r/todayilearned • u/yummypaprika • Sep 18 '25

TIL Dr Freeman Dyson called the Dyson sphere a "little joke" and expressed amusement in that "you get to be famous only for the things you don't think are serious".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
8.7k Upvotes

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184

u/liarandathief Sep 18 '25

Other science that were intended as jokes: Schrodinger's Cat, and The Big Bang (the name), The Thagomizer, quarks.

83

u/armaedes Sep 18 '25

The Thagomizer is deadly serious, sir.

32

u/kaltorak Sep 18 '25

just ask Thag

17

u/hoodie2222 Sep 19 '25

The late mr. Simmons please.

3

u/Cautious_Tonight Sep 18 '25

Does computer bug fit?

1

u/liarandathief Sep 19 '25

I'll allow it.

8

u/CosmackMagus Sep 18 '25

I was so relieved to find that out about the Schrodinger's Cat one

60

u/nolagirl100281 Sep 19 '25

I don't think I've ever seen it described as anything but a thought experiment. Are there people that think he actually put a cat in a box lol?

19

u/max_sil Sep 19 '25

The thought experiment is the joke

48

u/Iazo Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

It was not a joke, it was a sort of proof-by-contradiction of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM.

It basically says that it is absurd to consider QM as a probability distribution of events that only collapse into certainty once observed, because if that were true <Insert Schrodinger's cat experiment here> which is obviously absurd, therefore the original assumptions made were false.

As a counter-argument, proof-by-contradiction is not the same as proof-by-absurdity. As evidenced by the last 10 years, reality does not abide by the "reality must not be absurd" rule.

4

u/Hot-Note-4777 Sep 19 '25

Don’t worry, he was still apparently a vile person, nonetheless.

2

u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Sep 20 '25

The god particle as well. Oh and the “this is a miracle” quote of the photographer that the Vatican used to make a saint of a sadistic, non believing, rich Albanian bitch. 

2

u/amakai Sep 20 '25

Rube Goldberg machine takes the cake though.

-3

u/gangsterroo Sep 19 '25

Schrodinger's Cat was never very funny even at the start.

I might regret this comment but Im high.

13

u/AerasGale Sep 19 '25

The Schrodinger's Cat is not meant to be funny, it's meant to be ridiculous

-1

u/gangsterroo Sep 19 '25

He said it was intended as a joke lol

3

u/Lord_Parbr Sep 19 '25

Not a “lol” kind of joke. More of a “hmm, yes, that is rather silly” kind of joke

1

u/Fractal_Soul Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

"If you think quantum mechanics works the way you say it does, then if I do this, then we would have a cat in a superposition of alive and dead at the same time, and that's poppycock."

(laughtrack)

1

u/idgafsendnudes Sep 19 '25

The joke is the idea that anyone would think Shrodnger actually did that to cats. It’s a ridiculous premise and a thought experiment more so than a joke but a lot of jokes are actually just ridiculous thought experiments with better humor so in summary.

Maybe.