The Top 5 Amazing Things I Love About Physics

1.       Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – What’s not to love? Know the position of a quantum particle? Then you can’t accurately know its momentum. Vice versa. Ever.

2.       Quantum entanglement - Entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by vast, vast distances. When that was first explained to me it seemed a little like magic, not science.

3.       Dark Matter - 84.5% of the total matter in the universe. But we can’t see it, feel it, measure it. All we can do is infer that it exists from the gravitational effect it has on other matter. Mad, Ted.

4.       Time dilation in relativity  - The theory that people travelling close to the speed of light and then returning to Earth would have aged less than those they left behind because of the nature of the way time bends with regards to gravity or velocity. It even happens in tiny (but measurable) ways with regards to astronauts after they return from the ISS.

5.       Multiverse theory - Not the way Doc Brown explains it in Back To The Future with skewing timelines and impossible to explain in 25 words or less. Still very experimental but with some hard physics behind it. Look some recent articles up and have your mind blown…

This guest post was written by Rick O'Shea, a radio presenter for RTÉ 2fm who tweets .