'physicists don't know how planes work'

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]I'd like to stand. Is Is that crazy?

[00:00:02]It's just that I sit all day. It hurts my It hurts my body. Am I old? Is it because I'm old? Is that Is that what's happening with that? Like I can't just sit all day anymore. All right. So, on April 26, 1902, an interview was published in the New York Advocate with Lord Kelvin. Do you think it possible for an airship to be guided across the Atlantic Ocean? Not possible at all. On what grounds do you think that an airship is impracticable? Because no motive power can drive a balloon through the air. Your objection, as I understand, rests upon the unwieldiness of the balloon. But how about the airplane? Do you think that is practicable? No. No more than the other.

[00:00:45]Then we cannot navigate the air at all in a commercial way. No. I think it cannot be done. No balloon and no airplane will ever be practically successful. No balloon and no airplane will ever be practically successful. On December 17th in 1903, 600 days after this interview, the Wright brothers, you know, successfully do that. They make the first controlled powered flight in heavier than air aircraft. And here, heavier than air there there's like two types of flying machines. Like you have balloons which are lighter than air, meaning they they float up because like either they're made of helium or you use some type of hot gas like in a hot air balloon which is less dense than air so that it moves up. Heavier than air means they're using something else like an airplane uses an engine. Okay. So the first commercial flight happened in 1914 January 1st 12 years after this interview. They flew 21 miles from St. Petersburg, Florida to Tampa Bay, Florida. The first international commercial flight across the Atlantic happened in 1919.

[00:01:52]So 17 years after this interview. And by 1960, more Americans were traveling by plane than by train, which devastating.

[00:02:04]So sad. I We could have had it all, you know, we could have had trains. I want to start this conversation by something that I think is relatable to every single human being on Earth, which is that birds fly. And it doesn't matter if you were born in the year 800 or the year 1600 or the year 2700. Hope hopefully there are still birds. We've all seen birds. If you've never seen a bird, you could you could even feel a bird take off and fly away from you.

[00:02:31]Everyone can experience a bird. We've seen birds fly. Birds start on the ground. They fly up. birds can fly. That alone would convince me that it's possible that humans could build some sort of device that they could fly. It's crazy pants to me to suggest that humans could never ever fly given that we can see birds. Birds fly. Then it would appear that in your opinion we have no hope of solving the problem of aerial navigation in any way. No, I do not think there is any hope. Neither the balloon nor the airplane nor the gliding machine will be a practical success.

[00:03:09]Neither the balloon nor the airplane nor the gliding machine will be a practical success.

[00:03:44]Listen, I think this is so interesting.

[00:03:46]I will tell you that this video is not a video mocking a man for not being able to predict the future. That would be very boring. Instead, I'm really curious how he could have this opinion. Like, Lord Kelvin, weirdo, but not a dumb dumb. Lord Kelvin, why? Why? Why? 600 days before flight happens, would you say that it will never happen? And you know, if we wanted to make fun of Lord Kelvin, there are plenty of actual ways we could make fun of him. This man didn't believe Maxwell's theory. This man was explained Maxwell's theory by Maxwell and didn't accept it. He had this weirdass vortex atomic theory didn't make any sense. He saw the results from radioactivity experiments, you know, the the electron and he was like, "No." So, we could make fun of him for a lot of his late time ideas, but also he he wasn't as interested in science as you would think. He was one of the first scientists that just made a fortune profiting off his scientific knowledge and ideas. Kind of like Edison. I guess one of the things he did was improve the navigation system of ships, which when ships started being built with iron rather than wood, it started [ __ ] with the compass. Right?

