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The Thought Experiment

The Thought Experiment

Scott V. Burger

The Thought Experiment is a podcast devoted to theoretical situations of the same name. Once a week, we cover a thought experiment from the fields of mathematics, physics or philosophy.
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Top 10 The Thought Experiment Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Thought Experiment episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Thought Experiment for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Thought Experiment episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

The Thought Experiment - Paley's Watch (Guest)

Paley's Watch (Guest)

The Thought Experiment

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06/26/07 • -1 min

Paley's Watch

Special guest of the Big Bang and Creationism Podcast and colleague of mine, Robert Lippens joins returning co-host Andrew and I on a discussion about Intelligent Design. William Paley engineered his thought experiment about the watch and the watchmaker close to the turn of the 19th century. Since then, Intelligent Design has gotten lots more public media attention. The three of us roundtable it out on various claims by Intelligent Design proponents.

No skypecast for this week, sorry. We had millions of troubles and skypecasting was one of them. I realize there was a crowd trying to get in and get it to work, but they're being fixed right now, servers are down, etc. Perhaps next time!

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The Thought Experiment - First New Show

First New Show

The Thought Experiment

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08/08/11 • -1 min

The first episode of the new joint podcast, "Questioning the Cosmos" is online. Check it out and stuff!
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The Thought Experiment - The Strong Nuclear Force (video)

The Strong Nuclear Force (video)

The Thought Experiment

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07/03/08 • -1 min

The Strong Nuclear Force

The Thought Experiment podcast has been kind of stagnant lately. Largely because I've been so busy here on campus with Dark Matter research and so on and hopefully this video, a talk I gave recently on the strong nuclear force that holds atomic nuclei together, can shed some light on just how jam packed my schedule has been these last few days.

The recording quality is rather lacking, yes, but my placement of the microphone in the lecture hall I guess was less than strategic. Plus it has more buttons to confuse an astronaut!

Enjoy!
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The Thought Experiment - Kent Hovind's Last Debate

Kent Hovind's Last Debate

The Thought Experiment

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07/24/07 • -1 min

Kent Hovind's Last Debate

Well, this week we had originally planned to go over Maxwell's Demon, but a screwup in the recording prompted us to ditch the file. Perhaps it was for the better, given that it is the 1 year anniversary of our debate with famed creationist Kent Hovind. Perhaps one of our few PDFcasts, the debate is about 20 some odd pages in length, but filled with comedic gold. As a toast to the convicted tax evasionist and 'scientist', we are putting up for free download a transcript from our debate with an intro included.

The feed has now been updated. Hopefully it should work at this point. If any other podcasts are not up and running, please alert me and I'll fix 'em.
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The Thought Experiment - Q&A With Brian Greene

Q&A With Brian Greene

The Thought Experiment

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10/21/07 • -1 min

Q&A With Brian Greene
Last week string theorist and physicist at Columbia University, Brian Greene came to my university as a part of a lecture series featuring distinguished lecturers. He did a question and answer session for a small group of us (about 20 or so people), as well as a planned lecture event. This week is the Q&A session.
Theme music by Liquid Tension Experiment
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The Thought Experiment - Shedding Light on Dark Matter (part 4)
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08/29/08 • -1 min

Shedding Light on Dark Matter (part 4)
In the fall I'm giving a lecture series on topics ranging from the history of the universe to time travel. Dark Matter is one of those topics.
In this final part of the series, we go over a very brief history of Dark Matter and some of its competitor theories, such as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs).
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The Thought Experiment - Shedding Light on Dark Matter (part 2)
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08/14/08 • -1 min

Shedding Light on Dark Matter (part 2)
In the fall I'm giving a lecture series on topics ranging from the history of the universe to time travel. Dark Matter is one of those topics.
In this second of 4 part series, I do a thought experiment involving Barry Bonds and detail the origin and nature of matter.
Next installment deals with detecting candidates of Dark Matter.
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The Thought Experiment - Shedding Light on Dark Matter (part 1)
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08/09/08 • -1 min

Shedding Light on Dark Matter (part 1)
In the fall I'm giving a lecture series on topics ranging from the history of the universe to time travel. Dark Matter is one of those topics.
In this first of 4 part series, I give a brief introduction and go over distinguishing Dark Matter from what isn't Dark Matter.
Next installment deals with properties of matter and Dark Matter and how they apply to baseball.
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The Thought Experiment - Quantum Tunneling

Quantum Tunneling

The Thought Experiment

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04/18/08 • -1 min

Quantum Tunneling
Tunneling is a very, very mathematical process by which a particle can 'leak' out into its surroundings. This has to do with all sorts of things called wave functions, probability densities, and so on, but the real aspect behind them is: how can we use this for our macroscopic advantage?
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The Thought Experiment - Rachel Cooper's Overview on Thought Experiments (guest)
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08/18/07 • -1 min

Rachel Cooper's Overview
Rachel Cooper, a lecturer at the University of Lancaster, provides for us an overview as to what thought experiments are and what they are used for. As a side note, she refers to Lucretius' Spear, an earlier podcast.
Debussy Reverie is by David DeLucia
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FAQ

How many episodes does The Thought Experiment have?

The Thought Experiment currently has 21 episodes available.

What topics does The Thought Experiment cover?

The podcast is about Knowledge, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Podcasts, Science, Philosophy, Thought and Physics.

What is the most popular episode on The Thought Experiment?

The episode title 'Shedding Light on Dark Matter (supplement)' is the most popular.

How often are episodes of The Thought Experiment released?

Episodes of The Thought Experiment are typically released every 9 days, 22 hours.

When was the first episode of The Thought Experiment?

The first episode of The Thought Experiment was released on Jun 26, 2007.

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