Episode #1104
Special Segment
What are the challenges and advantage of living in LA?
What Ever Happened To
Breakthrough Starshot, Fen-phen, The Coming Hydrogen Economy, String Theory, The Segway, Going to Mars
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Fiction
Although the volume of a d-dimensional cube with sides of length one stays constant as you increase the number of dimensions, the volume of a d-dimensional sphere with radius one grows without bound, having the asymptotic functional form of an exponential.
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Item #2
Science
Black holes in four spacetime dimensions are uniquely characterized by their mass and angular momentum, but the equivalent result in five spacetime dimensions is no longer true, meaning that there can be multiple singular solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations with the same mass and angular momentum.
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Item #3
Science
The densest way to pack d-dimensional spheres is known only in dimensions 1, 2, 3, 8, and 24, and otherwise remains an open problem in mathematics.
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” - Marie Curie