Five Theories About the Universe to Blow Your Mind 

Everything came into existence last Tuesday.

I love that Schrödinger’s Cat gets mentioned just as a guest appears for a split second at 13:35 in the shadows on the bottom left of the frame. The timing is flawless.

If I'm some sort of cosmic hallucination at the end of the universe, then it's a baaad trip, man.

"Is there a problem with gravity in the future, Marty? Why is everything 'heavy?'" - Doc Brown, 1955.

Your cat walking past the open door as you said "Schrodinger's Cat" was peak synchronicity. Great video as always! edit: "...it was meant to be a ridiculous argument" - Simon

Our current theory of gravity isn't "wrong" so much as it's incomplete. We can use it to make astonishingly accurate predictions in almost every scenario, but those couple of extremely specific scenarios we can't predict tell us that we're missing something. Einstein and Newton were both correct; they just didn't see the full picture (and we still don't).

Thank you for getting Schrödinger's cat right. There's far to many science channels mention it without explaining the intent of the thought experiment.

I genuinely didn't know about the hierarchical paradox of the four forces until I watched this. Thanks for teaching me something!

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” ― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

Very odd fact, but my granddad was the welder who made the satellite dish that exploded in “Contact”

I liked how when you were touching on Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment, a cat walked across behind you on our left. Very subtle humour. 😂

The end left an eerie empty feeling inside me and a buzzing in my brain…

Love that we’re sending “we are here!” messages into the depths of a completely unknown universe… good plan!!!

'Dark Matter' has always reminded me of the 'Ether' that scientists were sure existed for light to move through, although it couldn't be seen or measured in any way.

The concept that our dimension is in a membrane and that there is a forth dimension that has the majority of the bulk outside the membrane is insane. So it’s insane in the membrane.

And Simon Whistler is a stupid genious...he knows nothing but hires intelligent people to write stuff for him to read. Simon knows how to read and project a big brain charisma. Thanks Simon :)

I feel like you and the writer dudes would be really good at trivial pursuit and jeopardy without trying much. You've narrated videos on literally everything.

Bro you looking distinguished as heck right now. Good for you man, I remember when your channel started, and now you’re clearly moving up. 👏 well done Mr Whistler 👏

Rule 68 of the internet: There's a conspiracy theory of it.

"You're a Boltzmann Brain" sounds like a schoolyard taunt.😝😝😝😝

Not sure I followed all of that but this was a fantastic video. More mind provoking stuff always appreciated

Very clearly written and interesting as hell, even without your epic tangents! I have a questiom to Simon or whomever. Are the scrips uploaded somewhere? I would read this one a few times over 🤘🏻

Thank you Simon, I always wanted to question the existence of everything including myself.

Simon I am a physicist and I noticed that you forgot to mention that astrophysicists have alrwady produced a map of the dark matter structure of the universe using gravitational lensing. It looks like an enormous network where most of the galaxies form along the arms and nodes of the network. I would be surprised if this did not come up during your writer's research

“I think we've underestimated the life on this planet. The people have so much courage. Here they are hurling through space on a molten rock at 67,000 miles an hour and the only thing that keeps them from flying out of their shoes is their misplaced faith in gravity.” - Dick Solomon, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Season 1: Brains and Eggs

This is so well written, and explained. thank you, bookmark for multiple re-listens

Also.. the Boltzmann brain at the heat death of the universe definitely explains why I feel so bloody cold all the time xD

I love the high end critic look. Simon could totally be judging an art show or giving out restaurant star ratings

I gotta ask, did you do more than one take of the "Schrodinger's Cat" segment just get your cat in frame or did you just get lucky? Either way, brilliant.

“Even those who agree with the [Boltzmann Brain] probabilities don’t believe that’s the reality in which we’re living” is cold comfort, given that: if I’m a Boltzmann Brain, those people, their assurances, and even the “we” in the clause “in which we’re living”…none of them really exist

I've been starting to think that universes multiply like how cells go through mitosis. This would also be supported by the membrane theory and also the multiverse theory. It can help provide an explanation to how the big bang happened as well.

