An Ancient Roman Shipwreck May Explain the Universe

Why would astrophysicists care about a two millennia old Roman shipwreck between the islands of Sardinia and Mal Di Ventre? Why would archaeologists care about a particle physics experiment hiding deep beneath the Apennine Mountains, seeking to answer one of the most fundamental mysteries of reality as we know it? The answer to both of those questions is, in fact, a single story.

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[ATJonzie]

Funny thing, in roman lead pipelines lead poisoning was actually decreased in drinking water as time went on. Not because they stopped using lead pipes, but because the water was so mineral rich that it calcified the interior of the pipes and created and insulating layer between the lead and the water.

[EggnogTheNog]

As a maritime history nerd, I feel compelled to point out that the sail on the animation of the ship is facing the wrong way.

[colonelb]

For our European friends who aren't familiar with American units of measure, a Kia Sorrento weighs about the same as 82 emus.

[CarBENbased]

I love this meeting of two seemingly completely independent disciplines of science. Just goes to show that all of them are important.

[IntegralKing]

I worked on CUORE in 2007-2008, and one thing I'd like to add is: we don't measure temperature the normal way. We measured vibrations in the TeO2 crystal structure. These were perfect blocks of TeO2 crystals without defect, so a single phonon of vibration at the double beta decay energy could be detected. And what you'd see is a slight squeeze and expansion of the size of the TeO2 block as the phonon bounced through the crystal. This heat cannot even be dissipated because it is a single quanta of vibration, so it just bounces back and forth in the crystal until it quantum tunnels away into some other medium

[SEELE-ONE]

The year is 5750.
Inside a glass case in a museum there is a letter written in a long-forgotten language. Written in it is a complaint by physicists regarding the quality of some lead ingots archeologists sold them.

[Freezair]

Tragic as the loss of an artifact might be, I kind of take a philosophical stance on these particular artifacts. They're ingots; they're a transitional state in human craftsmanship. They're just a convenient way to store metal until it's turned into something else. By using their metal to build something, they're finally fulfilling the purpose for which they were intended. The hard work of those ancient smelters is finally paying off, and their handiwork was immensely helpful to people two millennia in the future! There's something I find very... human, about that.

[mosquitobight]

I'd like to see a SciShow about the science of spinning, knotting, weaving, knitting, crocheting, roping and braiding. All the ways we get loose fibers to stay together just by twisting them.

[JonnoPlays]

Most people don't know that "who framed Roger rabbit" has an underlying plot line that is based off the true story of the rubber and oil companies buying up all the light rail lines in Hollywood and tearing them up to promote highways. You can still find remnants of this time period when walking around towns like Oakland, California where the original rail lines were just left in the ground because it was easier. This is part of why the taxi is a lead character in the last half of the movie and there are many references to trains.

[Ithirahad]

It isn't every day you find a modern thing with a supply chain that includes the ROMAN EMPIRE.

[icjdqsp]

It's cool that both are teams of historians just in a completely different time scale.

[dangeorge]

What do we want?

An episode on leptogenesis, and right-handed neutrinos, and the see-saw mechanism!

When do we want it?

At a reasonable timeline to produce it with the same quality that SciShow has maintained up until now!

[PoeyJoey]

I like the idea that the lead bars being used by CUORE were sacrificed to avoid pirates profiting off of them not once, but twice

[pchiare]

I love how most advanced experimental physics is basically one of two things:

- Can we make things go really fast and crash, so we can measure the craziness?

- It’s going crazy fast, can we trap it so we can look at it?

[wvdh]

Since so many people ask the same question: The reason there is Lead-210 (Pb-210) in the ore in the first place, is because it is a decay product in the Uranium-238 (U-238) decay chain. In the lead ore there is always some amount of U-238 present, so Pb-210 is constantly produced (and it is in equilibrium: just as much Pb-210 is produced in the decay of U-238 as goes away by the decay of Pb-210).
If you extract the lead from the ore, the Pb-210 goes with the rest of the lead, but the source of it (the U-238 and decay products) is removed: so once extracted the Pb-210 that decay isn't replenished and the amount of Pb-210 starts to decrease.

[geovaughan]

Fun fact: The ship classification "Navis Oneraria Magna" translates to "Great Mule Ship". It's the ancient Roman equivalent of a cargo freighter.

[abracadaniel]

2000 years ago some dude was running errands and was so good at it, his boss put his name on a piece of lead that ended up being used in an experiment to understand the universe.

[brainfragrances]

this may be the most sophisticated clickbait I've seen

[AlauraJones]

“The universe was in its Jessica Rabbit era, young and indescribably hot.” 😂 The way I did not expect that.

[loganig]

This was the first episode of SciShow my 3yo ever watched and about 5 minutes in, and with mouth agape he said, "This is my favorite show."