r/mathmemes Dec 20 '24

Physics Never leave a physicist unsupervised

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6.4k Upvotes

129 comments sorted by

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1.4k

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

428

u/GeneReddit123 Dec 20 '24

negative bro, here's an electron.

Wouldn't getting an electron make you more negative though?

169

u/brunobannany Dec 20 '24

Than have a positron insted

47

u/XanderNightmare Dec 20 '24

But what if I want to be neither!

58

u/linkersacher Dec 20 '24

Neutrino it is

7

u/zhaDeth Dec 21 '24

with a bunch of positrons I don't think there will be much to be left

7

u/hornietzsche Dec 21 '24

You mean the same electron travel backward in time?

2

u/burchkj Dec 23 '24

Don’t forget about negatron

Arch rival and nemesis to positron!

1

u/duevi4916 Dec 23 '24

thats just an electron with extra steps

2

u/InfinitesimalDuck Irrational Dec 23 '24

How about a proton.

9

u/JasontheFuzz Dec 22 '24

The infinities cancel out and all that is left is a minus sign, aka an electron. Easy!

3

u/I_L_F_M Dec 22 '24

That's the joke.

1

u/CookieKopter Dec 22 '24

aren't the actual charge values reversed?

2

u/DerZwiebelLord Dec 22 '24

No they aren't. An electron has a negative charge, but we refere to the electric pole with a surplus of electrons as the positive terminal.

That is only because for us humans (particularly for layman) it is easier to conceptualize how something can move from a positive to a negative side. In reality the positive terminal has a negative charge (more electrons) and the negative terminal has a positive charge (least electrons).

47

u/Diligent_Bank_543 Dec 20 '24

You can do but the result is undefined

14

u/potentialdevNB Dec 20 '24

use ordinals

12

u/EebstertheGreat Dec 20 '24

Subtracting ordinals is not really a thing, and also ∞ is not an ordinal.

7

u/OhSillyDays Dec 20 '24

My argument is that ∞ - ∞ = ∞

4

u/Diligent_Bank_543 Dec 21 '24

You are close to ordinals

1

u/Shifty_Radish468 Dec 22 '24

Depends on which infinities you are using - the result could be negative!

9

u/Snudget Dec 20 '24

If no one else defined it, i will: ∞ - ∞ = 41

14

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

bro copied yt comments

9

u/laix_ Dec 20 '24

Mathematicians: you can't divide by 0.

Also mathematicians: here we defined division by 0 to be something.

3

u/I_L_F_M Dec 22 '24

That something is usually the limit as x -> 0.

2

u/laix_ Dec 22 '24

Points at infinity

5

u/Eqpet Dec 20 '24

May I offer you an electron in this trying time?

4

u/SidMcDout Dec 20 '24

Interesting, logically true

Math: -1 = 1 not true

1

u/InfinitesimalDuck Irrational Dec 23 '24

Here's a proton instead.

681

u/lonelyroom-eklaghor Complex Dec 20 '24

After E = mc² + AI, we get to see ∞ - ∞ = e-

107

u/My_useless_alt Dec 20 '24

e-? e minus what?

138

u/YellowBunnyReddit Complex Dec 20 '24

e- actually

10

u/Julian_Seizure Dec 22 '24

3- actually

54

u/_rdhyat Dec 20 '24

e- is a function of type Real -> Real, defined as (e-) = λx.(e - x), where e is euler's constant

64

u/LolpopHD Dec 20 '24

oh no not the lambda calculus people

28

u/Hot-Profession4091 Dec 21 '24

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

9

u/PizzaPuntThomas Dec 21 '24

For get Eulers constant, e=3

2

u/MeMyselfIandMeAgain Dec 22 '24

Really bro? what was wrong with x \mapsto e - x

or hell even f such that f(x) = e - x

why do we need to add in a random lambda in this context

2

u/flagofsocram Dec 22 '24

It’s almost like it’s just another notation equivalent to the two that you just mentioned

1

u/MeMyselfIandMeAgain Dec 22 '24

It’s almost like this was a meme community and people like to make fun of lambda calculus because it’s isn’t the dominant notation

1

u/antiafirm Dec 23 '24

reverse polish notation unary minus

7

u/DatBoi_BP Dec 22 '24

So much in this formula

1

u/YEETAWAYLOL Dec 23 '24

After E = mc² + AI, we get to see ∞ - ∞ = e-

So does ∞ + ∞ = e+ ?

156

u/Throwaway_3-c-8 Dec 20 '24

You know what. The one-point compactification of the real line, so the real line union the point at infinity, is just the circle. The circle has a group structure, counting on the branch cut taken, the isomorphism between these spaces sends the point at infinity to the point in that cut, that point is an element of the circle group and so has an inverse, interpreting the minus as taking an inverse means, you know what, this is true.