[00:05:13]If you have a bunch of magnetic metal around, your compass isn't going to read straight through like Earth's magnetic field. So, he, you know, invented something called Kelvin's balls, the big compass for the ship. And he took two magnets, magnetic spheres, and placed it next to it. And he was like, "Okay, be at the dock where you know where true north is and then move these little magnets around until your compass reads north so you can account for all the metal in your ship and then your compass will work." And he's like, "This is an invention." He goes to the government, which he's a part of because he's Lord Kelvin. And he he convinces these not very scientific people that like, "Hey, I've done a bunch of real hard science here and I've made an invention. My invention is putting two magnets next to a thing and I've patented it and so the government has to buy this from me. And so all of the naval ships at the time that were being built by the government would purchase a Kelvin's ball compass system from Kelvin, funneling just a bunch of money to this man while the people who worked the ships were like, "We already know how to do this. This isn't an invention. You can't patent the laws of physics. This doesn't make sense. But Kelvin made like a bunch of money doing this. Very silly. When you read about Kelvin and like his daily activities, he seemed a lot like the tech bros of today. Like much more interested in just gaining wealth than like actually doing science or saying things that make sense, you know. um he wasn't really he wasn't really interested in like the fame of being a famous scientist which he did of course earn like there's this famous letter where people were like we want to name this unit after you the Kelvin and he's like it doesn't make sense to do this please don't do this um so like he's not in for the fame and then of course later they gave him a different unit the the Kelvin absolute temperature because of his work and thermodynamics but like he just he really wanted that crash.

[00:07:18]We We should make fun of him for that, but we're not going to make fun of him for not predicting the airplane. I I just You can't predict the future. He He just very definitively, which I wouldn't have done. I would have said, "Hey, maybe I don't think so." But, you know, whatever. But why did he think that?

[00:07:33]That's this video. This video is not a history of aviation. It's not a physics of spaceflight video. It's just what would cause a man to think that two years before the Wright brothers prove that you're wrong. So, I have come up with a little list of three things.

[00:07:50]Three things that would make Lord Kelvin be just so strongly convinced that airplanes would never happen. Although, now I'm realizing he had a commercial interest in ensuring that planes never happened. It makes sense that he would go around being like, "Hey, planes are stupid. Don't invest any money in planes. Build more ships. Buy my balls.

[00:08:13]You know, is that the reason?

[00:08:17]Do you think that that's the reason why he said that? Like it was just purely like my company makes more money if airplanes don't happen. So I don't think airplanes would ever happen. That sucks.

[00:08:26]That's worse. I came up with actual reasons. It it doesn't matter because there there are plenty of people who said airplanes would never happen very strongly just before airplanes actually happened.

[00:08:57]In fact, there's a very famous Snopes article that goes around with some man being like, "Millions of years, no one will ever fly." So, we can just insert one of those people. It's fine. Why would anyone think this? The first thing I'm going to call it's only 10 years away.

[00:09:17]Kelvin says 1902, planes will never fly.

[00:09:20]And that's because for the last 50 years of that man's life, people had been saying, "You guys, it's so close.

[00:09:28]Everyone's going to be flying all over the place. Next year, we could get on a plane and go somewhere or or a balloon.

[00:09:35]It's going to be crazy. Airflight is going to happen. It's so close. It's happening." And they said that for 50 years. There's an English man called George Kaye, and he's sometimes called the father of aviation. And he you wouldn't call it discovered. He didn't invent it. He identified the the four vectors that affect flight, right?

[00:10:00]Weight, lift, drag, thrust. You've seen it. This is how planes fly. And this leads George Kaye to start focusing on lightening his materials. You know, why not use children to fly the planes? He starts thinking about wing shape and like the aerodynamics of the chassis and stuff. In the 1850s, he's studying very very early hydro, you know, airflow, how does wind affect drag? And the whole time while he's studying this physics, the physics of aviation, he's also building like these little test planes.

[00:10:39]And there's a very informative, I think, timeline on Wikipedia where you have George Kaye in the 1790s developing all these ideas of like these four vectors and how these forces affect flight. And then in the 1850s, he has a controlled manned glider flight that's very successful for for like a first ever thing and then nothing. So in the 1850s, big news, George Kay's done this thing.

[00:11:07]And then the next 50 years, people are like, "Guys, it's just around the corner. We are going to have airplanes.

