A note for those visiting: the path down is incredibly steep and slippery. There is a rope to help, and you may need it: but there's also a sign warning you that it's dangerous, and advising that you look from the hilltop instead. If you do go, please be very, very careful!
After all these years, his judgment about what makes for a good topic and how to present it has earned my trust, more than any other youtuber I follow and countless I don't.
When I was growing up, dinosaurs weren't related to birds, pluto was alone in its orbital distance, and the coelacanth was extinct. None of these discoveries required breakthroughs in technology that didn't exist when I was born, but they did require someone to look a the dogma of the day and say "hang on a second... take a look at this..."
As a former geology student, I'm so happy whenever geology gets any attention at all. Siccar Point is talked about in almost every introductory geology textbook ever printed.
Recent geology student listening to this at work, my eyes almost rolled into the back of my head when I realized it was this story. It's like a story a grandfather repeats every holiday presenting it as super fresh lmao. Maybe I'll feel more nostalgia for it in a few years, but this short video didn't really get into some of the most interesting parts of James Hutton's life revolving around this discovery ((to me)) so I probably wasn't going to find it that entertaining anyways.
I would take a guess that "The Ocean" is the final place left where such a discovery can take place. Satelite imagery helps us little, and it is still very much unexplored. Perhaps, someday we will venture down the right bit of blue and find something as simple, yet groundbreaking as this
Agree completely Just want to say ( before anyone brings it up) We have now "explored" 20-30% of the oceans, not 5%. Because it always annoys me when people say "anything could be down there"
I love that sentiment! Great "not in-depth video about geology"! Edit/add: I used to envy the scientists from back in the day - there was so much low hanging fruit it’s easy to imagine they could just go out and pick some, but also back in the day, their metaphorical arms were a whole lot shorter. Figuring out the fundamental laws of physics, or geology, or anything, feels trivial when you were taught it at school, but these people started from square zero and figured out what we now take for *granite*. Today if you want to make a theoretical physics discovery you need a thousand people and a supercollider, but I’m not convinced it was personally any easier for Newton…
I love Playfair’s quote about his time on that boat trip: “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time”. When accepted knowledge was that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, this sudden acceptance that it was actually much much much older must have had quite the overview effect.
I doubt we can even understand these numbers. We view time with the eyes of something that won't be here for more than a century. To put it in perspective. If we could travel back in time at a speed of 1 year every second, we would see our birth in less than a minute an a half of travel. And 1 million years is very small in geological time, yet we would be sitting 11 days in our time machine just to travel that short "time distance"
You never know, somewhere in the world there might be a small rock containing a mineral compound or elementary isotope that wasn't previously known to occur naturally.
Most likely would turn up as an meteorite somewhere that's a geode or the like that while technically easily visible and reachable no one thought to open up that random pebble. Would make a intresting story real or fiction.
Or at the bottom of the ocean an incredibly rare species of animal containing a chemical compound that can reverse biological aging or cure cancer or make you bust a nut upon contact, y'know something really incredible.
The most important factor of Tom's question of "low-hanging fruit" is how we consider what is low-hanging. As humans become better and more comfortable in more hostile environments, as greater masses of people have more access to the technology and techniques of exploration and the education needed to know what they're looking at when they see it, the tree of knowledge steadily bends toward us, and things that now seem "low-hanging" were out of reach for most not that long ago. It is immensely comforting for me to know that many of the things that are only just attainable by the most expert of researchers today will be "basic high-school" science in a generation or two.
Alternately, remember that people have been sleeping together as long as we've been human - but there's no documentation of rapid eye movement in sleep before 1953. Many individuals must have noticed, but it didn't get into our collective knowledge until within living memory. Humans kept bees for at least 4000 years before we figured out the bee space (you can google it) and learned how to easily harvest honey without harming the bees or the hive. I can't feel sure there's not something we're looking right past now that will be obvious once we notice it.
One of the most important lessons I've learned over the years is that just because it's in plain sight doesn't mean people will recognise it, on the contrary, most people will ignore things in plain sight. So there's a good chance that there are still quite a few discoveries left.
Humans have breathed oxygen every second as long as we've existed, but we never realized oxygen even exists until Scheele, Priestley, and Lavoisier took a moment to analyze it.
I would add, it is not the seen action which is needed. The right person must assign it meaning and only then does it become something obvious to others. The 'others' start as the experts but in time it may move to the typical student at least in the well educated industrialized nations.
We've been keeping bees for thousands of years - but it wasn't until the 19th century that anyone worked out 'bee space' and, from that, how to make beehives that let us harmlessly harvest honey without damaging or even destroying the hive. The ancient Egyptians could have built modern style box-like beehives if they'd just known the trick.
I live in the centre of Australia. For a century biologists heard legend about a parrot living in the desert. No proof has ever been found till a farmer found one nesting in his barn this year.
