light sails

Veritasium explains why the one-way speed of light has never been measured, only the round-trip speed, since measuring it requires synchronized clocks that assume the answer. It explores the implications for relativity.

Technology Connections examines why light bulbs have the lifespans they do, including the real history of the Phoebus cartel. He shows that bulb life trades off against brightness and efficiency rather than being simple planned obsolescence.

A PBS clip in which Richard Feynman explains the strange nature of light and electromagnetic radiation. He conveys how little of it we actually see and how radio waves are present everywhere.

Technology Connections explains why American cars all had the same standardized sealed-beam headlights until 1957. It covers the regulations behind the design and the effect on night visibility.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why she thinks faster-than-light travel may not be ruled out. She argues that the standard objections from special relativity are inconclusive.

An 8-minute explainer on the Lightning Network and how it relates to Segwit, Bitcoin and Litecoin. It covers how off-chain payment channels route payments to scale blockchain transactions.

Technology Connections complains about the harsh, overly blue color of modern LED Christmas lights and tries more fixes for them. It follows earlier videos by the same creator on holiday lighting.

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

Professor Mike Merrifield of Nottingham explains in a mostly uncut conversation why light travels slower in glass. He treats light as a wave and describes how the material's electrons produce secondary waves that combine to slow it.

PBS Space Time argues that the speed of light is better understood as the speed of causality, the universal limit on how fast cause and effect propagate. Light travels at that speed because it is massless, but the limit itself is a property of spacetime.

3Blue1Brown visualizes Feynman's lecture on the refractive index, explaining why light appears to slow down in glass and why the effect depends on color. It builds the idea from waves produced by oscillating charges in the material.

Fermilab's Don Lincoln explains why light travels slower in water and glass. He knocks down common wrong explanations such as absorption and re-emission, then gives the wave-mechanics reason tied to refractive index.

ScienceClic explains why nothing can go faster than light by treating motion through space and time together, so everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. It uses animated visuals to cover relativity basics in 12 minutes.

Half as Interesting explains why airlines flew empty 'ghost flights' out of Heathrow to keep their landing slots under use-it-or-lose-it rules.

A BBC Earth clip from Super Powered Owls in which the team uses sensitive sound equipment to compare owl flight with other birds. It shows why owls fly almost silently.

Not Just Bikes explains how Dutch traffic lights use early detection, transit priority and conflict-free design to cut waiting. The aim is to move as many people as possible rather than as many cars.

A Technology Connections video weighing LED streetlights against high pressure sodium lamps, covering efficiency, color, cost and light pollution. It is a follow-up to his earlier explanation of why street lights are orange.

Tom Scott investigates moire-effect beacons, called Inogon leading marks, a Swedish invention from the 1980s that shows different patterns depending on the viewer's position. He visits one used to mark an undersea cable and tracks down its history.

Technology Connections explains how RGB light and color work, from hue and saturation to color vision and how objects appear under different lighting. It uses a studio setup with colored lights to demonstrate the effects.

PBS Space Time explains the proposal to use the Sun's gravity as a giant lens, sending a train of small light-sail spacecraft to the focal point roughly 550 AU out. It covers how such a telescope could image exoplanets in surprising detail and the engineering challenges involved.

3Blue1Brown, in collaboration with minutephysics, introduces the math of superposition and quantum states using polarized light. It builds up the quantum behavior of photons as a simple counting and probability problem.

Asianometry explains the EUV light source inside ASML's lithography machines, where lasers hit falling tin droplets twice to produce 13.5 nm light. It walks through the engineering of the droplet generator, the pre-pulse and main laser, and the plasma that results.

Not Just Bikes explains how SUVs and light trucks have grown in size and share of US sales, and why that is dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and city life. He covers the regulatory loopholes, such as fuel economy rules and the chicken tax, that favored them.

Wendover Productions explains why Boeing's efficient 787 beat Airbus's giant A380, contrasting hub-and-spoke with point-to-point routes. It covers the economics of long-haul flights.

Veritasium explores planned obsolescence, from the Phoebus lightbulb cartel to printers and phones. It explains how companies deliberately shortened product lifetimes and why products aren't better.

Musician and audio engineer Benn Jordan tries Dolby Atmos as a consumer, covering the theory of immersive audio, its business model, and home theater and headphone listening. He concludes it often falls short of the pitch.

PBS Space Time explains what happens as you approach and cross a black hole's event horizon, using Penrose diagrams and light cones as the tool for understanding spacetime there.

Astrophysicist David Kipping presents the halo drive, a proposed way to propel a starship to a good fraction of light speed by gaining energy from a black hole. The video is based on his peer-reviewed paper and explains why energy is the main obstacle to interstellar flight.

PBS Space Time examines the interstellar object 'Oumuamua and the popular theories about it, including the light-sail hypothesis. It argues that a natural rock is the likeliest explanation.

AVweb's Paul Bertorelli explains why general aviation has failed to replace leaded avgas, blaming industry inertia, bureaucratic delay and an exemption that removes the incentive. This is part one of two.

SuperfastMatt looks at how the Tesla Model S retracting door handles were redesigned over time, from many parts to a motor plus sensor, with a focus on engineering and reliability.

AVweb's Paul Bertorelli explains in part two of a series why general aviation has not replaced leaded avgas. He covers industry inertia, bureaucratic delays and the exemption that lets the industry keep using lead.

Huygens Optics shows how DIY photon sieves shape a laser's wave front, explaining how they differ from zone plates and how aperture count affects the focal point, with time-resolved visualizations of the diffraction.

Huygens Optics explores the idea that space is a non-linear elastic medium, and uses simulations to show how wave energy might be confined locally into particle-like objects. It touches on inertia, the Schwinger limit and the vacuum as a medium.

A Veritasium video that follows the principle of least action from Bernoulli and Newton to quantum mechanics, asking whether light takes all possible paths at once. It includes experiments showing quantum waves.

PBS Space Time explains how spacetime geometry and light cones determine the order of events and what can cause what. It visualizes causality in special relativity.

A PBS Space Time episode explaining why faster-than-light travel is equivalent to travelling back in time, using relativity and Minkowski diagrams for different observers.

Technology Connections explains why North American tail light rules, which allow red turn signals and flashing brake lights, make signals ambiguous. He argues for amber signals and cites studies showing a safety benefit.

CGP Grey explains the mess of Daylight Saving Time, including its dubious energy savings and the odd cases like Arizona that opt out. It is a short, simple explainer.

Nature video showing MIT researchers flying the first plane with no moving parts, powered by an ion drive that creates an ionic wind from high-powered electrodes. The 5m-wide craft flies across a sports hall.