[00:11:13]We are going to fly. Say goodbye to trains. Say goodbye to sailing across the Atlantic instead of we'll all be flying. Just you wait. Just you wait."

[00:11:23]And nothing happened for 50 years.

[00:11:32]Listen, I don't know where else to put this part, but I've been reading a bunch of books and uh like looking on all these websites with like the timelines of the history of flight with all these examples of machines. And when you're searching this type of thing on the internet, you will come upon a group of people who say physicists don't understand how planes fly. I I guess the the exact physics of how planes fly of course requires, you know, calculus and math, but physicists definitely know how planes fly. And yet on the internet, just physicists don't even know how planes fly. It's crazy. In one case, I found a man that said, let me I'm going to read it to you so I can quote it directly. And honestly, the only thing more complex than how do planes fly is is quantum mechanics.

[00:12:25]It's just like there are a lot of things more complex than quantum mechanics. But a planes flying is not not one of them.

[00:12:36]Air go down, plane go up. That that's the elementary explanation for how planes fly. That's the answer. I Is it a joke? Are are these people making a joke that like we don't know how planes fly? Would you get in a plane if you actually thought nobody knew how it worked? I like the flat earth thing started as a joke and then people started believing it and now like that's a whole thing. Is this like that? Do they think we don't know how planes fly?

[00:13:10]Like there you go all over the internet there are people seriously discussing how plane go up air go down is wrong and like there are little nitpicks and critiques on this elementary basic explanation of what's going on with the forces in this situation like legitimate paragraph long discussions on plane go up air go down. There are like just some [ __ ] who think it's funny to go around and be like, "Oh, physicists don't even know this. I think it's fun to debate and argue. I'm the worst person you've ever met." But also in that group, there are people that are like legitimately confused about how planes fly. And plane goes up, air goes down is correct. It's an elementary explanation. And maybe if you're not satisfied with that, you would like a more complex explanation. And like that's fine. I just I guess I don't understand how you go from I'm unsatisfied with the elementary explanation, you know, for children.

[00:14:12]Physicists not must not know what they're talking about. Do you know what I mean? I I think I might understand the issue like plane go up, air go down. And maybe you ask a second question that's like, well, how exactly is the air pushed down? And maybe you want an answer to that question. So you ask a physicist. And the thing about that question is if you ask four different physicists, you will get four different answers because they're wanting to pull from their background knowledge. depending on their sub field. Like I did a lot of hydro so I would start talking about like pressure fields and things but every physicist would have a slightly different answer and I can see how you might get confused. I don't see like if I asked an expert for an explanation and then I didn't understand it. I would not say huh these experts have no idea what they're talking about. I would assume that I didn't understand it. I wouldn't write articles about how physicists don't know how planes work. But the issue is that the basic explanation plane go up air go down is correct. It's not complete. And if you want a complete solution, you actually have to learn math. The the math of how planes fly is really nice and really good. And if you understood that math, you would be able to answer all your little nitpicky questions about how planes fly. You could move beyond plane go up, air go down. If you're actually very interested in moving beyond plane go up, air go down. Like you actually want to know the nittygritty details of how planes fly and you're not one of those weirdo losers who's never experienced joy because all you do is argue on the internet. You have a very exciting path forward.

[00:16:01]Learn calculus. Learn the Navier Stokes equations. You know what you should do is you should write a little 2D hydro simulator. You can do that on like any laptop. Make a little grid, fill the grid with air, write the equations of conservation of energy and momentum across the boundaries, slap a plane in and click go and watch the plane fly.

[00:16:22]And you could develop questions to ask and you could arrange your simulation to get the answers. The field of hydrodnamics very well established.

[00:16:31]Physicists know exactly how planes fly and plane go up, air go down is a perfectly reasonable explanation. But if you want more, there's a ton of math you can learn and it's really fun. So, I'm happy that you get to go do that now.

[00:16:45]But we got to stop allowing this on the internet. Censor the internet. No, but I just we got we got to stop giving space to this. Physicists don't even know how planes fly. Physicists don't even know the color purple. Physicists don't understand bumblebee. Like, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? And why is it planes? Why not cars? You know how cars work? Road go down, car go up.

