The Royal Institution
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2019–2025
1:00:18 · 6.9M views · Feb 15, 2017
David Tong, a Cambridge theoretical physicist, explains at the Royal Institution that the fundamental building blocks of nature are quantum fields rather than particles. He covers what we know about these fields and how they fit into the Standard Model.
Called a favorite and a masterpiece by commenters as the clearest accessible explanation that there are only waves in fields, and what physics still doesn't know.
9 comments from Hacker News
I would love to hear any critical take on David Tong's excellent video here: this video "Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe" I'm interested to talk to others who want to think about QFT past the maths. I had my own stab at making sense of related ontological implications here: [LINK]
When I see "explanation of the Standard Model", my mind immediately goes to my favorite YT video, which is Dr Tong's talk at the Royal Institution. I started watching this video and it took me a second to recognize the voice, it's him as well! If you want a long version: this video
His quantum mechanics lecture on YouTube at the Royal Society I think, is a masterpiece. Some very interesting facts, mostly about what we don't know. this video
Agreed - mathematics is predicated on the idea that there are individual things, but as we are learning, through things like quantum field theory, there are no individual things, hence, no individuated 'things' to count. As such, mathematics is not the 'language of nature'. Check out David Tang's lecture on QFT: "there are no particles, only waves" this video Mathematics still works (at our scale); the consequence is precision. Individuation of anything is a construct - including subjects and objects: [LINK]
Honestly I feel as though that's one of the most incredible aspects of theoretical physics I've seen. The fact that often times these underlying physics are danced around and even though they're unknown, we can tell something is not quite right. I believe this guy even talks about it a bit in this video made by the Royal Institution (which I really enjoy watching), discussing the possibility of different fundamental building blocks of nature. this video