There are lots of things still undiscovered. Just look at the bottom of the ocean, the top of the night sky, or the inside of your mom's locked drawer.
How eels make babies. That's not a google search I wrote in the wrong place, but an answer to Tom's final question (and a good video topic IMO). We know that they have to (obviously), that it happens somewhere in the mid-Atlantic for both American and European sub species, but nobody has found where, how or when. Aristotle used to think they spontaneously appeared out of mud. Freud (the famous one) dissected hundred of eels hoping to find testicles, but failed. All it would take is one lucky boat at the right time and the right place and a millennia old question would be resolved.
dont we kind of know when it is (roughly) since they all migrate away from their usual habitats? but also this has been the topic of several dinner table discussions in my family, and is one of my favourite strange facts(or lack of fact i suppose) to throw at people
Similar with Great Whites. Though we do know how they reproduce it has never been captured on camera or witnessed that we know of and we are uncertain where it happens.
My graduate advisor always said “the oceans are the final frontier of geology.” Siccar Point is an awesome place. If you visit, take a notebook and sketch what you see, putting your self in Hutton’s shoes. One of the coolest things I’ve done.
The oceans are also just the final frontier in general. Up until just a few years ago only two people had ever been to the deepest point, but now that frontier is being conquered.
Thank you for a great little "rock talk". I've been practicing geology for 30+ years. Lovely location. There are indeed many 'undiscovered' gems of geology in the world. I've found a few myself, and have papers about them. It's part of what I love about geology. The stories are just waiting to be found. Right below our feet.
"Literally just three minutes where I talk about some rocks"....and inform, educate and reveal something absolutely interesting and inspire everyone's curiosity to wonder with a new perspective about our natural world.
The recent(ish) aerial LiDAR survey of the jungle in Guatemala has revealed thousands of previously undiscovered ancient Mayan structures that have the potential to completely change our understanding of pre-columbian civilizations. Just an example of something new. It's easy to look back through history at all the scientific discoveries we've made and compare them with the discoveries being made RIGHT NOW, and come to the conclusion that the pace of scientific progress has slowed, or that all the good stuff has already been found and there's nothing left to discover. Remember, though, we look at the scientific discoveries of the past with the benefit of time. We know about the past because we've had time to study it and construct a narrative for it. We don't know about the present. There is progress being made right now that we don't know about, because it hasn't found its way into common knowledge yet. Scientific discoveries, however earth-shattering, take years or decades or even centuries before they become commonly known. So what will people 200 years from now say about the science of today? Who knows? But there is always more to discover. Everytime we think we've filled in all the corners of the map, the camera pulls back to show just how much there is left to discover.
Agreed - but that’s an anthropological and sociological find, not a geological one. It’s every bit of interesting in those fields, just not what Tom was wondering about.
@@michaelfoxbrass LiDAR is huge for geology too, in heavily forested areas like Washington state it has recently allowed us to determine the exact locations of previously undetected faults and ancient landslides.
Hearing someone talk so passionately about something that are not noticed by most is always refreshing for me. I admit that I find geology to be a recent interest of mine, how mountains were formed, how breathtaking they are, but also gemstones, minerals, metals, that Lapis Lazuli was sourced for generations from only one mine in Afghanistan, and so on. It's a topic I know next to nothing about, but one that I find genuinely fascinating when I do take the time to research it.
I'm certain there is still "low hanging fruit" to find. We just don't recognize it. It only looks easy, AFTER you understand it. We don't know what we are looking for. It only appears to be easy "low-hanging fruit" with hindsight and knowledge. Believing that we have "finally" discovered everything 'easy' is nonsense .... everyone in history thinks that, until the next big discovery comes along. Progress will happen, and the biggest discoveries will look "easy" with hindsight.
@@plovet I mean, the last 150 years of scientific discovery have all been fairly... not-simple In physics, for example, we moved to quantum mechanics, general relativity and the standard model. None of which is particularly intuitive
@@plovet We now know about things so small, our eyes can't see them even with massive lenses to help. We can manipulate the very matter that makes us, we are starting to read brains and create our own. We know about distant space and structures so large no single human can comprehend them. Our tools to learn new things need tools built to build the tools we use to make them. I'd say it's fair to believe the low hanging fruit is gone.
Tom, I believe there are many more discoveries like this to be made. Every age likes to imagine it knows nearly everything there is to know, and so far every one has been proven wrong.
I was also thinking we may have already made similar discoveries in recent history, we just don't know it yet. Tom Scott said it took a lifetime for the theory to be accepted by the scientific community, it's only now 200 years later we can go "duh".