[00:17:10]It's the same thing. No one's ever like physicists don't understand how cars work. And you had run into the same situation where you're like, "Hey, what do you mean road go down, car go up?"

[00:17:21]And one physicist would talk about like tire pressure and one physicist would start talking about combustion engines.

[00:17:28]Like why is it only about planes? I don't get it. You know how humans walk. Why why is it just planes that you're confused about? Like shouldn't that confusion apply to how everything moves? How all forces work? What's going on with this?

[00:17:45]I didn't I don't know. Anyway, back back to the show. We're done with this.

[00:17:52]Actually, no. Okay. There's a lecture on YouTube by Doug McClean, who used to be like a professional fellow guy at Boeing. And this video has over 800,000 views, which gives evidence to the fact that I'm telling you, there are people around going, they don't even know how planes work. Crazy pants. We We do. We do know how planes work. But in this video with 800,000, this is a video he gave a guest lecture at some random college course and this video has 800,000 views because people think physicists don't know how planes work.

[00:18:28]Anyway, it's a fun lecture. Plane go up, air go down is also not good enough for him. You know, that's probably why he became a professional aviation engineer.

[00:18:40]But he talks about all these misconceptions with flights and all the little details you can get into with the explanation. So like if you're interested in how physicists know how planes fly, you could go watch that video. All right, I'll link it below. He also links his book, which I'm sure is very good and very detailed on, you know, plane go up, air go down, but you shouldn't buy it. Not because I don't think it's good. I'm sure it's fine because you're going to pay $130 and receive print ondemand garbage. WY, why do you think it's fine to take my money and send me trash in the mail? Garbage.

[00:19:17]Don't ever buy books from WY. This is trash. Print on demand is trash and you should feel bad if you buy it and or sell it. Anyway, there's a review that I want to point out that kind of highlights this whole problem. Let me read it to you. From a United States customer, three stars. not as easy to grasp as he makes it on his YouTube.

[00:19:37]I know the easy to grasp explanation is plane go up, air go down. And if that's not good enough for you, you have to learn the math to understand it. And his book outlines all of that for you. But it's not easy to grasp. It takes effort, which is why it's really easy to sit around and be like, "Physicists couldn't even explain this to me without math, so they must not know." Oh, buddy. Now, back to the show. We're done with this.

[00:20:02]We don't ever need to mention this again. It's so fine.

[00:20:07]So, in the 1850s, big news. George Kay's done this thing. And then the next 50 years, people are like, "Guys, it's just around the corner. We are going to have airplanes. We are going to fly. Say goodbye to trains. Say goodbye to sailing across the Atlantic instead of we'll all be flying. Just you wait. Just you wait." And nothing happened for 50 years. Can you imagine your Lord Kelvin in 1902 and the last 50 years of your life have been spent with people describing this amazing tech that's just so close? It's just a year away soon.

[00:20:43]We're going to save everything. We're going to solve everything and it's been 50 years and nothing has happened.

[00:20:48]Wouldn't you be a little skeptical, too?

[00:20:50]Can you imagine what that's like? Oh, wait. Of course you can. Fusion is just 10 years away, right? I'm going to go to Mars in 10 years. as he says every single year for the past 25 years. We're we live in that world. We share that reality. Aren't you a little skeptical that fusion is just 10 years away because they've been saying it for 50 years? Aren't you a little skeptical? If someone popped up and they were like, I made a fusion. Wouldn't you be like, I'm not so sure about that because they've been saying it for 50 years and I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to need a little bit more evidence. Wouldn't you be exactly like Lord Kelvin? I think you would. I think you would I think you would be exactly like Lord Kelvin in 1902 600 days before being proven incredibly wrong. Are we calling that flying?

[00:21:39]And also, I'm going to be incredibly brave and I'm going to say something.

[00:21:45]Birds fly. They start on the ground.

