HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough

23 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this news clip2 months2014–2022 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Shared for its moving moment of scientific discovery, and later cited as a cautionary example after the BICEP2 result was retracted.

A short Stanford video in which Chao-Lin Kuo surprises Professor Andrei Linde with BICEP2 evidence supporting cosmic inflation, the first apparent images of primordial gravitational waves.

“They made a nice video of the researcher surprising Prof Linde with the news” (HN, 2014)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 3 critical · News · news from the time

5 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@marlag May 2016 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Crying
Sharing my cryiest ever video clip, when Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough: [1]. I've seen it thirty times and I cry (oh, the tears) every time. I also cried at the end of Real Steal. [1] [this video]
Deeply moving moment of scientific breakthrough.
@DangerousPie Mar 2014 Recommends
on HN thread Gravity waves from Big Bang detected
They made a nice video of the researcher surprising Prof Linde with the news: [this video] The reaction of the couple is great!
Researcher surprises Prof Linde with news of the detection.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@tombone12 Apr 2018 Pushes back
on HN thread Losing the Nobel Prize
I don't know how to estimate their reckless from the outside, but it is simple fact that however sensitive, they only had one waveband and so no real way of estimating the foreground contamination. I think it is also well established that the foreground estimation was made by looking closely at pictures from a presentation showing preliminary Planck skymaps of the dust emission, and then building a foreground model from that. They also put out this adorable video as part of the announcement, maybe not the greatest show of caution ever: [this video]
@tombone12 Apr 2018 Pushes back
on HN thread Losing the Nobel Prize
It's not really mistakes that is the issue though, its more the fact that they got reeeeelly close to outright fabrication. They had a very shaky estimate of an important background (the foreground) and instead of being cautious they put out a video like this as part of the announcement: [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close