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Comment by xyzal | Hacker News Reader

Articles like these make me want to stop doing everything and isolate in the basement for several months to study physics. Then I realize I have a family to feed and elderly parents to take care for.

Sigh, so many beautiful mysteries in the world, and only one life.

edit: A friend told me germans have the word "Sehnsucht" to describe such a feeling. So I guess it might be somewhat universal.

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Same, but I imagine doing it in a country house with a table looking out into a lovely garden, and a mountain path nearby for long walks thinking about things.

I'm sure there's a catchy phrase for that kind of thing, intellectual cottagecore maybe?

Wanderlust

I think that's called "dark academia".

It was beautiful and unexpected that this was not a "but"-one-up or "but"-and-here-is-why-you-are-wrong.

I don't know if it's any consolation, but a few months are not nearly enough to understand this on a meaningful level. I spent almost a decade studying physics, still feel like I don't really understand it and could barely wait to get out at the end.

> I spent almost a decade studying physics, still feel like I don't really understand it

This is the part that’s actually consoling.

I have kind of done that for last few months. Chat GPT helped immensely with that. I recently even asked if it's worth it to go back to academia. Still exploring that.

A few things that I recently understood or read about.

- Fermi Paradox - with help of chatgpt https://imgur.com/a/LuVV6iK

- How the age of universe was calculated.

- Redshift

- How age of solar system was calculated. I previously thought just like the universe is expanding, so is solar system. Turns out that is not the case. The distances have been more or less fixed. (i thought sun would be losing some mass, weakening gravitation for that to happen, nothing like that).

- Exo-planets.

- a lot of nuclear physics.

- Parallel universe theory according to quantum mechanics.

- gravitational waves (how to measure ripples in spacetime https://www.wired.co.uk/article/catching-cosmic-rays-virgo-i...)

- Theories around nuclear fusion and how ML, High Temp super conductivity and more precise chips are making advances possible.

And so on.

Will add one special mention to this: https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-new-calcula... (this universe exists because it has the highest entropy is a layman summary of the article)

Chances are significant that some explanations received are just not true as chatgpt does that too, unfortunately.

Not all of it is from chatgpt. It's a good starting point, and essentially tells me what to google and how to read further. When I get something, I anyway want to read more so would google around the topic. The ability to ask a cross question is what makes learning easier. If the answer is not true, i will end up finding that out anyway from google or other science publications.

Interesting approach. Aren't you worried that chatgpt is feeding you bullshit without you noticing? I'd imagine chatgpt read as much science fiction content as science one, so there's no way to know if it tells the truth or hallucinations. How do you deal with that?

It's a good starting point. It may get some things wrong, but that's where my ability to research and truth seeking lies. I usually google more anyway because i want to go deeper than what chatgpt offers. I will eventually get to the truth. But the basic questions are well answered. I once asked it to explain the whole "Field has momentum" theory in a way a Feynman lecture would. It did it surprisingly well. I had some background so I kept asking more questions, and it was alright. Augments the curiosity, and make the topic seem simpler. Tools I use are: Google, science publications, and archive to see if there is text around it.

One small thing, the idea that chatgpt will feed bullshit is possible, so you have to be a bit skeptic and check the info, but it gets things right most of the times. Fun fact: I confused chatgpt about static electricity ie "Why does my hair get a static charge by rubbing a balloon?" It kept saying positive charge or negative charge, with transfer of electrons. Truth is, it's still poorly understood. [1] this paper highlights the conundrum.

For a beginner in college level physics, chatgpt is an excellent resource for understanding concepts.

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360674587_Derivatio...

Anton Petrov regularly covers topics like these and encourages sharing with people interested in space and sciences.

https://youtube.com/@whatdamath

Love it. Bookmarked. Thanks for sharing.

Seems like https://www.edx.org/xseries/astrophysics?index=product&query... would be of interest to you.

For me, it's been learning about the topic of last year's nobel prize in physics. Shedding light on Einstein's famous "God does not play dice" through, literally college algebra and a somewhat mundane experimental setup. The only thing stopping people from doing it sooner was obscurity and a comfortable attitude towards to status quo!

Now I'm convinced we can understand really fundamental things about our reality, and that is so so interesting.

I'm dreaming of going back, getting a math master's, then a physics PhD ... Maybe

although there is a german word for everything, "Sehnsucht" just means "desire"

only one life? don't be so sure about it

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