[00:21:48]They go up into a tree. They flitter around. They can fly off a branch. They can go higher. They can go lower. They can dip and come back up. Gliding is not flying. If your flying machine requires that you start on like a big ramp and roll down it or jump off a mountain, are you flying or are you falling? I showed you this timeline that I said was very informative, but there are a bunch of things that you could put here of like people dying after falling off a mountain, people just filling a balloon with helium and then watching it go and being like, "That's a test of our airship." Like a lot of people hopped in a balloon that they had no method of directing it. They were just going where the wind fancied and then they died.

[00:22:36]That's not flying. That's floating. You know, of course, you can direct a balloon. This the first Zeppelin was in 1900. What is that called?

[00:22:50]Durigible. A durigible, you know, direction. You can you could drive it.

[00:22:54]You can drive a balloon, but not until 1900. Okay. In that 50-year empty period, people are just hopping in into helium balloons and floating wherever and dying. I have this book. Hang on.

[00:23:09]It's called The First Flight. It was printed by the National Park Service, RIP. And like it's the type of thing you buy in a museum. And they have a little history of flight.

[00:23:24]Okay. And they start with Chinese kites and also Chinese rockets. Flying a kite is not flying. Holding a kite is just gliding. Would you call rockets flying? That's my question. Like, do you watch a bottle rocket and think I could strap myself to a giant version of that?

[00:23:48]I don't think so. I would not include like listen, early rocketry in China, fascinating, interesting. I love to hear about it. And all of that should be included in the history of rocketry, not so much the history of aviation. Because when you strap yourself to a rocket, are you flying? People are losing their minds that I'm not mentioning this guy.

[00:24:10]Juan who? This is perhaps a real man, perhaps like a fable. He wanted to see the heavens, so he strapped a bunch of rockets. They had like real ass rockets in China in like 1200 BC. They they like they used it to make weapons. So like maybe rockets are bad, too. I don't know. But he strapped a bunch of rockets to a chair. allegedly and went up. Now, if he was briefly successful in this event, would you look at a man sitting in a chair with a bunch of rockets and say that man is flying? No. He's being catapulted. He's being thrown. Like, is this woman flying? No. Is Is this flying or is it floating? This isn't flying.

[00:24:55]This is falling. I mean, these people are not flying. They are being shot out of the atmosphere by a giant rocket. And even when they're doing this little bit, that's not really flying either. It requires lift.

[00:25:08]Are they sailing? I I don't think so.

[00:25:11]Like in Star Trek, they use nautical terminology, but they're they're not sailing. They're not on water. This is not flying. It's not sailing. It's not falling like when you're in orbit. This is some different third thing. This conversation I'm having with myself right now is like verging on quibbling.

[00:25:32]And God, if I ever quibble, just just put me out. Just end it for me. What's with quibbling? Quibbling is everywhere lately. It's like um whimsy. Have you noticed whimsy is everywhere? But at least whimsy is fun. What's with the quibble? Don't understand the quibble.

[00:25:46]Like by definition, when you announce you have a quibble, you're announcing you don't have anything interesting to say. like what you're about to say is so non-essential that it doesn't need to be said. So I would question why you're saying it. What's with the quibble and why are people doing it? The thing about quibblers is that they always open with just a small quibble and it's like so you know it's a quibble then why just say say nothing. What you know who quibbles? People who think they can pedantic their way into convincing others that physicists don't understand flying just because they specifically don't understand math. That's the person who quibbles. This what I'm doing right now. I'm trying to define what flying is is not a quibble because I think it's necessary to the discussion on why a professional scientist man very famous would very publicly give an interview 600 days before being proven wrong. That definitively no we will never fly commercially. It will never happen.

[00:26:44]Because for the last 50 years people have called gliding flying. They've called floating flying. That's not flying. I read this book called Sky High. I know there there's a movie. I've never seen it, but like I should pretend to to improve our parasocial relationship if you happen to like that movie. But this book called Skyh High, it was written in 1930, you know, after flight had happened and it was kind of about all the efforts of flying, just lots of pictures of machine designs.

