The brain is among a human's strongest weapons.
We are considered the most intelligent creatures in the universe because of this.
Humans can solve any problem with enough effort and knowledge.
But the question is: do you agree with that?
The claim seems dubious given that there are some things that, despite our best efforts,
we simply cannot comprehend.
The paradox is one of those things that the human mind has a hard time grasping.
We always think that the reality we are aware of is true, yet paradoxes always provide a
different, strange explanation.
What are these paradoxes?
Can you name some?
In this video, we'll discuss the paradoxes that often raise a lot of questions, and make
scientists wide awake at night to be able to study this.
Let’s not waste any moment, and let’s get this started!
Paradox #1 - the Fermi Paradox Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist best known
for developing the first nuclear reactor, is the source of the term Fermi paradox.
The purpose of this paradox is to establish the existence and location of aliens.
This paradox argues that since interstellar travel is already possible, there could be
a presence of extraterrestrial life on our planet at this point.
Some individuals, however, think that this is not a true paradox because it merely makes
the assumption that there are aliens on our planet.
The Drake Equation, which is utilized in this paradox to calculate the number of potential
civilizations in our galaxy, was developed to dispel people's skepticism.
The number of Milky Way's observable civilizations is calculated using the Drake Equation, which
takes seven variables into account.
This equation gave us the notion that there might be millions of Earth-like planets with
advanced civilizations.
But it's important to remember that these results were only true in 1961, and since
then, nobody has learned of any other planets that could be the same as our own.
We didn't learn about additional details until 2020.
It was when astronomers discovered that the Milky Way contains more than 300 million worlds
with characteristics similar to Earth, as they were analyzing data from the Kepler Space
Telescope.
According to the astronomers' calculations, about half of the sun-like stars in the galaxy
are home to rocky planets in habitable zones where liquid water may exist.
In fact, there are more planets in our galaxy than stars.
However, the question is: Why is the universe still quiet if there are aliens in there?
Well, we don’t know the answer yet.
Once we have the most advanced technology, maybe we might locate them and be able to
address our questions about them.
It's possible that some distant culture has already visited us and we are simply not aware
of it.
Furthermore, this paradox may be supported by the current increase in unexplained UFO
reports.
However, there is still no concrete evidence to prove this paradox.
Paradox #2 - The Bootstrap Paradox How something existed even if it’s taken
from the future and put in the past is the focus of the Bootstrap Paradox.
It's a recurring concept that many science fiction movie plots are inspired by.
To be able to understand this concept, imagine yourself as a time traveler.
Let's say that you are going back to London during the Elizabethan Era.
Before you go on the time machine, you visit a bookshop and purchase a copy of Shakespeare's
play Hamlet.
After that, you travel to Elizabethan London and give the book to Shakespeare.
What Shakespeare did is that he duplicated the book and passed it off as his original
creation.
Hamlet is printed and reprinted multiple times over the course of centuries, eventually making
its way back to the bookstore where you originally purchased it before you time travel.
Now, if Shakespeare in the past only plagiarized the book that you gave him from the present,
who penned Hamlet?
That’s a really tricky paradox, right?
Paradox #3 - The Grandfather Paradox In the Grandfather Paradox, the goal is to
literally go back in time and erase your grandfather's entire existence.
But is that even possible?
Let's assume that you are a time traveler once again.
Instead of giving Shakespeare a book this time, your goal is to make no trace of your
grandfather.
Let's assume you were successful in doing that.
Then you come back to the present.
However, the problem now is because you erase your grandfather in the past, neither your
father nor you were ever able to exist.
Your whole existence and your family, friends, assets, and social network have all been deleted.
It would be impossible to time travel because even that would also be erased.
Now, some scientists think that if this is the case, you are not entirely erased; rather,
you have only entered a different timeline or exist in a parallel world.
Paradox #4 - Taking Out Hitler Paradox This is another interesting paradox that you
should not miss.
This is like a variation of the grandfather paradox, wherein you will also travel through
time to stop Hitler from starting World War II.
However, this has some intriguing implications.
Let's imagine that before traveling through time, your reason for returning to Hitler’s
reign is to correct the situation before the war gets worse.
And the only thing for you to do that is to kill him.
The issue now is that the action nullifies any justification for going back in time,
as well as any knowledge that such justification could have existed.
Killing someone through time travel just results in a paradox.
If you will do that, traveling back in time might only produce a new timeline without
him as a head of state, but the old timeline would still remain, taking into account the
concept of the multiple worlds.
You might even make a new, more disastrous timeline.
Who knows?
Do you have any idea what would happen if you attempted to send something back via a
small hole?
Well, that's what we're going to talk about in the next paradox.
Before we continue, I just want to remind you that if you've made it this far in the
video, you're clearly enjoying it.