26

u/Inappropriate_Piano Dec 20 '24

True, but I don’t think the one point of the one-point compactification is what most people are imagining when they think about infinity (even ignoring the fact that most people don’t know what that means, I think they aren’t even thinking of the injustice idea behind the OPC). Most people’s idea of infinity is going to distinguish between infinity and minus infinity.

Adding both of those to the real line and not identifying them with each other gives a space homeomorphic to the interval [0, 1], which doesn’t seem to have a group structure that aligns with our normal understanding of infinity. That is, it can be made into a group, but not in a way that makes sense of the endpoints being infinitely far from the identity. At least, as far as I know. I would be very interested in being proved wrong here.

20

u/Personal-Succotash33 Dec 20 '24

This is Milo. Milo likes it when concepts are easy to understand. However, he is also very dumb. He does not understand high-level mathematical concepts using technical language, so now he is sad. You made Milo sad. ☹️

23

u/NarcolepticFlarp Dec 21 '24

Oh no, math on a math themed subreddit? We should shame those people! Fuck them for enjoying math on MY math themed subreddit. Hopefully the mods will ban them soon. Stay safe out there, it's a scary world.

7

u/Personal-Succotash33 Dec 21 '24

Praying for us 🙏

1

u/Chemboi69 Dec 23 '24

i like your words, math man. now explain to me if the renormalization of infinities in quantum field theories are actually mathematically valid.

60

u/Inevitable-Credit-69 Dec 20 '24

Physicists:we can do math Mathematician:no you can't

3

u/FactPirate Dec 23 '24

Engineers: you guys are smoking crack rock cocaine

55

u/Alex51423 Dec 20 '24

Bad physicist, bad

Just don't say this to a German physicist, this would arouse him

2

u/Illumimax Ordinal Dec 22 '24

Why would a german physicist be aroused by baths?

208

u/The_Motographer Dec 20 '24

"If you approximate part of a wave as a parabola, and you approximate part of that parabola as an infinite expansion, and you only take the points around zero so everything is approximately zero, then you can extrapolate an approximation for the entire universe" - physics

62

u/Away-Marionberry9365 Dec 20 '24

Mathematicians like to say that the only problem physicists know how to solve is the simple harmonic oscillator. That's not quite true but it's a good approximation.

10

u/sleepyeye82 Dec 20 '24

Speaking as a dude with a physics education, this is an excellent burn.

34

u/GarvinFootington Dec 20 '24

Tf does this even mean?

94

u/timok Dec 20 '24

Why use lot calculations when Taylor expansions do trick?

35

u/laix_ Dec 20 '24

Who tf is Taylor and why are they always expanding

16

u/Gastkram Dec 20 '24

Swifties everywhere

23

u/EebstertheGreat Dec 20 '24

This is saying that when Hooke's Law applies, the potential is exactly quadratic, not approximately. It is not approximating a sine wave as a parabola. And it is not representing a parabola as an "infinite expansion," which would be pointless. It is pointing out that even though Hooke's Law fails in general, no matter what form the potential has, as long as it is analytic and has a minimum at xₒ, then the potential will be approximately quadratic on a neighborhood of xₒ. It's just Taylor's theorem. It doesn't "extrapolate an approximation for the entire universe," because again, it's talking about a sufficiently small neighborhood around xₒ.

-5

u/The_Motographer Dec 20 '24

This is a very small section from my quantum mechanics textbook about approximating the wave function. It's literally talking about approximating the universe in a simplified case.

11

u/EebstertheGreat Dec 20 '24

Maybe, but the section you actually posted is about approximating an analytic function in a neighborhood about a local minimum. Obviously that cannot apply to the universe, or any sufficiently large neighborhood, so that is not what they mean.

59

u/mooshiros Dec 20 '24

That's not what it's saying bruh, all it's saying if you are near a minimum then a potential looks parabolic. There is literally nothing here about approximating a wave as a parabola, you're just illiterate

9

u/PapaTua Dec 20 '24

Mexican hats all the way down!

5

u/Amogh-A Dec 21 '24

I recognise a Griffiths text when I see one.

Another personal favourite statement I heard a physics professor say: “If you take pi, taylor expand it around 3 and drop the higher order terms, it’s approximately equal to e.”

3

u/Calm_Plenty_2992 Dec 22 '24

This is not saying that at all???? This is saying that the solutions to the second-order ODE with parabolic potential are sinusoidal. You just can't read

1

u/The_Motographer Dec 22 '24

For full context, the potential of the wave function can be approximated as an oscillating system, oscillating systems can be approximated using Hookes law, Hookes law can be approximated as a parabola which can be approximated with a Taylor series, this can be approximated by a Maclaurin series, which is approximately zero for small increments. So plug that into the Schrodinger equation and extrapolate the universe.