[00:27:17]Is drawing a picture of an airship, never building it, never testing it, not understanding any science about it, like a contribution to aviation? Because the author of this book, the authors seem to think that it is just dozens of like, this guy drew this ship. It looks like this. Like, I could just draw a spaceship. Will you include me in the history of spaceship evolution? I don't think so. Anyway, imagine it's 1873.

[00:27:42]you've told me, professional scientist, that you've built an airship and you're going to display it in a field. People are going to come watch the news is going to be there. They want you there to be like a scientist. And you're like, "Okay, but it's 1870, so planes don't exist." So, you you drive like a moto car or a carriage to like London. It takes two days to go 37 miles. I don't know. I don't know anything about history. You get on a train in London, it's all dodgy. You're all tired and sick from the travel. You probably have tuberculosis now. And you get out, you walk to the field, and this [ __ ] has a giant ramp. And it's like, you're not flying then. You're going to roll down a ramp and then be up in the air, and then you're going to fancy fall to the ground, and that's not flying.

[00:28:31]Imagine how annoying that is. You hear, "Oh, big news in the papers. Someone built the flying machine." and you get to the image and it's a freaking drawing of a giant ramp. That's not flying. Like a lot of the early days of learning to fly was not like the calculated experimental structured study of the Wright brothers. It was a guy convincing his friend to get in a helium balloon and then crashing to their fiery deaths.

[00:28:58]Do you know what I mean? I can understand hearing all of these reports, 50 years of people just falling to their deaths and being like, "Come on, guys.

[00:29:08]It's never going to happen." Come on, guys. That's not flying. That's not what flying is. Do you know what I mean? I understand where Kelvin is coming from.

[00:29:18]In 1902, aviation was not his field.

[00:29:26]If you go back to the interview that started this video, half of it is him being like, "Commercial flight will never happen. I wish he'd stop asking me about it even.

[00:29:36]Like, who cares?" The second half is about radio transmissions. This is more in line with what Kelvin actually worked on and studied in his life. And when talking about this, Kelvin is like, "Hell yeah, dude. you could totally see a future where we're transmitting radio signals wirelessly for communication.

[00:29:57]And the guy's like, but how would you keep those secret? And he's like, of course, there are plenty of ways to keep radio transmission secret. The first thing is that you have to know where the signal is coming from and how to read the signal. Like that would be totally fine. He's even like, hey, we could probably talk to Martians with radio signals. See, see the difference? like that's his field, an area he knows about, an area where he can make an informed prediction on. And he was right.

[00:30:24]Why are they asking him about aviation?

[00:30:27]He doesn't work in that field. He doesn't know anything about aviation any more than random man. Do you know what I mean? So, I'm supposed to be reading about Maxwell, but I've been sidetracked. I've been reading a lot about the Wright brothers. And the thing that I found really interesting about the Wright brothers is that while they were vocal about we want to build a plane, they were very quiet about their actual research. And you know, this could have been because if they were successful, they stood to make like a [ __ ] ton of money. But it could also be if you keep your failures quiet, people will be more excited about your successes. And one of the things that stands out when you're reading interviews with the Wright brothers is that the interviewers are constantly like, "It must have been so devastating to get your plane all the way to Kittyhawk and then watch it crash and fail." And the Wright brothers were like, "What? That that's not really how it happened because they have their little bicycle shop in Dayton and they're doing test after test after test. They're making little scale models. They're scaling them up. They built a windch tunnel and they were blowing air through it to see how the wings would move and stuff. So by the time they got to test flight, they pretty much knew what was going to happen and that's the way to do it. But also, how would you expect Lord Kelvin, a man from across the Atlantic, to even be aware of what the Wright brothers were doing? How would you expect him to know? That's not what he studied. He wasn't like reading news up on how planes fly. The problem I have with this interviewer from the year 1900 is the problem I have with a lot of modern interviewers, which is like, why are you expecting that man to know every single piece of science when that's not his field? He doesn't know any more about planes than like your average person. Why are you expecting him to know? And that's one of the reasons it would be so crazy for me to be in the future and make fun of him for not knowing what like how would he know? How would he know? Another thing that I haven't mentioned is that a lot of the calculations and the physics done towards navy niation aviation up to this point often concerned vehicles that were powered by man.