Give it a like, subscribe so you don't miss anything, and let us know what you think in
the comments section.
Paradox #5 - Polchinski's Paradox This paradox has the name of the late, renowned
theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski, who wrote the book on string theory.
Polchinski is not just the inspiration for this paradox name, but he is actually the
one who invented the scenario in which a billiard ball is thrown through a small hole that causes
it to go back in the past.
The billiard ball is tossed into the small hole at an angle that, if it continues down
the path, will emerge from a small hole in the past.
With the proper angle, the ball will crash with its present version, making it be thrown
in a different direction, thus, not getting into the small hole in the first place.
Some physics students, however, propose solutions that prevent any flaws.
This is accomplished by having the ball emerge from the future rather than the present.
This will only give the past, which is its younger self, a slight hit as opposed to throwing
it far from the hole.
This only indicates that the hit will alter the ball's trajectory in the right manner,
causing it to go back through time at the right angle.
Now, let’s see how the next paradox will influence how you perceive reality.
Paradox #6 - Observer's Paradox One of the most peculiar aspects of quantum
theory is the observer's paradox, which is even stranger than Schrödinger's well-known
parable about a cat that is neither living nor dead.
Reminder to all of you watching this video: no animals have ever been injured in this
experiment; it's only a thought experiment.
In the thought experiment, a radioactive substance, a Geiger counter, a hammer, and a bottle of
lethal poison are all contained in a windowless box with a cat inside.
There is a half chance that the radioactive substance will deteriorate.
If that happens, the radioactive substance will be detected by the Geiger counter, and
a hammer is then set off, which will break the bottle of poison that will kill the cat.
However, opening the box is the only method to determine if the cat managed to survive
or not.
This means the cat would thus be both alive and dead at the same time until the box was
opened.
How is that possible, though?
Well, this paradox believes that this is what happens to matter when someone looks at it.
It has the ability to alter the result.
Without seeing it, you cannot know what happened there.
You're probably frowning by this point since you can't afford to believe this whole thing.
So let's look at the double-slit experiment, another observer's paradox.
This is the most well-known physics experiment of all time.
The experiment involves throwing tennis balls at a wall that has two slits in it.
Some of the balls, of course, will hit the wall and bounce back, while others will pass
through the slits.
The tennis balls that made it through the slit are likely to hit the wall behind the
slit.
So, you can assume seeing two strips of markings around the same size as the slits where the
tennis balls impacted the walls behind the slit.
However, there is something strange about this double-slit experiment, particularly
when the slits are lighted.
We are all aware that light is both a wave and a particle known as a photon.
Now, if you throw a single photon at the double slits, it will appear to be interfering with
itself by creating an interference pattern on the rear wall.
It appears as though the photon passed simultaneously through both slits.
The scenario will become stranger at this point: the photons' behavior changes just
by staring at the double-slit experiment, as if they are aware of your presence.
We can infer this from the fact that no interference pattern appears when the researcher tries
to determine which slit the photon is passing through.
The main finding of this experiment is that, similar to matter, witnessing a photon can
alter previously occurring events.
However, nobody has ever managed to crack this riddle up until today.
We’re now down to the last paradox!
Paradox #7 - The Black Hole Information Paradox The black hole information paradox is a paradox
that arises from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity.
This is one of the biggest mysteries in physics.
So what is the mystery in this?
Well, according to calculations, physical data may completely vanish into a black hole,
causing physical states to deteriorate.
However, this is debatable because if we’re going to take into account the concept of
quantum mechanics, it will tell us that information cannot ever be destroyed.
For instance, if we burn two distinct letters printed on paper, it would be extremely difficult,
but not totally impossible, to reconstruct them from ash.
The two distinct letters would still be identifiable through the variations in smoke, temperature,
and ash.
Black holes, on the other hand, swallow everything up.
After a very long period of time, they emit what they have swallowed as Hawking Radiation.
Unfortunately, Hawking radiation doesn't reveal what the black hole swallowed, unlike the
smoke, temperature, and ash from burning a letter.
This is due to the fact that all Hawking radiation is identical, which suggests that black holes
destroy cosmic information.
Is information actually destroyed when the black hole dissipates or is it the other way
around?
The quantum extremal surface, an invisible surface inside a black hole's event horizon,
has been uncovered by a new generation of scientists who claim that information does,
in fact, escape a black hole by way of its radiation.
How does it work?
The amount of data that has radiated away from the black hole is going to be encoded
on this surface, which has changed over the black hole's lifespan.
This only means that something is capable of escaping a black hole.
However, it's an issue that hasn't been fully resolved yet and is still being worked on.
What do you think about these paradoxes?
Which of them do you believe to be somewhat true?
Let us know in the comments section.
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