My Boltzman brain keeps on generating more and more Simon Whistler videos as it descends into madness from complete isolation.

I thought the cat was real at first🤣 well played... Well played

Watching this high will literally change your life

One of the theories I heard a long time ago was that our descendants would have enough computer capacity to upload the whole universe and bring us all back into existence. It makes you think. Perhaps we have already died, and this is just the second life that our descendants have created for us. So, the question is, what are you going to do with your second life, given that we might be living in the cosmic equivalent of the Sims?

My refutation of the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis would have been that if I were a brain and all of this life and world were in my imagination, I wouldn't possibly imagine a life as hard and cruel as the real world -- but then I realized that if I am a Boltzmann Brain, I may only exist for a fraction of a second (because honestly, how long could a brain survive in a heat death of the universe environment?), and in that time I was formed with all of these memories intact; I'm only *remembering* the horrible tricks the universe has played on me and everyone else. Of all the untestable hypotheses, I dislike this one the most.

Simon needs a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray on the shelf behind him if he’s gonna dress like that! 😅

The Boltzmann Brain theory is a true mind-blower.

What if an immortal being with a human like body/brain was lost in space floating for eons, and their only form of entertainment is to imagine a world in their head? And over time they became so good at locking themselves in said imagination that it became like a new life? That life being what we experience when "living". This is an odd idea I have has floating around in my mind for a while and hearing that last theory reminded me of it 😅

One crazy theory; we are the imagination of ourselves and nothing truly exists.

13:30 There is no way its a coincidence that a cat walks in the background as soon as Simon mentions Schrodinger's cat 😅 edit: on rewatch its actually clearly an animation haha

One theory that I always found interesting was the one in which we're all living inside of marbles attached to the collars of cats

That was either great editting or perfect timing by the cat who walked in the background at the end when Simon mentioned Schrodinger's cat

The was the best explanation for cosmic expansion that I've heard. Somehow most scientists tend to fumble when explaining it (trying to insert caveats and addendums).

As far as light once being faster, I feel like in the given example of the big bangs rapid expansion of the universe, would it not be better to say that the light itself wasn’t any faster, just the space itself becoming larger. Like in the warp drives of Scifi that warp space around the ship, it’s usually suggested the ship isn’t moving at all.

i love how as soon as you mention Schrödinger's cat a cat starts walking across the dark bottom left corner of the background

The 1932 Olympic Games TV signal was a closed circuit broadcast and thus the power used was quite low. So low that it was not powerful enough to be seen on the moon let alone light years away.

Our best antennae are barely able to pick up the voyagers at 22.5 W, +48dB from voyager's antenna, and 120 AU. It's estimated the signal will drop below background noise by 200 AU (but the power to transmit is likely to be gone before then).. We don't need to worry - 1) we reuse almost all communications frequencies - even back in the 1930's - within 60° of latitude and/or longitude. The signals are going to be out of phase, resulting in a lot of noise. 2) even a 50 MW broadcast is losing a lot. Our biggest radio signal ran about that strong. Due to lack of collimation, it's only going to get picked up by a +70dB Deep Space Network at sqrt(1.3e5) × the ranage, or about 82000 AU... a light year is 63241.1 AU... not even enough to get to the nearest star system. 3) even given all that, there is the formatting issue. Our video encoding for broadcast is pretty messy. So, if they detect and record is, they're unlikely to be able to make sense of it. And that is due to the way we included sound and video. If they guess wrong, it's just noise. (after all, each watt is roughly 1e40 photons ± a factor of 1000... past a certain distance, there just aren't enough photons to carry signal.)