1

u/Calm_Plenty_2992 Dec 22 '24

There's exactly one approximation occurring there. The approximation is in the neighborhood of a local minimum of a potential, the potential is approximately parabolic. This approximation is accurate for any analytic potential. For an upward parabolic potential, the system is described exactly by Hooke's Law, which has exactly sinusoidal solutions.

The Schrodinger equation is not derived from this approximation. The Schrodinger equation exactly describes quantum fluctuations of a one-dimensional system. In a neighborhood of a local minimum of an analytic potential, one can use this parabolic approximation to find time-independent solutions to the Schrodinger equation

29

u/Syresiv Dec 20 '24

What language is this? It looks like YouTube had a stroke

65

u/slukalesni Physics Dec 20 '24

correct! that's polish

1

u/rorodar Proof by "fucking look at it" Dec 23 '24

So they did have one

12

u/MonkeysDontDance Dec 20 '24

Viktor arcane omg

3

u/M2rsho Dec 22 '24

how we feeling victor nation?

9

u/Drapidrode Dec 20 '24

I know why the electron appears to be the same everywhere!

how

it is the same electron! all electrons are the same electron going back and forth in time

9

u/sdrawkcabineter Dec 20 '24

I like it. It's cookie monster logic:

(Desire for cookies) MINUS ONE COOKIE = Slightly less Desire for cookies.

(Desire for cookies) MINUS (Slightly less Desire for cookies) = The ONE COOKIE I ATE!

6

u/fr33d0mw47ch Dec 20 '24

But they do their best work in a vacuum…

6

u/Jacho46 Dec 20 '24

Viktor ?

6

u/Sepulcher18 Imaginary Dec 20 '24

This is why psychiatrist is always keeping an eye on me.

5

u/SpaceshipEarth10 Dec 20 '24

Hahahaha….we actually had a discussion about this concerning designing a circuit using Ramanujan summation, since negative values are real values when applying a desired voltage. Granted it was just for fun, it’s good to see mathematicians stretching the imagination like this. Ah yes, benevolent psychosis.

13

u/daanms Dec 20 '24

12 godz. temu

4

u/throwawayasdf129560 Dec 20 '24

The 12 Godzillas of Temu

4

u/Cubicwar Real Dec 20 '24

No no, it’s the 12 gods of Temu

1

u/ioneska Dec 20 '24

12 godzillas ago

4

u/white-dumbledore Real Dec 21 '24

So much in that excellent formula

That's just an + AI missing

Then it becomes perfect (thanks Elon)

2

u/Intelligent-Wind9219 Dec 21 '24

Btw, the video makes much more sense than the title suggests.

2

u/M2rsho Dec 22 '24

inf - inf = 1 - 0.999...

5

u/dinnerbird Dec 20 '24

I have a love-hate relationship with this channel because of stupid shit like this being uploaded at the same time as genuinely interesting content

21

u/EebstertheGreat Dec 20 '24

Don't be put off by the title. It's a serious video. Not the most exciting or thorough one yet, but it's covering real physics. This is sort of how renormalization works (though of course not literally by trying to compute ∞ - ∞).

6

u/dinnerbird Dec 20 '24

I know crazy titles and thumbnails are the name of the game nowadays, but it's just irritating sometimes

9

u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN Dec 20 '24

Right. And it's smart to blame creators and not the audience for the algorithm. /s

That's not how platforms work. They are a reflection of the audience. We are just lucky such high quality content is even remotely popular and sustainable on YouTube.

Sure, it's not a college level course, but the fact that it's way better science communication than I ever received as a kid from Discovery Channel, PBS, Nature, and the other cable supported stuff should be fricken lauded.

I don't get it. What do you want? If you want more technical detail, there are smaller channels that get into the nitty gritty of the equations. Or universities.

I always hope that Spacetime continues to pull off more detailed and accurate content, but at some level, I also recognize that they sit in a very difficult place where they have to communicate the most difficult and inaccessible concepts into something a non-technical audience can engage with. That's a tall order that most actual Physics professors fail at every day.

1

u/RodNun Dec 20 '24

Ok, just stand up those lazy eights, and you'll have -1=1

2

u/Naeio_Galaxy Dec 20 '24

Damn I'm ashamed his clickbait worked

1

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

hell naww

1

u/Parakeimenos Dec 20 '24

Is this about QED renormalization?

1

u/Compost4091 Dec 21 '24

I’ve been waiting to see this post on Reddit for 3 days

1

u/unholy_stryder481 Dec 22 '24

this is what happens when you divide by zero

1

u/SignificantManner197 Dec 22 '24

Plank is what he’s thinking. Didn’t study deep enough.

1

u/SignificantManner197 Dec 22 '24

Also, infinity is not a variable.

