An established physicist she may be, and a science communicator. This however does not preclude the possibility that she may be wrong. Just because she is a scientist, her theories are not cast in stone and should not be taken as proven science. They are what they are: theories.
She also has a quirky sense of humour, which may not be to everyone's liking.
That is why my contention is, that it would take a professional physicist to counter her arguments regarding the possibility of FTL travel. We cannot do that with any degree of authority, we cannot throw equations back at her to counter her arguments. We do not have the required in-depth knowledge.
As Crims said, and I noted it as well, she hardly ever concludes any argument she puts forward, before leaving it hanging and moving on to the next one. I am not impressed by her throwing equations at us, and leaving it there. She knows damn well that most of her viewers do not take mathematical equations with their breakfast cereals.
Firstly, her tagline is "science without the gobbledygook" which is why she doesn't go into the equations in depth, but does sometimes suggest the viewer look up more in-depth info to understand the subject better, including those equations. Her channel is about scientifc explanations at the concept level in short videos that most people can understand.
They are what they are: theories."
You misunderstand the word theory, but it's really important to use it correctly before we discuss this further. A theory is a hypothesis underpinned with a lot of facts verified by scientific experimentation and peer review. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is perhaps the best known one. What you mean is hypothesis, or idea, which doesn't need any facts for it to exist and indeed, all theories start out as such until the experimental data verifies them, or they remain as such if the data disproves them. nvm, unfortunately, this misunderstanding is engrained in society which is why you had it wrong too, but it's important to use it correctly when discussing science. I did as well until I looked up the proper usage of theory some time ago.
That is why my contention is, that it would take a professional physicist to counter her arguments regarding the possibility of FTL travel.
That's probably true, or at least someone with more knowledge about this than we do. However, you can be confident that she's not BSing you due to her good reputation. It's also true that General Relativity doesn't actually preclude FTL travel. It's more like lightspeed is a barrier that must be crossed which we haven't figured out how to do yet, which she explained. I know this last fact from other sources too, so can confirm that she's correct here.
You should browse her list of videos and watch one or two more to get a better sense of what she's about. I've posted quite a few on NZ, or you can browse her channel for one you fancy watching. Please do use Brave to view them to get rid of the ads though.
btw, I really like her deadpan sense of humour.
I'd like to see what you and
@Crims mean by her apparently circular arguments, but to be honest, it's too much effort to watch the video all over again and I doubt that they really are, so I'm gonna leave that as undetermined since she's not normally not one for circular reasoning.
....At the end of her presentations, she never forgets to plug some paid-for courses she would like us to subscribe to.
Nothing wrong with that. Most established channels plug some sponsor which funds them being able to make those videos and I would too if I had a YouTube channel. To her credit, she leaves it to the end, so that it doesn't interrupt the content. Most others stick it somewhere at the start or the middle so that it catches you out and have to tediously skip it. It's very respectful towards the viewer and she should be given credit for doing it this way.
