Rational Thinker – Details, episodes & analysis

For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier discovered a strange anomaly regarding mercury’s orbit. This led to a problem in Newton's reality that didn't have an answer until Albert Einstein proposed General Relativity in 1915. Einstein accurately modeled Mercury's orbit with GR, but it wasn't enough for his theory to be accepted as fact. He needed to predict a testable anomaly that had been previously unobserved, and one of his predictions was light bending around the Sun. In 1919, that prediction was put to the test, and what was found would make Einstein a worldwide celebrity practically overnight. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Absolute zero is the theoretical limit to how cold temperature can reach. The quest to calculate the value of it started in the 1700s, but wasn't accurately done so until the mid 1800s by British physicist William Thomson. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The first liquefaction of helium in 1908 by Dutch experimental physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was revolutionary. For the first time, scientists could push the boundaries of extremely low temperatures and see what happens to materials. 3 years after that feat, Onnes wanted to test something new: what happens to a metals electrical resistance as you reach those critical temperatures? 3 theories existed before Onnes tackled the problem, one by Lord Kelvin, one by James Dewar, and one by Augustus Matthiessen. However, when it came time to experiment, he collected data that matched none of the 3 existing theories. His discovery shocked the world of physics and introduced an entirely new concept to the community. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The gravitational constant, or at least what it represents, is a fundamental part of our universe. It represents the strength of gravity and, to our knowledge, remains unchanged throughout space and time. But how did our knowledge of this come about? It all started with the Principia, but Newton did not introduce the constant G. This video takes you through the historical process of discovering G and integrating it into the science landscape. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered a new type of radiation. It was invisible and penetrating to some materials, but not others. He called the radiation "X-rays," and the phenomenon took over the science world. The very next year, a French physicist named Antoine Henri Becquerel, while studying these rays and trying to link them to phosphorescence, accidentally stumbled upon a new phenomenon that would ultimately shape the following century. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the late 19th century, cathode rays were the dominant topic of discussion in the world of physics. Scientists all over the globe were debating over what the nature of those rays were and what that implied for our reality. In 1895, a German physicist by the name of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen joined this debate, but in his experiments, found something else entirely... something that would change the world forever. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The 1920s were an era of intense discovery and progress in the world of physics. Concepts such as matrix mechanics, the Schrödinger model of the atom, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and more dominated this era of progress. All of these concepts had a particular trait in common with one another: they showed that probability was the driving force behind reality. Many physicists, most notably among them, Albert Einstein, were not so willing to accept this idea to its fullest. Einstein brought his concerns with him, along with his challenging thought experiments, to the 5th Solvay Conference in 1927, where he and his colleague, Niels Bohr, would start a decades long debate over probability and the true nature of reality. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Henry Moseley was a British physicist known for his discovery of Moseley's Law, which relates the atomic number to the "characteristic X-ray" of each element. Before Moseley's discovery, the atomic number was merely an arbitrary number given to elements, and was not the way elements were sorted on the periodic table. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the 1770s, a revolution in chemistry had just begun, starting in Uppsala, Sweden. A young apothecary named Carl Wilhelm Scheele began a series of experiments that led to the eventual downfall of an entire theory of fire that had dominated chemistry for a century. This theory was known as the theory of phlogiston; phlogiston was an invisible substance that released from materials when they burned and was absorbed by air or other substances. Scheele supported phlogiston from his results, but his went unpublished for five years, leading to another chemist, Joseph Priestley, getting credit for the discovery of what Scheele called "fire air." This is the story of how Scheele, Priestley, and a French chemist named Antoine Lavoisier discovered a substance that would eventually tackle the theory of phlogiston and replace it with a new theory of oxygen. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ever since the discovery of the proton in 1919 by Ernest Rutherford, scientists had been on a mission to break atoms apart, splitting them into their smaller components in hopes of changing elements into others. This was first successfully done by two of Rutherford's pupils, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932 after their invention of the world's first particle accelerator. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.