One crazy theory I read about is that gravity does not exist in the first place. Or, more accurate, it does, but its only a side effect of time and mass interacting. The metaphor would be a boat on a river. The river flows in one direction and the boat drifts along. The closer you get to the river bank, the slower the water flows. Now, once you get close enougth, the water on one side flows noticibly faster than on the side towards the river bank, and that exerts a force onto the boat pushing it towards the river bank. In this metaphor time would be the flowing river, an large object with mass would be the river bank and the boat a smaller one. The idea is that the faster flow of time is exerting a force towards a mass rich object, the small difference of, for example your feet and your heads time speed, being what actually causes what we observe as gravity. So, the theory states , its not gravity that pushes you down, its time.

Simon here is so good with science, Im a multi degree science grad and he's always on the money, I learn more myself!

My theory: there are actually FIVE Simon Whistlers, which is how he manages so many YT channels

Awe Simon, you are awesome, your writers are amazing. Give them a day out of the basement.

If the internet has taught me anything, it’s that there will always be somebody who will argue that Hitler “wasn’t a bad dude” 😅

I swear the best science videos come from bald guys with beards and glasses.

I remember back in HS, I decided to do my final physics project (it was like a mini-thesis -- preppy school tbh) on dark matter. Well... I had to quickly change topics because there was and still is very, very, very little known on the topic. I chose anti-matter and had fun studying that.

I've always wondered if Gravity was a side effect of mixing the other fundemental forces. Which is why it exists, but is weaker than the other forces.

Aliens: How many planets are in your system? Adolf Hitler: NEIN!!

Good point. This could have implications for phenomena like the strength of gravity across different distances or the behavior of gravitational waves.

I always had a headcannon that the universe isn't like a wide open field but like a crumpled piece of paper where dark matter is just other parts of the universe (planets, blackholes, etc.) impacting local space .

My theory- There are as many simons as there are Kruegers

Simon takes me back to 2017 - 2019 to a happier time

Contact is one of my favorite books. Was not expecting it to get mentioned

From the thumbnail it looks like one of the theories is that Hitler is the Kwisatz Haderach.

At some point, most higher order physics is indistinguishable to the layman from theology in its content; the only difference is you have Hawkins considering entropy in a black hole and not Aquinas wondering how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

The human brain doesn't contain thought. It is just a more sensitive receiver transmitter. Thought, analytics, innovation and the ability to record, theorize and share these intangible materials is the true mystery.

Every time Simon starts a new channel, a big bang happens in a new universe

My brain hurts or maybe that’s just a planted memory of my brain hurting from the planted memory of watching this video

Finally *the* explanation. Simon is the Boltzmann Brain. All of these channels, all of these videos, all of this information, all of us supposedly real people watching it: it's all going on in Simon's brain, as there is nothing remaining of whatever actually existed before. Keep on talking to yourself, Simon's brain! You are the universe!

Jesus christ, just found this dude and his videos across all channels are so bloody good.

Why do they say gravity is "weak" when if you get too much in one spot it can LITERALLY stop time and keep light from moving away from it? What "strong" forces do this?

We still don't know if Schrodinger's cat was alive or dead while it was in the box ,but we know it's ghost is haunting Simon's office ,it's nice that he has some company .Personally I'm quite content with the idea that I'm a disembodied "Brain" full of false memories ,it explains why reality sometimes seems questionable .

Gravity always amazes me. The simple fact that is a powerful force that is completely invisible.

The hardest working man on youtube 🏅

If you view gravity as a repulsive force emitted from empty space due to its non-affinity for matter the planets, solar systems, galaxies, and the universe would behave as they are observed to do. This would also explain the impossibility of detecting the ‘graviton’ as well as the exponential expansion of the universe.

Love the editing at 13:31 ! Awesome guys, just awesome!

Trying to comprehend some of the theories in this really puts into perspective how much of a dumbarse I am compared to these scientists and academics.

Gravity so weak? Increase it by 1% and we're toast.

My favorite part of this video is when he mentioned Schrodinger's cat followed closely by his cat walking by in the background.

