater, Kennedy in a Lincoln made by Ford. Both men were succeeded by a man named Johnson - Andrew for Lincoln and Lyndon for Kennedy. Andrew was born in 1808. Lyndon in 1908. What are the odds...." (Courtesy: You Are Not So Smart)

[@SylveonSimp]

Praise the Lord! This must be a sign!

[@martifingers]

It seems Lincoln did not have a secretary called Kennedy. Lincoln did not die on the Friday.

[@guest_informant]

@@martifingers Buzz Killington!

[@7thangelad586]

Math is so tidy.

[@patricialauriello3805]

Now I need a chilled bottle of wine and a glass after listening to this. A coincidence? Good. Cheers!

[@dominiquetopfer2237]

Not to mention the cosmological secrets you can infer by measuring the constituents of a dutch bike...

[@haudace]

This video feels a lot like: "Oh hey, look at this pond. It's wet and circular. It also takes on the exact shape of the hole. Coincidence?"

[@Thomas-gk42]

It depends, Koide´s formulare seems to be more than that, these three particles are different flavors of the same lepton.

[@derickd6150]

This is a little disingenuous and you are just implying that OF COURSE these things would be so. But the stuff she mentions really is at the edge of human knowledge and we don't know what the range of "of course" is. You might say, well the vacuum couldn't be unstable or we wouldn't be here, to which I say maybe, but there are a lot of values it could have as shown in the stability plot. Why did we get the exact one we did? Is there even a reason? These are not trivial questions and they are worth asking

[@Masonova1]

Some of the observations clearly have less implications or are "easier coincidences" than others, but IMO many formal relationships in advanced physics started out as (approximately) spurious numerology about repeatable observations, until we gather more hypotheses for the phenomena. It's easy to relate fluid filling its container to an intuitive understanding of fluids, and _of course_ water would do that, but as soon as one tries to formalize _why_ water conforms to the shape of the pond, we have to engage with some very convoluted dynamics. For that matter, we don't even fully understand the motion of viscous fluids in 3 dimensions, and the Clay Math Institute will throw a million dollars at you if you can close that gap.

[@haudace]

@@derickd6150 sometimes we don't even know if a question is indeed trivial or not.. For instance, why did I choose to reply to your message now instead of 5 minutes ago? Is there some uniqueness to this exact time I picked?

[@O_Lee69]

I think the reason is more like this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/roeviHiVd6toocUsi=FVaMd_9CySve2Msg

[@dr_shrinker]

Also, we are closer to the size of the observable universe (10 to +24 meters ), than we are to the Planck Length (10 to -36 meters), by order of magnitude. I love videos like this. Thank you Miss Sabine for informing the uninformed! 😊

[@patpowers9210]

That Planck guy has a lot to answer for!

[@dancingdog2790]

There's plenty of room at the bottom!

[@smorcrux426]

The reciprocal of the hubble constant is very close to the age of the universe: this makes sense if you assume that all galaxies have been moving away from us at a constant speed ever since the big bang, but in reality the hubble constant changed wildly with time and this is purely a coincidence.

[@davidford694]

Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest explanation should always take priority over the more complex. In this case the simplest explanation is obvious. The universe was designed.

[@seanshubin2075]

The equations are just selection bias, just keep searching for a pattern and you will necessarily find one whether there is a relationship or not. That we find ourselves in a universe seemingly fine tuned for us is easily explained by the mathematical universe hypothesis. That is, all mathematically possible realities exist in a causally disconnected way, so the anthropic principle guarantees we will find ourselves in that possibility space that supports beings capable of making that observation. The universe being metastable rather than stable or unstable is actually the most probable way to get to any sufficiently complicated state for life. Too stable and there is no way to progress towards life. Too unstable and life doesn’t have time to form.

[@thstroyur]

Nope - that'd be survivor bias, plus how science works (the constants of nature are what they are because anything else wouldn't agree with experiment). That doesn't mean there is no fine-tuning - which is manifested in, e.g., all the Goldilocks zones required for life to exist on this planet. Coincidence? Hardly - but anything it takes to dismiss theism, I suppose...

[@seanshubin2075]

I never dismissed theism, but I don’t see how theism explains anything meaningful about reality itself. You just move the problem one level out. How is it that reality is fine tuned to support the existence of whatever deity/deity’s required to fine tune the rest?

[@thstroyur]

@@seanshubin2075 Define 'God' first; AFAIK, the word means, 'that which grounds reality'. Most people fail already in not understanding that much (cf. the Skydaddy nonsense). Next question: once we accept God as defined as extant - what are the divine attributes? Is (He) intelligent? How can we tell? Would an otherwise improbable or 'fine-tuned' arrangement of things in the Universe suggest design? If I had a box of air, and all the air is clumped in one corner - is that due to random chance, or because someone designed a pumping system to achieve that?

[@seanshubin2075]

You claimed I dismissed theism, which I did not. Then you gave me a pan-theist rather than theist definition of god. I have no interest in advising what god or gods people should have faith in. That is about their own personal search for meaning, belonging, community, morality, and religion. I don’t really care one way or the other about theism, the coincidences can be explained regardless.

[@thstroyur]

@@seanshubin2075 First, I never said _you_ dismissed theism; second, I never said anything about 'pantheism' (which is just one form of theism) - and, if you think the 'correct' definition is something else, you're free to provide it; finally, I don't care about whatever people believe in or not, I care about what's real - and in spite of claiming not to dismiss theism, casually stating you can always find other explanations amounts to just that - that you already dismissed it out-of-hand, and arbitrarily removed God's existence from the realm of objective inquiry, as if everybody agreed with that premise TBW. So much for all that.

[@mikemarkowski7609]

Multiplying, dividing and otherwise manipulating data to get results that are "about", "approximately" and so on does not denote coincidence. If two or more seemingly unrelated raw data points were EXACTLY the same then coincidence.

[@KingCobbones]

I agree. Taking the square root of a number or raising it to the fifth power, then pointing out a similar result, isn't really a coincidence.

[@EinsteinsHair]

But if it were exactly the same to an infinite number of decimal places, then probably NOT a coincidence. There is some hidden reason.

[@gingerestkitten]

Someone definitely needs to explain why an integer ratio of one constant to one constant square rooted would be so exciting in the first place, for sure. Who gives a toss if it’s 3 times bigger. What’s the significance of the 3? What’s the significance if it WAS exactly 3?

[@gingerestkitten]

@@EinsteinsHair no, there isn’t. At times where you have a constant you’re trying to measure and refine and you’re out by the first decimal place and over 50 years you finally get a 5-sigma result, sure - you can look for hidden meanings to attempt to refine the result. These aren’t those numbers they’re VERY well measured. They’re not integer ratios, and they’ll never be integer ratios.