[00:32:44]So, back of the envelope, if you imagine how heavy the copper blades have to be to propel a 200lb man up into the sky, you have to imagine a man moving a machine that weighs 400 or 500 lb. And and in your back of the envelope calculation, it's like, oh, of course, a man cannot sustain powered navigated flight when he is responsible for propelling the propeller with his like legs moving on like a bicycle spoke or something. If it weighs 500 lb, it's just not very achievable for someone to fly a machine like that across the Atlantic. Flight doesn't make sense. And I can understand if you're Lord Kelvin and you're a young man, you might do that back of the envelope calculation and then go, "Oh, this would never work." And this is also what would happen like a lot of the time, like someone would build a little toy, like a little copper ball that floats down. You rip a rip cord and it flitters away, right? And then they would scale it up and they would shove an underweight 8-year-old girl in it and she could like bicycle pedal and like lift off the ground a little bit and people were like, "See, we can do it." And then like a materials guy would come over and be like, "When you scale this up, that copper would be so thin and also so heavy that it will just collapse upon itself and this will never work." And of course, the people would just try it and fall to their deaths.

[00:34:13]All of this, I think, makes sense leading a man to go, "It will never happen." You guys, we've watched so many people die. Like, let's just stop with this. Of course, you know, Kelvin neglected the gasoline engine. Like, why would airplanes ever be powered by the bodies of humans? That makes no sense.

[00:34:36]Why would that ever be the option?

[00:34:38]Kelvin, you're aware of the steam engine. Why would you think we're bicycling our way into the air? That's crazy, dude.

[00:34:46]But haven't we all been there? Haven't we all been making predictions about the future, and we neglect that engines exist? Of course, it's fine. But also, humanpowered flying machines do exist.

[00:35:00]Here's one. The first ones that happened were like airplane style. This video is like an anniversary recreation of it.

[00:35:09]And much more recent is this giant manpowered helicopter.

[00:35:17]And these are the type of things that I think Kelvin was talking about when he said these will never be practicable because physically this helicopter is definitely getting up in the air. Like but can you imagine flying this carrying water to put out a forest fire or something? No. This is a circus trick, right? This would never appear as a commercial company, as a thing that you would take to get where you're going. This is only a party trick. So, he was kind of right.

[00:35:54]He just neglected gasoline engine.

[00:35:59]And I mean, haven't we all haven't we all neglected the gasoline engine?

[00:36:05]So, you know, thanks thanks for watching the least viewed video on my channel where I talk about this guy said a weird thing. I wonder why he said that. Um, but I wanted to end with Arthur Seekclar. He's got these three laws and one of them, what is it? I'm not going to say it right. Oh, no.

[00:36:23]Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Is that Wikipedia the words? There you go. And I like that. I think that that makes a lot of sense. Like imagine going back in time and grabbing Newton being like, "You got to stop being so weird about ladies." But also saying, you know, in the future we can use particles to look inside a human body without cutting them open. It's actually probably a bad example. I feel like Newton would understand that as soon as you explained it, but you you get it. Like anything sufficiently advanced just seems crazy.

[00:36:57]I read this book recently called The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Kawa and I have complicated feelings about it. I don't recommend it. It's fine. But in that book, there is a species of aliens that live on this planet called winter.

[00:37:10]And because of the the the ecology, no ecosystem, climate, the climate, the climate of that planet, they don't have any birds.

[00:37:21]So when this alien is like, "We drive these airships and then also we just made spaceships that are kind of like the airships but they travel through the void of space." They're just like, "What? How would we ever how would we even know it was possible to fly on air?

[00:37:34]We've never seen it, you know? Whereas of course on Earth, on human, we have birds. So to them, an airship would seem like magic. You get it? I like that.