I'm still at a loss to why gravity is so weak when black holes are so immensely strong

The universe isn’t in a Boltzmann brain- but Whistler beard. 🫥

People ask the wrong questions....like, why are we here? That speaks more to the ego of humanity than anything else. Why is a blade of glass here? Why does it exist? Why is there an amoeba or a virus, or a shark? Things exist and that is all that matters, I don't think that in the grand scheme of the universe we matter any more than a blade of grass.

The open door creating a cross is so subtle.

I usually listen to his videos while driving (not actually watching) and in my head I can only see stewie )Family Guy) narrating

I like turtles

I don't know why I found that cat to be incredibly creepy when it walked by. I think that we will eventually be able to peer into extra dimensions and even alternate realities if we can maintain our scientific advancements and not destroy ourselves or succumb to our own arrogance/ignorance. The technology just doesn't exist yet but some day it will and people will take it as a norm to see what we can't see now.

I love how a cat walks across in the lower left background at 13:34 as he is mentioning Schrodinger's cat...

The most unpleasant theory about the universe is that all time, both past and future, is predetermined. It means that we live in a world where free will is an illusion. Our whole life will be like a movie that has already been recorded.

Weird observation... The word "and" is one of the most common words in the English language. However Simon rarely uses it.

One add on to the Dark Matter part. We know by now that Dark Matter is not just an artifact of gravity, but its own tangible (wel not really, its by definition intangible but you get what I mean) thing. We can tell due to observation of galaxys and galaxy clusters that in coliding ripped the Dark Matter from the others, and also that Galaxys with very little to basically no Dark Matter exist. So gravity and Dark Matter are not intrinsically linked.

This guy would be the perfect voice for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 😮

Regarding the variable speed of light ... what about the speed of causality? As I understand speed of light (in a vacuum) just happily coincides with the speed of causality, but to claim that lightspeed could have been higher means that speed of causality must have been higher too (or it would lead to a ton of paradoxes). However even if light could somehow change phase I don't see what could happen to affect the speed of causality.

When I was doing Ayahuasca at a Peruvian ceremony in the Amazon jungle, I was shown behind the veil, and what I realized made me want to throw up, and it took months before my mind would let me access what I learned that time again. There was nothing, and I'm not real, and nothing has actually ever happened. The now, future, and past were only parts of the illusion that made me believe that I was real and something that was separate from nothingness. I had never heard of the Boltzmann brain theory before, but I think it has an affinity for the deepest level of "truth" that I was shown.

Is anyone else reminded of the episode of Futurama with the giant brains when he went over the Boltzmann Brain theory? “I’m a gigantic brain!”

We can only comprehend what our senses let us

Would be interesting to find that dark matter was the gravitational fingerprints of the influence other membrane universes have on us. You can imagine the position of mass in a higher dimensional space resulting in the gravitational influence being offset in a lower dimension. Maybe this would accelerate things like the rotational speed of galaxies 🤔

_The Whistler-Verse_ continues to expand with just a single superhero carrying it all... At this point, Simon would make even Kal-El feel inadequate... 😎👍🏼

The speed of light slowing down? Reminds me of the end of the Three Body Problem series.

Hitler retired to the New York countryside, he continued painting under the pseudonym Stephen Wolfe, he passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by friends...

Combining two of these theories together we might be able to assume that if gravity can "escape" whatever universe it came from, then dark matter could be the affects of gravity from other universes affecting ours and vice versa. It would explain why it's completely undetectable and why gravity is so weak.

I always thought that extra dimensions existed (although how many is unknown) simply because black holes exist. The matter sucked in by a singularity has to go somewhere - the laws of physics (thermodynamics?) state you can’t just turn matter into nothing so why not have that energy that was matter travel into another dimension? Perhaps someone better versed in astrophysics can better explain what I mean if I haven’t cocked up my explanation completely 😂 😂