yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

We Explain the Seen in Terms of the Unseen


2m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Now people might object at this point and go, "How dare you invoke in science things that cannot be seen, things that cannot be observed? This is completely antagonistic towards the scientific method!"

Surely, and I'll say to anyone who's thinking that right now, almost everything of interest that you know about science is about the unobserved. Let's consider dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are unobserved. You say, "Oh hold on, I've been to the museum, I've seen a dinosaur!"

Now you have seen a fossil, and a fossil isn't even a bone. It's an ossified bone; it has been metamorphosed into rock. So no one has ever seen a dinosaur. We have seen things that look like dinosaurs and interpreted them to be huge, reptilian, bird-like creatures. When we assemble their skeletons, we make up a story about what this thing was that walked the Earth tens or hundreds of millions of years ago.

In the same way, no one has ever seen the core of the sun, and no one will ever observe the core of the sun. But we know about stellar fusion. We know that hydrogen nuclei are being crushed together there to form helium, and in the process, producing heat.

We don't see the big bang. We don't see the movement of continents. Almost everything of interest in science we do not observe. Even many of the things that we say we have seen, we've actually just seen instruments detect those things. So we're watching the effects through instruments and then theorizing that there are other universes out there, where the photons are interacting with the photons that we can see.

More Articles

View All
Introducing Constitution 101 from Khan Academy and the National Constitution Center
Introducing Constitution 101: The National Constitution Center and KH Academy are teaming up to offer students a free online course on the US Constitution. Led by conversations hosted by Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Cente…
Hunting Caribou | Life Below Zero
We had a really tough year this year. The Yukon River is kind of our life blood here, and we no longer have it as an option for getting food. So we’re relying on getting moose, bears, and caribou. We had no luck getting the moose this year. The caribou ha…
Lasting Lessons from Charlie Munger.
Charlie Munga: businessman, investor, mathematician, meteorologist, developer, lawyer, husband, father, and philanthropist. But most importantly, Charlie was a thinker. As much as he’s known for his investment track record and decades-long partnership wit…
Investigating Rock Carvings | Atlantis Rising
Author George’s Diaz Montek Sano has been researching this area for years, and he’s convinced that some Atlantan refugees fled inland and built shrines to memorialize the lost city. Deciphering the shrine would help Giorgos prove his theory. “No sir, a r…
Investments and retirement unit overview | Teacher Resources | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy
Hello teachers! Welcome to the unit on investments and retirement. As always, I encourage you to go through the unit yourself. If you have limited time, at least go through the exercises and the unit test to refresh both your own understanding of this mat…
Pop Goes the Beetle | Primal Survivor
Dehydration is affecting my coordination. I should drink, but there’s a problem with my remaining water. This water in this bag has been here so long, and it’s been so hot; it just tastes so rancid. I’m thirsty, but it’s almost undrinkable. Drinking bad w…