[00:37:44]That makes sense to me. Because birds exist, and I'm sure Kelvin had seen a bird at some point in his life, I think we should interpret his declarative statement of impossibility as not that human flight was impossible, but that it would never be commercial because he didn't understand the problem. He was imagining a human body powering a vehicle. He just didn't think that you could just put an engine in a plane. So, like I I kind of see what he's saying. But also inside Arthur C. Clark's little laws, there is one that's also applicable, which I actually wrote down so I can read it to you. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he's almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he's very probably wrong. And I like this one, too. Right? He says, "Hey, radio wireless transmissions are definitely possible and they'll be very useful and we'll definitely have those up and running soon." And he was right. He says, "Commercial airflight will never happen. Stop asking me about it." And he was very, very wrong. This little adage perfectly applies to this situation. But looking at this little adage, you can apply it to Lord Kelvin, but I I don't think you can really apply it today. I don't think it works anymore. I mean, first of all, because we don't have distinguished science anymore, we have tech bros, and the tech bros are stupid and they say stupid [ __ ] all the time.

[00:39:10]Like, a tech bro is like, I'm going to put a data center in space. He says it's possible. So, according to the adage, we should assume that it's possible, but he's an idiot and he doesn't know what he's talking about. Do you know what I mean? So, like, I don't that's kind of sad. We don't have distinguished scientists anymore. We just have tech bros, so this doesn't apply. But also, the internet has changed the way people communicate. And I don't think you can just make statements like this anymore.

[00:39:38]The same way if Kelvin existed right now, he would definitely be an evil billionaire. But he would also have learned from the internet not to say [ __ ] like, "It's impossible. It will never happen." If you're aware of how the internet works, you know, you can never make a declarative statement like that. You have to say things like, "Listen, AI doesn't exist right now, but maybe there's some sort of paradigm shift miracle in how we understand the brain that could let it work sometime in the future. Who knows? Maybe." You guys, I made a video and I said Dyson spheres are dumb. I said if if a civilization has the technical capability of taking apart a Jupiter, a massive Jupiter which is mostly hydrogen and taking that hydrogen and somehow doing nuclear physics to to make it buildable materials and using those buildable materials to make millions of solar panels. They wouldn't need to do that. I said, "Therefore, Dyson spheres are stupid. It doesn't make any sense because if you can't do it, you don't need to do it." And would you believe I got the Arthur C. Clark quote. Would you believe people were like, if you know, if someone says it's impossible, that's how you know it's going to happen. You see how this got turned into, well, if someone says it's impossible, it has to be true. That's what the internet has done to us. I don't think you can have this anymore. And isn't that interesting? It's just that the world is very different. How we communicate and exchange information is very different from like the 1970s when Arthur C. Clark was writing. And it's very very different from 1902 when Kelvin was like, I don't know. Why are you asking me about this? I don't think it's real.

[00:41:24]Let it go, man. All those people died.

[00:41:26]Do you know what I mean? I I found this whole journey very interesting because I read Kelvin's quote and I was like, this guy sucks. But then once you think about it, you think about historically where the world is and what kind of person Kelvin was, I think you can convince yourself that like it makes sense. It makes sense for him to be like, "Guys, it's not commercially viable. Buy my Kelvin's balls.

[00:42:23]End of video thoughts, discussions. Okay. Um, I'm going to end this video with a discussion section that you can have with your friends and loved ones. Okay.

[00:42:34]In this book, John Glenn wrote the introduction and he said, "Aviation was the defining technology of the 20th century, altering international relations, quickening commerce, changing the face of war."

[00:42:48]And um, I like it. Aviation, the defining technology of the 20th century. That's interesting. I would have said transistors or perhaps you know the internet computers. What would you say?

[00:43:03]I mean, I would never ever in a million years have said aviation like first blush if someone said, "Hey, what's the most important invention of the 20th century?" But I feel like you can make a really good argument for it. And I think that's interesting.