Couldn't agree more. There are so many things that seem blindingly obvious when you know about them, but are otherwise just... nothing. We just need someone to be able to notice that nothing, AND be able to spread the word and knowledge well enough that the nothing isn't forgotten when they stop thinking about it. It's like biologists saying that if you want to discover a new species, the best place to look is your own back garden!
Humans look at things either too close or too far. Sometimes we just need to open our eyes and look around with them and we might get to see something new
I'd say this was one of the best three minutes of rock I've had in my life so far, second only to Mumbo Jumbo's recent video about a geologist reacting to Hermitcraft
I was here yesterday, by chance. I fancied a walk and a look at the sea. I got there, read the sign and saw the view and had a "hang on a minute!..." moment where I realised I'd seen it in one of your videos
lovely! but I like to think that "Low hanging fruit" really depends on how tall our ladders are. And our ladders are much taller than they were in 1788
@@bearcubdaycare That reminds me that we can now see platypuses have bioluminesence too... Honestly there's just so much we don't don't know, even though we know a lot! There are known unknowns, but the unknown unknowns make it difficult for us to grasp exactly how much we are missing.
As someone who's interested in pure math, I think about that last question a lot. It seems really likely that the only significant advances in math these days will be made by (and understood by) people with years of specialized technical training, but of course we don't know that for sure.
There's lots of, albeit specific use case, theories that are still getting improved to this day. Stuff like superpermutations, that normal people can understand. So don't lose hope.
I think a lot of new math advances are used in technologies we use every day, math will certainly help science and technology. Quantum computers for example would probably be better with more advanced math
Cellular automata! Automata are some of my favorite things in math that an everyday person could easily pick up and discover an entirely new way of making things work and wouldn't even necessarily know that they had done something amazing! Graph theory too, to an extent
There are some problems in number theory where the question itself can be started simply enough, but solving it will certainly take some extremely advanced mathematics. Fermat's last theorem was like this. The twin prime conjecture and the Collatz conjecture are a couple of currently unproven examples I can think of.
In math, I think the closest recent thing to this was that one time when 4chan, of all places, solved a problem (how do I watch my anime in every possible order in the most efficient way) that stumped the mathematicians for 25 years or so.
I think everything we've missed so far is likely still on or near the ocean floor. Might be a few years, or major geological events, before we have something new we can walk to.
Having literally only taken one college level course on tectonics and geology I got excited the moment I saw vertical sedimentary rock, and more so when you talked about the horizontal strata on top of it!
In the capital of Norway, Oslo, we got very similar geological formations. They are most notable and available on Bygdøy, but can be spotted around Oslo and on both sides of the Oslofjord ("Oslofjorden"). This is the part of a geological area called "The Oslo Rift".
I think the most recent is probably the "discovery" that the Coelacanth was not a long extinct animal, but that they were living in reasonable numbers off the coast of Africa. That happened in 1938 when a museum curator happened to see one in a fisherman's boat in South Africa. We have since discovered a second species of this fish in a distant separate area of the Indian ocean. Yes they are rare and regarded as endangered animals but we have something on this planet of a species which has been around for over 350 million years. We may yet find more strange and long thought as extinct creatures in our oceans, so further discoveries should not be unexpected. So let's be thankful for the surprises we can still find.
Tom, I feel like your small speech at the end there about simple, yet un-discovered ideas really rings home the point of how we as humanity have outgrown small science. Now, we are in the age of big science, where more then one person with way more sophisticated tools than simple hand held tools or their eyes are making discoveries.
I would say that the reasonably recent Mpemba effect definitely applies as one of those "low hanging fruit" you speak of, but yes, to your point, they must be very rare those which still exist.
Nah, Aristotle was on it *long* before the 1950s: "The fact that the water has previously been warmed contributes to its freezing quickly: for so it cools sooner. Hence many people, when they want to cool water quickly, begin by putting it in the sun. So the inhabitants of Pontus when they encamp on the ice to fish (they cut a hole in the ice and then fish) pour warm water round their reeds that it may freeze the quicker, for they use the ice like lead to fix the reeds."
I love this! They are very cool rocks :-) Back in the 90s, child-aged me was on a boat trip with a friend's family from Pease Bay, and "discovered" the formation there. Nobody else on the boat seemed at all bothered about it, but I took a (film!) photo to show my parents, and I was kind of disappoined to hear it was already well-known to geologists.
thats so cool, bet you were so proud off yourself at the time xd I do A-level geology and saw a programme on this last week then did it in college this morning so definitely wont forget this.
This reminds me of Crail beach in Fife! There are petrified tree stumps in their life position and arthropleura tracks, and caves! Please visit this place too and show people how amazing rocks in Scotland are :D
I can tell this means a lot to you, and it's a great message you're sending, followed by a great question. Thank you for getting me to watch literally 3 minutes where you talk about rocks.