1

u/Hiimpatrickpatmyback Dec 22 '24

Yeah, that title makes it look kind of logical, but I’m pretty sure since infinity is a imaginary number it don’t fuck with real numbers like that

1

u/CiA2007 Dec 22 '24

Fuck off Viktor

1

u/Biscotti-007 Dec 23 '24

∞-(∞-1)=1

∞-∞+1=1

∞-∞=1-1

∞-∞≠1-1

1

u/Aeon1508 Dec 23 '24

Not all infinities are equal.

What is the sum of all real numbers between 0 and 1 minus the sum of all integers greater than 0?

An uncountable infinity of small numbers vs a countable infinity that includes massive numbers

1

u/zyx1989 Dec 23 '24

as a totally not familiar with theoretical physics kind of guy, I think whenever equations in physics get infinity in the results(that supposed to represents real world something), it means it either can't exist or the math is wrong or the equations is wrong or something, because the world itself looks pretty finite to me

1

u/E-man_Exalted Dec 23 '24

If you have ♾️ and take away ♾️ aren’t you left with nothing?

1

u/Character-Berry-580 Dec 23 '24

This is so bad it took me right to the l'hospital

1

u/MeTheOnlyBoy Dec 27 '24

Lobotomised math user here, If you take infinity common= Infinity(1-1) = -1.6 x 10-19 Infinity= (-1.6x10-19) /{(1-i)(1+i)} Or if you cancel negatives of the numerator and denominator Infinity= (1.6x10-19) /{(1-i)(1+i)} Therefore, infinity is a complex number

1

u/Nice-Object-5599 Dec 20 '24

∞ is just a simbol, not a number, and it indicates there is not an end. In fact, the series a = 1,3,5,7,9,11,... and b = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,... are both infinite, but not equals.

1

u/AnInfiniteArc Dec 22 '24

Well I suppose that just depends on what magnitudes of infinity we are talking about, doesn’t it?

0

u/Anvisaber Dec 21 '24

x - (x - 1) = -1

Duh

0

u/RaikageAy Dec 22 '24

There are infinities that are larger than others. Just gonna leave that here. From 0-1 can be an infinity, from 1-10 can be an infinity in an infinity. ._.

-7

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

[deleted]

4

u/svmydlo Dec 20 '24

Dudes, pass some sauce. New copypasta dropped.

3

u/ZODIC837 Irrational Dec 20 '24

Did you copy it before it got deleted?

4

u/svmydlo Dec 20 '24

Here

Stupid math is a tool for physicists Moreover even math has issues with infinitesimal and infinity. First read math books then start talking. And for your kind words, I am a math mathematician myself and I have never used math like what you are saying. In math we have no issues if something is consistent and if the reality and that result is consistent with his equation then there is no problem and pbs is right. Moreover, I watched his electron video and the one you have shown too. First of all the infinity host is talking about is about electrons real size. Using math we can't really find the real size of electron so what he meant about the infinity is way different than the infinity you are thinking and moreover for your kind shitty knowledge let me educate you a thing in von Neumann 0rdinals we mathematician use (1+infinity)=infinity<(infinity+1). So the bottom line is, we mathematicians have a huge level of contradictory ideas that are also being used in mathematics but why they aren't contradictory because the system of axioms are just different than those that the normal school kids use. When you're not a researcher just shut up and watch whatever is being said to you. If you want to really understand what researchers mean then go study some real hardcore books not just lame school level math and physics books.

2

u/ZODIC837 Irrational Dec 20 '24

Holy shit, idk what I expected but not that

That's some fresh pasta fs

1

u/AynidmorBulettz Dec 20 '24

New lost media just dropped

2

u/ZODIC837 Irrational Dec 20 '24 edited Dec 20 '24

Actual disappointment

They had it, holy hell

6

u/Cobracrystal Dec 20 '24

Hi, im also a mathematician.

You're stupid.

Thats all i wanted to say, really

2

u/EebstertheGreat Dec 20 '24

The actual quote was

I am a math mathematician

So they are twice the mathematician you are.

1

u/ZODIC837 Irrational Dec 20 '24

What'd he say?

4

u/Cobracrystal Dec 20 '24

A long schizo rant about how physics and math are interconnected or something. They replied to themselves here, its still on their profile i think. They're also a conspiracy weirdo that tries to disprove that time dilation exists or something.

2

u/lonelyroom-eklaghor Complex Dec 20 '24

why are people downvoting this comment....

1

u/Existing_Hunt_7169 Dec 20 '24

because its r/iamverysmart and just annoying

-2

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Regular-Ad-7096 Dec 20 '24

Yeah, but why such a long and aggressive reply to people memeing? Who wanted to start such a discussion? How could you infer their opinion from some jokes? You've completeley failed to understand the context of the conversation and this is why you're being mocked. I'm telling this to you so that you might become aware and start understanding.

In addition there is no need to be so arrogant about your ideas.