The Most Terrifying Physics Paradoxes Scientists Refuse To Talk About
Midnight Theorems
9,846 views
In 1949, Kurt Gödel handed Albert Einstein a solution to Einstein's own equations in which a traveller could reach their own past. Stephen Hawking later threw a party for time travellers and sent the invitations afterward. Labs have since broken Bell's inequality and sent 2,000-atom molecules two ways at once. So what waits in the last three paradoxes, the ones that reach all the way to you?
Ten paradoxes, each closer to you than the last. A full three-hour walk, made for listening at any pace, including drifting off.
Settle in and let this slow walk through the strangest paradoxes in physics keep you company tonight. Subscribe to Midnight Theorems if you like the long way through the strangest serious ideas in physics.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction
1:23 Number 10 The grandfather paradox
22:03 Number 9 The bootstrap paradox
38:00 Number 8 The arrow of time
56:42 Number 7 Spooky action at a distance
1:18:21 Number 6 The measurement problem
1:38:02 Number 5 Wigner's friend
1:57:44 Number 4 The information paradox
2:18:49 Number 3 The world you woke into
2:38:07 Number 2 The step on the stairs
2:56:06 Number 1 The memories already there
SOURCES
Chronology Protection Conjecture (Hawking, 1992) — https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract...
Hawking's time traveller party (2009) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking...
Closed timelike curves via post-selection (Lloyd et al., 2011) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1005.2219
On Certain Questions of the Theory of Gases (Boltzmann, 1895) — https://www.nature.com/articles/05141...
On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox (Bell, 1964) — https://fermatslibrary.com/s/on-the-e...
Loophole-free Bell inequality violation (Hensen et al., 2015) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05949
Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger win the 2022 Nobel Prize (Physics World) — https://physicsworld.com/a/alain-aspe...
Quantum superposition of molecules beyond 25 kDa (Fein et al., 2019) — https://quantum.univie.ac.at/news/det...
Physicists Can't Agree on What Quantum Mechanics Says about Reality (Nature survey, 2025) — https://scientificamerican.com/articl...
Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself (Frauchiger & Renner, 2018) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07422v2
Experimental test of local observer independence (Proietti et al., 2019) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080v2
A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox (Bong et al., 2020) — https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.05607
On Hawking's Concession (Preskill, 2004) — https://www.preskill.caltech.edu/jp_2...
—
Disclaimer: Midnight Theorems explores open questions at the edge of physics, mathematics, and consciousness, for curiosity and rest. The physicists, experiments, and published ideas named in each video are real, but many of those ideas are unproven hypotheses or minority views, and the narration says which is which. Nothing here is settled science unless it is described that way, and none of it is news or advice. Listen at your own discretion.
#PhysicsParadoxes #GrandfatherParadox
11 Comments
Someone has to explain whether that all mathematical proofs work to prove a locality in action only, or the whole world ensemble participating. Same case with later experiments to prove it. Getting satisfied with a number of repeated experiments cannot validate as the 'observer' in every case goes in wiih a definite prejudice; that is evident in the instruments he is setting up selectively.
Aside: Indian Advaita philosophy has two entirely different arguments.
1.Parinama vadha or arguments that consider an evolution of sorts, a preliminary set of initial conditions calling the shots resulting in an effect, that sets the initial conditions for the succeeding shots ad infinitum. or
2. Ajata Vada: (Arguments supporting the 'not born' theory). Every moment whatever is seen is a new stand alone manifestation, without cause-effect relationship for the Consciousness. Cause-effect relation is a make up of the observing mind which is under illusion. Mind is just a mirror like reflection of Consciousness for its benefit. It happens purely to keep it under bondage till the mind pines for and matures to the final liberation. Nothing was ever born, nothing ever died/dissolved etc., and all are mere appearances for the bemused mind.
I do not know whether this is the same stand followed by Gnostic Christians, while quoting Monad.
It may be possible to do it on the mental plane and he may meet the grandparents and spend the day, but the grandparents are his own projection as an observer and not the original. Either way there is no real meeting. Take the third case where one is going into the past by watching through a telescope travelling towards the big bang, the events you see are events of today's observer irrespective of the telescope and hence his own mental initial conditions of the moment and not what happened before!
Am I right?
So if there was a way to go back the past would be far gone into the future Only the new future would be the present
The Most Terrifying Physics Paradoxes Scientists Refuse To Talk About
Midnight Theorems
9,846 views
In 1949, Kurt Gödel handed Albert Einstein a solution to Einstein's own equations in which a traveller could reach their own past. Stephen Hawking later threw a party for time travellers and sent the invitations afterward. Labs have since broken Bell's inequality and sent 2,000-atom molecules two ways at once. So what waits in the last three paradoxes, the ones that reach all the way to you?
Ten paradoxes, each closer to you than the last. A full three-hour walk, made for listening at any pace, including drifting off.
Settle in and let this slow walk through the strangest paradoxes in physics keep you company tonight. Subscribe to Midnight Theorems if you like the long way through the strangest serious ideas in physics.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction
1:23 Number 10 The grandfather paradox
22:03 Number 9 The bootstrap paradox
38:00 Number 8 The arrow of time
56:42 Number 7 Spooky action at a distance
1:18:21 Number 6 The measurement problem
1:38:02 Number 5 Wigner's friend
1:57:44 Number 4 The information paradox
2:18:49 Number 3 The world you woke into
2:38:07 Number 2 The step on the stairs
2:56:06 Number 1 The memories already there
SOURCES
Chronology Protection Conjecture (Hawking, 1992) — https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract...
Hawking's time traveller party (2009) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking...
Closed timelike curves via post-selection (Lloyd et al., 2011) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1005.2219
On Certain Questions of the Theory of Gases (Boltzmann, 1895) — https://www.nature.com/articles/05141...
On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox (Bell, 1964) — https://fermatslibrary.com/s/on-the-e...
Loophole-free Bell inequality violation (Hensen et al., 2015) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05949
Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger win the 2022 Nobel Prize (Physics World) — https://physicsworld.com/a/alain-aspe...
Quantum superposition of molecules beyond 25 kDa (Fein et al., 2019) — https://quantum.univie.ac.at/news/det...
Physicists Can't Agree on What Quantum Mechanics Says about Reality (Nature survey, 2025) — https://scientificamerican.com/articl...
Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself (Frauchiger & Renner, 2018) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07422v2
Experimental test of local observer independence (Proietti et al., 2019) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080v2
A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox (Bong et al., 2020) — https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.05607
On Hawking's Concession (Preskill, 2004) — https://www.preskill.caltech.edu/jp_2...
—
Disclaimer: Midnight Theorems explores open questions at the edge of physics, mathematics, and consciousness, for curiosity and rest. The physicists, experiments, and published ideas named in each video are real, but many of those ideas are unproven hypotheses or minority views, and the narration says which is which. Nothing here is settled science unless it is described that way, and none of it is news or advice. Listen at your own discretion.
#PhysicsParadoxes #GrandfatherParadox