I work with autonomous underwater robotics, and I think such a discovery is highly likely to be made on the sea floor one day. We know more about space than we do of the sea floor but with the technology being developed today, underwater exploration will soon bring new knowledge of the planet we live on.
Another tidbit of geologic history: the British Isles were once connected to mainland Europe, and in fact were just the "highest" parts of an entire region called "Doggerland." Eventually the seas rose and the surrounding areas were submerged, turning Britain into an island (a geologic Brexit)
I think there's plenty more discoveries like this to happen. So much we just take for given that we don't even think about it until someone asks the right question. We also have millions of years of biology that are barely explored because all we have is fossils from the hard parts and some extremely rare impressions of soft parts. For example: We have zero direct evidence that ammonites had tentacles. Zilch. Not a single fossil or impression of their tentacles or how their soft body parts looked at all. The only reason we think they had tentacles is because we can see a progression of shells into an internal shell like cuttlefish's, and a separate lineage that we can sorta trace to nautiluses. But we're still to find a fossil that decidedly proves they had tentacles, and even then we'd still have the mystery of when and how did those tentacles evolve. Someone might have found rocks with those exact impressions and just thought it's a neat pattern, brought it home, only for their spouse to throw it away because they thought it was just a rock of no value, or used it to decorate their backyard. I think there's still countless discoveries like this out there waiting. Staring us in the face while we're completely oblivious to it until someone realizes what they mean and happens upon it.
Interesting fact on the evidence of tentacle-less ammonites, or lack of evidence of tentacled ones! So, I always have to ask myself is; “Am I looking for what I expect to find, and does that inform, or corrupt, my search criteria, and more so, my observations and interpretations of what I experience?”
It reminds me of some of the stories I've read on some blog reposted to some other site- stuff like the weird circle of bricks in old houses that *still existed in modern houses in the area* (it's for chicken herding), and unidentified bone implements that turned out to still be in use in modern professions and *still made out of bone*.
For discoveries waiting in plain sight, I'd argue that they will be larger in scale. That is, as we survey other planets in our local system we may learn stunning truths about our own and as we look at the stars and galaxies, new truths are to be found. Of course, there are probably discoveries to be made at the very very small scale as well.
bro i love your videos so much. so much. after seconds of watching, my interest peaks more than it already had, and none of it is boring. ever except when the video hasn't started. and like 2 seconds in
Me, who is studying geology for about 2 years: if I would only lose 3 minutes to these unfortunately interesting rocks... But well done, interesting short video about an essential topic!
i clicked on this video because of the pure honesty. no clickbait, just "hey, i like these rocks, lets talk about it.". and that disserves to be rewarded.
I’ve got an excellent book, called ‘The Floating Egg’, by Roger Osborne, that covers some similar subjects to those Tom is looking at here. It’s a collection of short stories, all with a link to Yorkshire, that range across a variety of topics related to scientific discoveries made through good old fashioned observation of the world around us combined with the application of scientific methods. Well worth a look if you’re into these sorts of things!
Respect to the guy who not only figured out this theory but also had the will and resources to go out and try to prove it with merely the technology available hundreds of years ago. I hope he was proud of what he had achieved.
this is how you make geography interesting, by just having this avaliable and allowing people's curiosity to be what allows them to learn because being curious about something helps someone learn a lot more than forcing someone to read textbooks does
This is the most interesting rock-related video on this platform. You did a great job explaining all of this. Your ending stinger involving new discoveries leaves me wondering what that next big discovery could be, if we ever find one like it.
Tom. TOM. You took a topic that I'm excited about- I was told this story just a few years ago in the beginning of my Geology major- made it understandable and exciting for everyone, then posed a unique and interesting question about the nature of discovery. Incredible food for thought. Thank you!
As a geologist, I very much approve of the concise and to the point explanation of this unconformity! Very well done! And a spectacular sight to see. I will visit this place, should I find myself in the area.
Think about the Chicxulub crater, and how that was only discovered in the 70s (and accepted widely in the 90s) by a geologist working for an oil company who was taking core samples and figured out what they meant. Now we know why the dinosaurs died off. If I had to guess: a lot of the counterintuitive things in quantum physics will probably be solved, and future generations will laugh at our silly ideas of superposition. Remember, we don't know what we don't know.
This is how I think dark matter and dark energy will be remembered, as silly ideas made when we were missing some crucial pieces of information about the universe
I think you’re one of my favorite youtubers tbh. Such a simple video but absolutely stellar content wrapped up in it. The perfect example of something having real substance from start to end.
Tom is the only person on this platform brave enough to talk about deeply controversial topics like this. We desperately need to get more public figures literally talking about rocks, even for just 3 minutes.
There is nothing deeply controversial about it - certainly not in scientific circles. What Tom describes is accepted fact. You are forced to venture away from science to find any level of controversy, but in doing so, you end up in the hands of charlatans, the deeply uneducated, or the profoundly ignorant. In other words, fools who should be ignored.
