this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 10 points 1 day ago
[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] BoosBeau@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

holy shit, underrated comment. got me good m8

[–] texture@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

the moment i see this guy appear on screen i know ive fucked up

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This guy is mostly famous from poor quality history channel scifi bullshit "documentaries".

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

He's literally just the Ancient Aliens guy but with a PhD

[–] Tiger_Man_@szmer.info 3 points 1 day ago

quick, get the xkcd

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 79 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I thought this guy was a legit scientist, but I read his recent book Quantum Supremacy and it was all shit like "with quantum computing, in the future you will be able to solve athlete's foot". Literally everything you can think of is going to be quantummaxxed by cubits, according to him. Need your car serviced but the garage isn't open on Sundays? Quantum computing. Need your mother-in-law to dial down the snarky comments about your new house? QUANTUM COMPUTING. Frequently walk into a room, forget why you went in there, leave, then immediately remember why you went in the second you cross the threshold? MOTHERFUCKING QUANTUM COMPUTING!

I'm sure he is a legit scientist, of course, but as a science communicator and terminal book-hawker, he's no better than Joe Rogan.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

His books decrease in quality the later you go.

One of his older ones (Hyperspace) is quite good and filled with lots of real science and math. Visions is pretty good too.

I think he leaned into the TV spots and airplay a lot and ultimately, fantastical stuff sells better. And now it doesn't matter what he says, it just makes money.

See Neil DeGrasse Tyson for a similar story, though perhaps at a different point in his career.

[–] daellat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Omg I had forgotten about that.

Yeah so... Maybe NDT is even further along than Kaku.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

he's 80. he's just old and losing it and trying to stay relevant.

he is legit and was dope in the 90s/2000s, he has just started losing his mind due to being old.

sort of like trump and tariffs. those were suppose to solve my athlete's foot too.

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[–] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

A young woman from Washington state university has already proven classical computers can solve just as well as quantum if you give them equal advantages. Everything saying quantum computing is faster is operating on the unspoken principle of having the entire data grid already preloaded and comparing it to classical computers who do not have the entire data grid preloaded but when you give them both the magic preload pill quantum computers aren’t any better than classical

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/uw-grad-student-researching-quantum-computing-proved-classical-computers-better-thought/

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[–] HrabiaVulpes 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

To be fair, this is the level of physics where if they discover things right out of fantasy book (teleportation, mind reading, transmutation etc) I wouldn't be even surprised.

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[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 day ago (14 children)

parallel dimension

Aren't dimensions by definition orthogonal?

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

That is true for space dimensions, but there is also a time dimension, and would another dimension, that is 'orthogonal' to a time dimension not be some kind of dimension that offers alternative time lines?

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[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 242 points 2 days ago (41 children)

The thing with dark matter is it's just a placeholder term for "we don't know what the hell it is", and aren't most hypotheses pulled out of the ass before experimentation to prove them?

Plus, Dr. Kaku is a string theorist so wacky is pretty much par for the course in that field. Granted, I consider him more of a TV personality these days and grew up watching him as a speaker on [insert any number of Discovery Channel shows here].

Maybe I'm just biased and enjoy the wacky theories because I'm more interested in seeing them proven right or wrong and thinking about the implications if they happen to prove correct.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, I like to think of it this way:

Dark matter is not a theory or even a hypothesis. It is a collection of observations.

Having "matter" in the name is kind of a presumptive thing, like "our observations act like there's too much gravity, and matter creates gravity, and we can't see any extra shit, so..."

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

imho gravitons are the key to interstellar travel. we need to find a way to aggregate and harness them

[–] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

All we need to do is reverse the impulsors and route weapons systems into the storage matrix.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 45 points 2 days ago

Interesting but i suggest it might be normal matter that had a bad childhood experience and turned evil. We can save it tho

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What's a parallel dimension?

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

He maybe means a parallel universe. Or a higher order dimension like in string theory. This guy is a string theorist so probably the latter.

[–] cabillaud@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

String theory was all the craze, at a time.

[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

String theory makes more sense if you take some LSD I think.

[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

If you can place a dimension that is orthogonal between two dimensions, then those two dimensions are parallel. /j

[–] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What he's probably saying is not that far out.

Dark matter was proposed initially because at galaxy scales the gravity force doesn't seem to match the one created by the visible matter in that galaxy, while others tried to propose modified laws of gravity at that scale. He is probably defending the later via compactified dimensions, so at some scales gravity stops transmitting at one over the distance squared, as those extra dimensions start to make an effect somehow.

[–] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In case someone thinks I'm saying something crazy imagine a universe that is an infinite straw. When you zoom a lot in the surface you see two flat dimensions, so gravity would propagate at one over the distance. When you zoom out you stop seeing the dimension that loops over itself and only see one, so gravity gets constant at that scale.

You could get the same with a lot more complex manifolds, that look like 3+1 dimensions at some scales.

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[–] addie@feddit.uk 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Scientific method and all that. Any conjecture is okay.

Now, what's the hypothesis that you can make out of it? We've plenty of observations that don't match theory, which we believe to be on account of dark matter - galaxy rotation speeds, what happens in the core of a type 2 supernova, and so on. Does this hypothesis explain those problems better than what we have?

If it does, keep it. If it doesn't, discard it. Repeat, until we've solved all the mysteries of the universe by banging our heads against them.

This strikes me as the kind of conjecture that has no predictive power, and therefore must be discarded, but I'm no PhD-level theoretical physicist.

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[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago (5 children)

What if dark matter is a time artifact of gravitational waves over time/space as particles with mass travel through time/space? (I am not a physicist and I don't understand jack shit.)

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

don't talk about my mom like that.

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[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I see nothing wrong with suggesting that, so long as it is made clear he is discussing one of many theoretical possibilities.

Is he a kook? He does kinda look like one, but so do a lot of legit scientists, so that's not a good measure.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (13 children)

Not a kook. Legit scientist. He has a PhD in theoretical physics, not a theoretical PhD in physics. While he spends a lot of time as a science communicator, he has his bona fides.

Yes, it's all just theories and intuition like all nascent science.

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