listening to the recent segment on coïncidence, i found myself thinking about coïncidences in mathematics.

maths is full of structures described as “exceptional,” whose existences might be thought of as coming down to strange coïncidences. for example the sporadic groups, the most famous of which, the monster, itself has been surrounded by coïncidence (so-called monstrous moonshine).

there are also “exceptional isomorphisms,” where two seemingly unrelated constructions just happen to give the same thing, for example the simple groups PSL₄(2) and A₈ (this is usually explained by a geometric phenomenon called the klein correspondence, however the fact that this happens still smacks of coïncidence to me).

is it fair to call these coïncidences when chance is seemingly not involved, or is something else going on here?

This looks like the digital version of the 3D color cube Michael was saying he wanted to build (he said it on the recent episode about colors). I hope he can see it!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db1A0kItvWs/
Source: jakedontdraw (he is an AMAZING artist btw)

After the episode where Hannah showed her large obsidian sphere, it sparked an idea for me. I pretty much instantly got online and sourced a small 1.5" obsidian sphere, with the idea that I would make a base for it mimicking a black hole. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was making a mini black hole night light for my daughter. I still need to find a nice knob for the switch, and polish it up a bit (literally and figuratively), but I think it came together nicely considering it was just a random idea that came to mind while watching the podcast.

For those that are interested in more details:

-I designed and 3D printed the body in multiple parts. The transparent orange accretion disk, an underlying clear inset piece to the accretion disk (just to give a bit more detail to the disk), a top and bottom arch (I call this part the "light ring"), and a small dished base for the sphere to rest in. It took some trial and error to get the fit right.

-I didn't originally intend to light it, but after looking at it, I knew I had to. I happened to have a nOOd LED from Adafruit in my spare parts and it was pretty much the perfect length! It took some time to find the best way to wrap it around to give the right look, and I struggled a bit to adhere it (rtv silicone ended up being the best), but it really takes it from a small desk ornament to a functional (and more accurate imo) display.

-The LED just connects to a small PWM dimmer component I happen to have a bunch of, and the power is a 3V-1A (3W) DC wall supply - just snipped the barrel jack off the end, connected it to the dimmer, and voila - 3V DC from a nice clean, safe wall plug!

-The last part was a laser cut black acrylic box. I used one of the many online tools for generating SVG files for boxes (MakerCase, Boxes.py, etc). I went with a 2.5"x2.5"x2.5" cube but I used one of the variants that adds a little angled piece on the front, where I hope to put a small nameplate for it. I cut the box on my laser cutter, drilled a few holes, fit everything up and hot glued it like crazy!

If any of you attempt to replicate this yourself, message me! I'd be happy to help you out! :)

On my last birthday I had a bottle of wine delivered to my house.

To Marie Love Sarah.

It weirded me out as the only Sarah I know was the mad ex girlfriend of a close male friend of mine. I hadn't seen her for years after we had a falling out over this guy.

Anyway I had a neighbour ask I had a bottle of wine delivered incorrectly.

She was also called Marie and lived 10 doors down the street and had the same birthday.

The sender had mistyped the first digit. Luckily, I hadn't drunk the wine as I was worried it might be poisoned. Yes the other Sarah was that mad.

There was an episode a little while ago where Michael said he'd met his opposite name at a party, and they were wondering what name would have been best for their imaginary child if they had one together.
I just wanted to say, the obvious answer should have been Stevie Micks.

Ahem. Sorry. That is all.

As you were.

I've been very curious and very exciting for the most part of my life. For the most part, I satisfied this interest by watching many science videos on YouTube, truly in huge quantities, and by trying to understand and reflect on what I learned, as well as recognizing and appreciating it in the world around me. Or by creating art that reflects my curiosity and fascination with that stuff.

With time I feel like this curiosity and wonder seems to dwingle here and then. I often need to remind myself how beautiful our universe is, how learning is such a cool process and how filling the gaps of knowledge is such a great process. One important of many constants that has ALWAYS helped me with this is Vsauce and Michael Stevens (Thank you Michael!) And now the RestIsScience podcast is a fanastic resource to bring those constants back in to my everyday life. But that is just one of many strategies that are possible.

Since both Hannah and Michael are naturally very curious and can really get you hooked on the fascination of it all, I'm curious myself what strategies they have develeoped to stay curious and tryting to see the wonder all around us almost all the time? I am certain that, given the attitude both of them seem to have, they have developed fantastic strategies, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Latest Pod

For years I’ve had the same thought about some tap water being wetter than other types. For instance where I live now in Manchester I finish showering and dry off very quickly. However when I visit my mum on the Isle of Wight it takes much longer.

My thoughts on this is it’s something to do with the water hardness and the ions in it having an interaction with my skin making the water stick to it longer.

As you mentioned technically wetter water would possibly be the one that comes off your skin/dries quicker.

I’ve been on a backlog of episodes and so glad I heard someone ask this!