@@hgbnkbggj2915 I believe in an old Earth, but I think that's deeply unfair to those that don't. "A creator liked the way the rocks looked and made them that way" is as completely explanatory as a belief that those rocks were created by a long process. I don't think it helps anything to insult them, and indeed simply drives them away from considering any other point of view. There is absolutely no need to demand that people give up their religion to accept science, and if you do, then don't whine and complain if they then decide to not accept science.
There was an impact crater discovered recently (2018) in Greenland beneath the Hiawatha Glacier. Maybe not as ground-breaking, but these types of discoveries do still happen.
It's entirely possible that there's something about that very rock which you wouldn't even think to ask a question about, yet will be a point of great scientific discovery centuries from now.
Just watched Michael Portillo visit Siccar Point last week as part of his great coastal railway journeys! I lived so close to it for so many years of my childhood and never knew about it. Now I want to take a trip there…but I’m 4000 miles away!
A note for those visiting: the path down is incredibly steep and slippery. There is a rope to help, and you may need it: but there's also a sign warning you that it's dangerous, and advising that you look from the hilltop instead. If you do go, please be very, very careful!
Wow, rock. The most common thing ever and you made it somehow interesting.
A sight to see.
Tom Scott just has high dexterity
Thanks mr scot
Why was this written 2 days ago?!
Thanks
finally, a youtuber that listens to his audience! Can't count the number of "tom we would absolutely listen to you just ramble on about rocks"
Yes! More rock videos Tom!
Tom rocks on about rocks, on rocks.
More rocks please
Must have been inspired by Half as Interesting's videos about bricks.
they’re not rocks, they’re minerals marie!
3 Minutes of Tom Scott talking about rocks and eventually philosophy is the most entertaining 3 minutes of my day, if not the week.
"rocks and eventually philosophy" is a fun description of a video.
After all these years, his judgment about what makes for a good topic and how to present it has earned my trust, more than any other youtuber I follow and countless I don't.
I hope things get better for you
Just for once, just for once, we get a new discovery like this....
I mean come on scotty boy, every discovery up until now has been 'like this'
Well done. You captured the geologic romance that lead me to work as a geologist for 43 years.
if you'd have any advice or recommendations for resources for someone like myself who's really compelled by geology/earth sciences, I'm all ears 😊
And that got me to my graduation with a bachelors in it in May!
@@Red-in-Green congratulations!
Do you have a high school education as Scott just said and go out to make something up, or I mean 'discover' something up
Geology Rocks!
When I was growing up, dinosaurs weren't related to birds, pluto was alone in its orbital distance, and the coelacanth was extinct. None of these discoveries required breakthroughs in technology that didn't exist when I was born, but they did require someone to look a the dogma of the day and say "hang on a second... take a look at this..."
always question the dogma
As a former geology student, I'm so happy whenever geology gets any attention at all. Siccar Point is talked about in almost every introductory geology textbook ever printed.
Recent geology student listening to this at work, my eyes almost rolled into the back of my head when I realized it was this story. It's like a story a grandfather repeats every holiday presenting it as super fresh lmao. Maybe I'll feel more nostalgia for it in a few years, but this short video didn't really get into some of the most interesting parts of James Hutton's life revolving around this discovery ((to me)) so I probably wasn't going to find it that entertaining anyways.
Anything about science is interesting.
@@y2kthe2nd38 Not everyone is a geology student so it will be unknown to lots of people,.
It doesn't even matter what the topic is about. It's always interesting to hear Tom talk about something
Dude could talk about vanilla ice cream for 10 minutes and I'd be here for it.
But have you seen the one about toasters?
Always with passion and fascination
It’s like the viewers of HAI and videos on bricks, they just can’t get enough of it
@@lukeelavan4048 i have. Extremely fascinating!
I would take a guess that "The Ocean" is the final place left where such a discovery can take place. Satelite imagery helps us little, and it is still very much unexplored. Perhaps, someday we will venture down the right bit of blue and find something as simple, yet groundbreaking as this
Agree completely
Just want to say ( before anyone brings it up)
We have now "explored" 20-30% of the oceans, not 5%.
Because it always annoys me when people say "anything could be down there"
@@yourladbrennen3130 That still leaves 70-80% left!
Btw I'm saying this in good humor, not as a confrontation.
The earth is also full of unreachable caves so we might find something interesting down there.
What is below that also. We know more about space than what we do what's below our feet.
Fish that walk with legs, calling it now
I love that sentiment! Great "not in-depth video about geology"!
