What Are the Limits of Science? A Conversation with Dr. Paul Sutter

During our Iceland adventure, I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Paul Sutter and talk about the limits of science. Why a better version of the Planck Mission can't tell us anything else about the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Will we ever run out of science we can do?

Subscribe to Paul's channel:

Join us on a future adventure:

Sign up to my weekly email newsletter:

Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday

Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001

[Albatross]

I wish more people were interested in these topics. They are fascinating

[Master_Therion]

"What Are the Limits of Science?"
I'm still trying to understand the _limits_ of calculus.

[sladegreenaway]

Thanks guys, I really like format of the two of you, a camera, microphone and a great topic.

[xHeavenKatana]

Love listening to Paul. He's always so passionate with everything he talks about. Great collab, Fraser. Looking forward to more in the future. Thanks!

[CJLloyd]

I love these collab vids. I discovered you from Isaac Arthur, and through you I discovered Dr Sutter and a few others, and from them I discovered others. It's so great that science minded creators are working together to educate us all. Thank you so much.

[tiagotiagot]

I don't think we can ever say that we know for sure that we know everything there is to know; there is always the possibility someone will come up with some new information or some new way to look at things that will open up whole new fields of study. Science will never run out of things to learn about; the only way Science can "die" is if we settle and stop asking questions.

[SM-ftxh]

Hey Fraser! Your production schedule looks to be quite full with universe today, guide to space, Q&A, astronomy cast, etc (not to mention spending time with family). How do you organize and stay on schedule? Seems like you have would have to be really organized to stay on schedule as well as not end up working all day. I also have several different hats and need to organize better.

[Durrutitv]

It always makes my day when I check my notifications and find that Fraser Cain has uploaded. Some of the most fascinating content on the internet. Thanks man!

[ExplosiveThoughts]

The wall / floor behind them is really tripping me out.

[TheCimbrianBull]

What a thought provoking and insightful video!

[colinp]

I'm surprised that he answered yes. I thought that we could never know all there is to know. We can only observe so far back in the Universe and can never see what is beyond a certain point after the Big Bang. I don't believe that we will ever fathom what happened in the very beginning. The Universe is good at keeping secrets from us.

[curiousborg]

When are they going to invent cosmic microwave popcorn, where you can just leave it out and it pops?

[IRONMANAustralia]

*Q&A question:* If you go too high in the atmosphere the relative percentage of oxygen gets too low to breathe and you die. What if we could dig a hole right through a solid Earth and have that fill up with atmosphere, (excluding air pressure and temperature), could you go *too low* so the percentage of gasses was unbreathable?

Like you could imagine an Earth-sized planet with an impact crater like Mimas with an atmosphere, so you have a very low valley area with significantly different gas proportions to the rest of the surface.

On Earth the atmosphere is relatively paper thin, and the oxygen concentration changes over a relatively short distance inside that, so presumably you wouldn't need much of a depression to have a very different gaseous composition, right?

[TiMJ]

There is also the notion of measuring the polarization of the photons of the CMB, already done by the Planck satellite. Wish you could go into that regarding what more can be learned from that and what more exhaustive measurements of the polarization would yield. Like determining the presence of quantum fluctuations of the singularity stretched out over the CMB.

[georgplaz]

*The wooden floor/background..*

.. makes my brain hurt! Which of the two is it? If you compare it with the wall, you'll see it's not vertical. If you compare it with the table, Fraser and Paul, it doesn't look horizontal either. but it being a diagonal slope sounds ridiculous as well!

btw, great video. Thanks

[hellfiresiayan]

If you get too close to the speed of light, would you turn into a black hole since your mass approaches infinity and your length contracts? Or am I misunderstanding this?

[justalunatic]

How do we know the limit of information we can get from the universe while it still isn't certain if it's finite or not?

[OmarTheAtheistAziz]

the animation @ 9:00 & 12:08, i any1 tell me where You-Tubers get these videos from? i want it in my desktop background

[proudamericanrobman]

Have a question- since the initial take off of a shuttle has such a high fuel consumption percentage (like 20 to 30 percent) of the fuel and fuel is so important once we get into space, why dont we use small compressed air, big ass magnets, or electric launcher to get up that first 100 feet and close to speed. Think of air craft carrier launching. Or the shuttle starts on something relatively efficient like a big jumbo jet. Lets go then the shuttle goes from there.

[evanquinn]

I know this is off topic but when u go near a black whole time 'slows down' is there place where it speeds up so a year there might be 2-3 weeks on earth?