Did You Know This Genius Changed Physics Forever?

Dr Brian Keating • December 19, 2025
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Dr Brian Keating

@drbriankeating

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🧠Our Universe’s Brightest Minds🧠 Every week I provide you with long-form interviews with a brilliant thought-leader or a deep-dive into a fascinating STEM subject. I'm the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego where my team & I study the origin & evolution of space, time, & matter. Scientists are obligated to explain their work in simple terms to non-experts. I think scientifically and I will teach you how to, too. I wrote INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE & LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE, which was selected as a 'Best Science Book' at Science Friday and one of the best non-fiction books of all time according to Amazon. I'm on a mission to magnify curiosity, stoke imagination, & inspire minds of all ages.

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Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 Pilgrimage mode: kilt on, chapeau secured, and I’m standing outside 14 India Street, Edinburgh — the birthplace of the physicist I’d nominate as the quiet GOAT: James Clerk Maxwell. In this solo vlog, I walk the neighbourhood where Maxwell grew up, try (and fail) to get into the small museum without a reservation, and connect the dots from Maxwell’s equations to the modern world: Wi-Fi, GPS, power grids, and yes… a Tesla charging across the street from his childhood home. Along the way, we hit the essentials: • Why Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism into a single theory that implied light is an electromagnetic wave — basically the operating system of modern physics • The ether problem: why even Maxwell thought light “needed” a medium, and how that set the stage for the next revolution • How the Michelson–Morley null result and Einstein’s 1905 leap reframed what’s absolute (spoiler: not space, not time — but the speed of light) • Maxwell the polymath: the first colour photograph via RGB filtering, Saturn’s rings, precision measurement and standards, and the founding spirit of the Cavendish Laboratory • Why polarisation mattered to Maxwell, and why it matters to cosmology now — including the hunt for subtle twists in the CMB polarisation, and what cosmic birefringence would mean for fundamental symmetries If you’ve ever wondered why one 19th-century Scot is hiding inside nearly every piece of 21st-century technology, this is your guided walk. CHAPTERS 00:00 Kilted pilgrimage begins 00:32 Maxwell’s Edinburgh origin story (and my museum plea) 01:27 Tesla charging across from Maxwell’s house 02:24 The prodigy years + Cambridge arc 03:00 Maxwell as “natural philosopher” + why he matters now 04:33 “Let there be light” (and what the equations really changed) 06:25 Ether, gears, and the bridge to modern physics Video & Edited by Sheikh Media Website: sheikh.media LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmadisapro/ This video contains commentary and criticism under Fair Use (17 U.S.C. §107). All third-party clips, articles, and documents are used for educational and critical purposes. Sources & Credits YouTube Clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFZpkB3igC8&t=58s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNPwfQDrK5Q&t=42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sghTX3Zc1sE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh3EfcNzKjI&t=9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWCN_uI5ygY&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6gd3bQLiFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-vS2nVRGc8&t=46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Dh35gejuc&t=548s Articles & Documents: https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF9-04McNatt.pdf https://www.bem.fi/library/1865-001.pdf https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf Google Images and Wikipedia were used for general reference. AI Tools Used: VEO, Flow, Hygen, Seedance, Nano Bnana, and others for audio and visuals. Stock Footage & Media: All stock footage, audio, and images used from premium licensed accounts: Wondershare Filmora, Shutterstock, Epidemic Sounds, Canva, and Pexels. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join 📚 Get my books: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Follow me to ask questions of my guests: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating

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