Edit/add:
I used to envy the scientists from back in the day - there was so much low hanging fruit it’s easy to imagine they could just go out and pick some, but also back in the day, their metaphorical arms were a whole lot shorter. Figuring out the fundamental laws of physics, or geology, or anything, feels trivial when you were taught it at school, but these people started from square zero and figured out what we now take for *granite*.
Today if you want to make a theoretical physics discovery you need a thousand people and a supercollider, but I’m not convinced it was personally any easier for Newton…
Geology videos always make me feel sedimental.
@@MaxLennon Damn, I was gonna say I share that sediment lmao
@@MaxLennon You guys beat me to the punch. Sometimes I take things for granite.
love your contenite! The mineral of viewer engagement.
Gneiss work, everyone.
I love Playfair’s quote about his time on that boat trip: “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time”.
When accepted knowledge was that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, this sudden acceptance that it was actually much much much older must have had quite the overview effect.
exactly. 1000% true!!
And angered people who were going to lose their grants. 😅
What an amazing quote.
I doubt we can even understand these numbers. We view time with the eyes of something that won't be here for more than a century.
To put it in perspective. If we could travel back in time at a speed of 1 year every second, we would see our birth in less than a minute an a half of travel. And 1 million years is very small in geological time, yet we would be sitting 11 days in our time machine just to travel that short "time distance"
Tom you're talking about literal rocks for 3 minutes yet I find you the most interesting person on this platform.
Speaks miles about how content has become nowadays
As a geologist who spent the last 7 years with rocks, I also enjoyed the video.
Dude jay foreman just dropped a new vid you have time to change your mind
Drop a new vid bro
Do you mean "littoral rocks"? 😀
I'd like to recognize how difficult it is to talk so articulately concerning geology while simultaneously navigating it. Props to Tom!
Even when it’s just you talking about rocks for three minutes, I do enjoy it.
Me too haha
@@DyslexicMitochondria hi phil
haha
But they're really good rocks.
You never know, somewhere in the world there might be a small rock containing a mineral compound or elementary isotope that wasn't previously known to occur naturally.
Most likely would turn up as an meteorite somewhere that's a geode or the like that while technically easily visible and reachable no one thought to open up that random pebble.
Would make a intresting story real or fiction.
for real. without a doubt correct dude
Good example
Or at the bottom of the ocean an incredibly rare species of animal containing a chemical compound that can reverse biological aging or cure cancer or make you bust a nut upon contact, y'know something really incredible.
@@Corzappy The last one 🤣
The most important factor of Tom's question of "low-hanging fruit" is how we consider what is low-hanging. As humans become better and more comfortable in more hostile environments, as greater masses of people have more access to the technology and techniques of exploration and the education needed to know what they're looking at when they see it, the tree of knowledge steadily bends toward us, and things that now seem "low-hanging" were out of reach for most not that long ago. It is immensely comforting for me to know that many of the things that are only just attainable by the most expert of researchers today will be "basic high-school" science in a generation or two.
Alternately, remember that people have been sleeping together as long as we've been human - but there's no documentation of rapid eye movement in sleep before 1953. Many individuals must have noticed, but it didn't get into our collective knowledge until within living memory.
Humans kept bees for at least 4000 years before we figured out the bee space (you can google it) and learned how to easily harvest honey without harming the bees or the hive.
I can't feel sure there's not something we're looking right past now that will be obvious once we notice it.
One of the most important lessons I've learned over the years is that just because it's in plain sight doesn't mean people will recognise it, on the contrary, most people will ignore things in plain sight. So there's a good chance that there are still quite a few discoveries left.
Humans have breathed oxygen every second as long as we've existed, but we never realized oxygen even exists until Scheele, Priestley, and Lavoisier took a moment to analyze it.
I would add, it is not the seen action which is needed. The right person must assign it meaning and only then does it become something obvious to others. The 'others' start as the experts but in time it may move to the typical student at least in the well educated industrialized nations.
We've been keeping bees for thousands of years - but it wasn't until the 19th century that anyone worked out 'bee space' and, from that, how to make beehives that let us harmlessly harvest honey without damaging or even destroying the hive. The ancient Egyptians could have built modern style box-like beehives if they'd just known the trick.
I live in the centre of Australia. For a century biologists heard legend about a parrot living in the desert. No proof has ever been found till a farmer found one nesting in his barn this year.
There are lots of things still undiscovered. Just look at the bottom of the ocean, the top of the night sky, or the inside of your mom's locked drawer.
How eels make babies. That's not a google search I wrote in the wrong place, but an answer to Tom's final question (and a good video topic IMO).
We know that they have to (obviously), that it happens somewhere in the mid-Atlantic for both American and European sub species, but nobody has found where, how or when. Aristotle used to think they spontaneously appeared out of mud. Freud (the famous one) dissected hundred of eels hoping to find testicles, but failed. All it would take is one lucky boat at the right time and the right place and a millennia old question would be resolved.