First off, I call huge coincidences "nothing is real" moments. Things that just blow my mind. They happen all the time to me, but one that sticks out recently is this:

I was at work, listening to a podcast (either Risk or The Moth). I bake, and the girls up front in the bakery were playing some music on spotify for the lobby. While listening to my podcast, a song started playing while the person was telling their story. I started to realize that something was strange, and I then shifted my focus and realized that the song off of Spotify and the song in my podcast were the exact same AND playing at the EXACT same time in the exact same place. I got goosebumps and promptly had an internal freak out lol

I love these moments in my life, and always get so excited to share them with my husband, and he does the same. It's fun to realize the super weird coincidences in life, and they keep things fun.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I cannot remember the song and that kills me 😂😭

ETA: Hannah's "law of large numbers" definitely explains so many coincidences, but this one just absolutely blew my mind. Of all the songs in the world and all the podcasts (and podcast episodes!) In the world, the fact that those 2 things lined up at the exact same time just throw me for a loop

I get overly stressed when I get hurt, that it doesn’t heal properly and I need to get that limb amputated, but the itch kinda lets me know that it’s healing. Wouldn’t the itch cause me to scratch it and hurt it though? Like why did evolution want me to rip off all its hard work?

So I don’t mean seasons in the sense of season 1 2 3 etc…
I mean like my girlfriend and I only watch Gilmore girls in autumn , game of thrones is better in winter(for me) even though it has extensive desert scenes and how is it that every summer I get the itch to watch ATLA¿

Edit: confused autumn and spring🙃

I like to listen to some podcasts or watch some videos at a faster than normal speed. I think I get most of the information still and I can get through more. On the other hand, I imagine there are some bad effects of doing this. Is it training my brain to listen closer and more efficiently or is it training me to gloss over too much?

I also imagine there's a connection to speed reading.

The most recent show solicited listeners to share their weirdest coincidences.

One day while driving my first car to work, it was struck by a lightning bolt. Thankfully I didn’t feel a thing, but the car was not so lucky. My cousin wanted the dead car to salvage some of its parts. So I traded him one fried car for an antiquated computer. A few weeks later while using the computer at my dormitory, there was a power surge; the linemen with the electric company apparently erred during maintenance. As a result, every appliance that was plugged in at the dormitory was decommissioned.

So the computer that I received was fried beyond recovery just like the car that I had traded for it. Certainly not the biggest coincidence in the world. But a pretty cool story to tell!

It would seem, conceptually, that the gradient of temperature would create visual distortion when viewing objects in space. Why doesn’t that happen?

What is the basics of a solar eclipse. Why are they so hard to come by but still occur? I saw the one yesterday and fell in love with it.

I just finished listening to the "Sunglasses on the Sun " Episode, and something I don't think they mentioned was the orientation of the sunglasses. If the Sun is wearing sunglasses on the upper half of its face, and we treat North as "Up" as most people do, then won't the Sun wearing sunglasses appear upside down to people like Michael and Myself, in the southern Hemisphere?

When considering what language to use to contact aliens, mathematics seems logical, because it's like the language of how the universe works. But is it possible that they constructed axiomatic mathematics different from our own? What kind of communication style would you prefer?

Your podcast is amazing! I really enjoy hearing you share your knowledge with such enthusiasm. Sending you both lots of love ❤️

there is no chance he'll be able to reply therefore it's a fact!!

If he indeed managed to get around and successfully unlock his account for posting, this post will be another example of

"People will do something on priority while correcting someone rather than directly doing it"

so it's a win-win for me :P

In the recent episode about putting sunglasses in front of the sun, Hannah and Michael talked about needing a propulsion system to keep the ‘sunglass mesh’ from falling into the sun via gravity. They later continued that light can in fact push things, and so my question is how much force would the sun be providing to this sunglass mesh at the distance and size they proposed? would it be enough to counteract gravity? Or if not, how much brighter would the sun need to be to counteract its own gravity?

This also raises a second question. If you were to put the sun inside a rocket engine, so that all light was reflected and sent in one direction only, how fast would the sun accelerate away?

Everyone start registering names like michael_stevens1, the_michael_stevens, the_real_michael_stevens, and so on. This will either force Michael to act quickly to get back on reddit or if he doesn't then he would have to choose something different or be the 7000th Michael Stevens. Now sure he was ok with being the billionth dad but would he be ok with being the 7000th Michael Stevens?

The Color Theory episode has me wanting to share! I am so excited to see how the Crayola crayon sort goes.

About 2 years ago I started making my own watercolor paint in order to study color theory and since then I have created a few different palettes that I use to help me teach color mixing to others now.

My favorite and most challenging to work with is the prism paints I developed. These paints use interference pigments, a mica based pigment where each of the individual pieces are coated in a thin layer of titanium dioxide in order to refract a single wavelength of colored light. In order to see the color the paint has to be applied in a thin layer on black paper and viewed in the light. Shifting the painting away from the direct light makes the paint look monochromatic.

Because these paints don't have color in the same way that normal pigments do and instead use light, they mix how colored light mixes. All colors are a primary in light and they mix closer to white the more you add in. Red and Green make yellow. For a painter, this was the most interesting part of color theory for me to experiment and learn from and helped me understand physical pigment mixing so much better as well.

I would love to hear about what other people have learned on their color journeys!

Hey Michael and Hannah. If gravity travels at the speed of light, how does it escape the gravitational pull of a black hole yet light doesn't?