Physics Is Erasing Your Memory

No memory is safe—whether you store it in your brain, a hard drive, or your diary. Thanks to physics, no memory can last forever.

Host, Producer: Greg Kestin
Research and Writing: Samia Bouzid, Greg Kestin
Editorial Input from: Julia Cort, Ari Daniel
Science Consultant: Murti Salapaka, Saurav Talukdar, Abu Sebastian
Filming, Editing, and Animation: Greg Kestin
Filming, Writing, & Editing Contributions from: Lauren Liebhaber, Daniel Thomson
Media: Shutterstock, CytoViva (Nanoparticles in water)
Brownian Motion Footage courtesy of Sam Snook of Latimer Arts College
Special thanks: Entire NOVA team
From the producers of PBS NOVA © WGBH Educational Foundation
Funding provided by FQXi
Music provided by APM

[daviddavids]

4:15 since it's very COLD, cryo MIGHT preserve (some) memory in an animal brain.

[WhatThePhysics]

Hey y'all! By the way, if you keep your hard drive in the refrigerator it will hold the data for longer.

Also, if you are cryogenically frozen, while you will eventually lose all your memories, it will take much longer than it would have been if you were body temperature...

[Dan-bqrd]

Man you deserve more people watching you, your the best.

[JonBastian]

I'd let him bump my memories back into place any day.

[lwocttk]

Hello can you please answer another question?
So... If you are on a train which let's say it travels 5km slower than the speed of light and you started running on the train 10km/h would you break Einstein's law that matter can't travel faster than speed of light?

[Blguun]

I can't even remember what I ate yesterday

[Janak-pt]

Understanding and memorization both are objective equations answers like.

[priyanshugaur]

Hi! there's this question keeps bugging me . Why do planets rotate on their axis ? what gave it the momentum ? Is there any scientific proof for the reason ?

[lwocttk]

Hi I have a question,
Since we know space ins expanding faster than the seppd of light, why do we say the speed of light is the fastest possible in the universe?

[emmajackovin]

Hey! I was wondering what collage you went to, I want to go into a branch of astronomy(either cosmology or astrophysics ) so Princeton is my dream collage! Also what do you major in?

[daviddavids]

4:33 wtheck was this supposed to mean

[xpuppygumx]

I have had terrible memory since I was very young and now I'm almost 15 and I have no idea what I was doing four minutes ago (brain you had one job)

[tyrannyresponseteam]

Now I can tell my wife why I forgot to take out the trash. My Synapse is to big!!! 😱

[tyrannyresponseteam]

What about 5G, will it mess up memory?

[HeadlessHoursemanMC]

This sucks and makes me feel sad although it’s fact and I want to know