They have been observed in captivity, just not in the wild AFAIK
too lazy to google, how much do we know so far?
Thats so cool! What an amazing thing to learn
dont we kind of know when it is (roughly) since they all migrate away from their usual habitats? but also this has been the topic of several dinner table discussions in my family, and is one of my favourite strange facts(or lack of fact i suppose) to throw at people
Similar with Great Whites.
Though we do know how they reproduce it has never been captured on camera or witnessed that we know of and we are uncertain where it happens.
My graduate advisor always said “the oceans are the final frontier of geology.” Siccar Point is an awesome place. If you visit, take a notebook and sketch what you see, putting your self in Hutton’s shoes. One of the coolest things I’ve done.
The oceans are also just the final frontier in general. Up until just a few years ago only two people had ever been to the deepest point, but now that frontier is being conquered.
Thank you for a great little "rock talk". I've been practicing geology for 30+ years. Lovely location. There are indeed many 'undiscovered' gems of geology in the world. I've found a few myself, and have papers about them. It's part of what I love about geology. The stories are just waiting to be found. Right below our feet.
"Literally just three minutes where I talk about some rocks"....and inform, educate and reveal something absolutely interesting and inspire everyone's curiosity to wonder with a new perspective about our natural world.
very true
The recent(ish) aerial LiDAR survey of the jungle in Guatemala has revealed thousands of previously undiscovered ancient Mayan structures that have the potential to completely change our understanding of pre-columbian civilizations.
Just an example of something new. It's easy to look back through history at all the scientific discoveries we've made and compare them with the discoveries being made RIGHT NOW, and come to the conclusion that the pace of scientific progress has slowed, or that all the good stuff has already been found and there's nothing left to discover. Remember, though, we look at the scientific discoveries of the past with the benefit of time. We know about the past because we've had time to study it and construct a narrative for it. We don't know about the present. There is progress being made right now that we don't know about, because it hasn't found its way into common knowledge yet. Scientific discoveries, however earth-shattering, take years or decades or even centuries before they become commonly known.
So what will people 200 years from now say about the science of today? Who knows? But there is always more to discover. Everytime we think we've filled in all the corners of the map, the camera pulls back to show just how much there is left to discover.
Agreed - but that’s an anthropological and sociological find, not a geological one. It’s every bit of interesting in those fields, just not what Tom was wondering about.
I remember seeing a show about how LiDAR has been used to find previously undetected meteorite impact sites.
Then the finds get confirmed by geology.
Same thing about the Amazon jungle basin right? New scans showed potentially lost civilizations or something like that.
@@michaelfoxbrass LiDAR is huge for geology too, in heavily forested areas like Washington state it has recently allowed us to determine the exact locations of previously undetected faults and ancient landslides.
Finding history is cool and we will continue to do that, but challenging fundamental theories of science seems to be dying out
As a geophysics student and someone who’s studied Siccar Point, seeing this video pop up in my sub box made me so excited :)
this was so wholesome... good luck with your studies!
do you have any good geology youtuber recommendations?? 😊
agreed. precisely true
As a geologist I’m glad people start to acknowledge rocks 😊
do you have any geology youtuber recommendations? 😊
Obviously, because ... they do rock! (Yes, baddadjoke, I know where the door is, stop pushing me *ouch*)
@@UnkSpec Wait no, come back! Beaches rock Sand-and-stone!
'Perseverance' does that for me 😅 Areology
You Rock, respect
As a geologist, I really love Tom's explaination about Siccar Point! Keep up the good work Tom!
Hearing someone talk so passionately about something that are not noticed by most is always refreshing for me. I admit that I find geology to be a recent interest of mine, how mountains were formed, how breathtaking they are, but also gemstones, minerals, metals, that Lapis Lazuli was sourced for generations from only one mine in Afghanistan, and so on. It's a topic I know next to nothing about, but one that I find genuinely fascinating when I do take the time to research it.
Even though it has some faults, geology rocks!
please
Get out.
stop
The rock makes music too.
Those are some gneiss puns.
I disagree that all the "low hanging fruit" is gone, mostly because an obvious discovery is usually only obvious in retrospective.
I'm certain there is still "low hanging fruit" to find. We just don't recognize it. It only looks easy, AFTER you understand it. We don't know what we are looking for. It only appears to be easy "low-hanging fruit" with hindsight and knowledge. Believing that we have "finally" discovered everything 'easy' is nonsense .... everyone in history thinks that, until the next big discovery comes along. Progress will happen, and the biggest discoveries will look "easy" with hindsight.
