Cited on HN 5 times, 2019–2024, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN uses it as a mind-blown reaction clip in threads about physics, space and GIFs.
A short Tim and Eric Awesome Show sketch, The Universe I, II & III, in which the cosmos is shown in a deliberately absurd way. It is an Adult Swim surreal comedy bit.
> No I really don't need to see the universe mind exploding guy in response to a story Universe mind exploding guy haha...what you need to see is some Tim and Eric ;) [this video]
I think it's typically the Tim & Eric skit that gets used for mind blown reaction. You could maybe use a different meme format, like the Drake one... But honestly I don't mind :) Coincidentally, I was looking at the same problem this morning. I found that exact snippet on an SO answer. Amazing! Snippet: [link] Full video: [this video]
"If you could put the universe into a tube, you'd end up with a very long tube, probably extending twice the size of the universe. Because when you collapse the universe, it expands. And it would be-- you wouldn't want to put it into a tube." [this video]
Just to go off these great works, there's a wonderful academic piece on the interaction between cosmology, quantum particles, and the higgs field here: [this video]
The idea that it's an abstraction is 100% accurate. That physics is a discrete set of fields with field rules and interaction rules, and what we observe is a scaffold on top of that. It's like okay, let's say the math is right and we have a set of fields, what are they and where are they from, how do we manipulate them. Then the physicists, often driven by ego, is want for an explanation and points to vibrating strings and such, and finally they knock on the door of the empiric physicist and say "can you do an experiment to show that I'm right" "sure, build a machine the size of the universe and I could test that" and that's the state of physics the last gorillion years [this video]
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