Travelling to the Stars by Ladder - Numberphile

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NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran
Animation by Pete McPartlan

[kempshott]

If he collected 6.022 x 10-to-the 23 stars, mole would have a mole of stars.

[CRSBO]

Tony is the only guy I know who replaces his ladders after a single use. He is a mathematician though, we do famously write "problems" about such things.

[joaosilva]

I believe he may have overestimated the number of stars roughly by a factor of two as the Mole will only see the half of the sky corresponding to the Earth's hemisphere where the Mole lives. If you adjust for this you'll see that Mole's plan is much more feasible.

[martinleopard]

Tony reading bedtime stories and calculating the practicality of the story should be a thing on this channel! It is funny and educational like the calculator unboxing with Matt Parker. Great job on the video!

[jonidcrushfire]

This is why I come to this channel. Arbitrarily breaking down a children's book with math and poking holes in the plot just for a good laugh at the numbers. Well done, gents!

[ianchristian]

If Tony publishes "The Annotated Mole's Star" I'll definitely buy it!

[Sakkura]

6:13 Wood is typically only about 50% carbon by mass. There's a lot of oxygen in there, especially in the cellulose/hemicellulose but also to some extent in lignin etc.

[tufonkin]

Imagine Tony reads stories to his children while they falling asleep. Every page he drops the book and starting some calculations 😂 Pretty weird childhood.

[AmnonSadeh]

I like how he's bothered by some aspects of physics, such as mass and speed, but totally ignores others, such as gravity and stellar motion. 😂

[SgtSupaman]

Tony's analysis has a moral that the book totally missed out on. You can't just fix something because you're sorry. In the book, mole realizes he messed up and gets to just put everything back to normal. As Tony points out, though, there would be no fixing how badly he screwed up. He would only be able to wait for 10^10^122 years.

[thboss]

When Tony said “there’s not enough surface carbon” I half expected him to say we’d need to turn animals into carbon for these ladders

[Richardincancale]

I’ve got three moles (at least!) in my garden. I’d be very delighted if they could just do a one-way trip to the nearest star!

[ThreeEarRabbit]

The mole only needs the ladder that goes to the furthest observable star from Earth (V762 Cas in Cassiopeia, 16, 308 light-years away) and use it multiple times.

[laurendoe]

The mole says "I wish I could own all the stars in the world." Well, he already does; there are no stars in the world, they're all at least millions of miles away.

[CarFreeSegnitz]

12:22 But we’ve missed out on the acceleration forces on Mole. Repeatedly accelerating to just shy of the speed of light, decelerating to a stop, repeat… for 2 years and 4 months. He’s made of some stern stuff. He might be a fair match for Chuck Norris.

[leadnitrate]

Haven't watched Numberphile in a while (been so busy with college math that I forgot my roots), so didn't know Brady had a newborn. Congratulations 🎉

[DaveLeCompte]

Sounds like the ladders all radiate out from the Earth - I think Mole should, instead, solve the travelling salesmole problem to find the shortest loop that visits all the stars and ends up back at his burrow.

[HeWishesForTheClothesOfHeaven]

One thing not addressed here: nearing the speed of light changes an object's observable mass. Could Tony please calculate the Moler mass?

[betoneiracromadarebaixada]

15:25 the "prety reckless behavior from mole" made me laugh so hard

[johannesvanderhorst]

OK, so after the Poincaré recurrence time, we go back to the initial point. At that moment, again a mole sees a shooting star, and wishes he could own all the stars. Basically, we have a never-ending story.