@@plovet I mean, the last 150 years of scientific discovery have all been fairly... not-simple
In physics, for example, we moved to quantum mechanics, general relativity and the standard model. None of which is particularly intuitive
@@plovet We now know about things so small, our eyes can't see them even with massive lenses to help. We can manipulate the very matter that makes us, we are starting to read brains and create our own. We know about distant space and structures so large no single human can comprehend them. Our tools to learn new things need tools built to build the tools we use to make them. I'd say it's fair to believe the low hanging fruit is gone.
Tom, I believe there are many more discoveries like this to be made. Every age likes to imagine it knows nearly everything there is to know, and so far every one has been proven wrong.
The James Webb Telescope for one will bring many such discoveries! Why keep our eyes on the ground:)
The ocean hides a lot of mysteries there is a hell of a lot we don't know about it.
I was also thinking we may have already made similar discoveries in recent history, we just don't know it yet. Tom Scott said it took a lifetime for the theory to be accepted by the scientific community, it's only now 200 years later we can go "duh".
Couldn't agree more. There are so many things that seem blindingly obvious when you know about them, but are otherwise just... nothing. We just need someone to be able to notice that nothing, AND be able to spread the word and knowledge well enough that the nothing isn't forgotten when they stop thinking about it. It's like biologists saying that if you want to discover a new species, the best place to look is your own back garden!
Humans look at things either too close or too far. Sometimes we just need to open our eyes and look around with them and we might get to see something new
I'd say this was one of the best three minutes of rock I've had in my life so far, second only to Mumbo Jumbo's recent video about a geologist reacting to Hermitcraft
I really recommend looking into James Hutton's life, it's super intriguing for non-geological reasons.
It's not bad but 80s rock is better.
I was here yesterday, by chance. I fancied a walk and a look at the sea. I got there, read the sign and saw the view and had a "hang on a minute!..." moment where I realised I'd seen it in one of your videos
lovely! but I like to think that "Low hanging fruit" really depends on how tall our ladders are. And our ladders are much taller than they were in 1788
Sure. For instance, UV cameras helped scientists see bird plumage in (forgive me) a different light, well within my lifetime.
@@bearcubdaycare That reminds me that we can now see platypuses have bioluminesence too... Honestly there's just so much we don't don't know, even though we know a lot! There are known unknowns, but the unknown unknowns make it difficult for us to grasp exactly how much we are missing.
Who needs ladders? Soon enough we'll have jetpacks.
that's a really lovely way of looking at it!
As someone who's interested in pure math, I think about that last question a lot. It seems really likely that the only significant advances in math these days will be made by (and understood by) people with years of specialized technical training, but of course we don't know that for sure.
There's lots of, albeit specific use case, theories that are still getting improved to this day. Stuff like superpermutations, that normal people can understand. So don't lose hope.
I think a lot of new math advances are used in technologies we use every day, math will certainly help science and technology. Quantum computers for example would probably be better with more advanced math
Cellular automata! Automata are some of my favorite things in math that an everyday person could easily pick up and discover an entirely new way of making things work and wouldn't even necessarily know that they had done something amazing! Graph theory too, to an extent
There are some problems in number theory where the question itself can be started simply enough, but solving it will certainly take some extremely advanced mathematics. Fermat's last theorem was like this. The twin prime conjecture and the Collatz conjecture are a couple of currently unproven examples I can think of.
In math, I think the closest recent thing to this was that one time when 4chan, of all places, solved a problem (how do I watch my anime in every possible order in the most efficient way) that stumped the mathematicians for 25 years or so.
I think everything we've missed so far is likely still on or near the ocean floor. Might be a few years, or major geological events, before we have something new we can walk to.
I guess there might also still a few things hidden in the rain forests and under the desert.
@@Luxalpa My thought also
Thats where the eels are doing it
There are so many major geological events we still know so little about...
Having literally only taken one college level course on tectonics and geology I got excited the moment I saw vertical sedimentary rock, and more so when you talked about the horizontal strata on top of it!
In the capital of Norway, Oslo, we got very similar geological formations. They are most notable and available on Bygdøy, but can be spotted around Oslo and on both sides of the Oslofjord ("Oslofjorden"). This is the part of a geological area called "The Oslo Rift".
I think the most recent is probably the "discovery" that the Coelacanth was not a long extinct animal, but that they were living in reasonable numbers off the coast of Africa. That happened in 1938 when a museum curator happened to see one in a fisherman's boat in South Africa. We have since discovered a second species of this fish in a distant separate area of the Indian ocean. Yes they are rare and regarded as endangered animals but we have something on this planet of a species which has been around for over 350 million years.
We may yet find more strange and long thought as extinct creatures in our oceans, so further discoveries should not be unexpected. So let's be thankful for the surprises we can still find.
Tom could talk about nearly anything and still be interesting and engaging
yes. 110% correct dude
Tom, I feel like your small speech at the end there about simple, yet un-discovered ideas really rings home the point of how we as humanity have outgrown small science. Now, we are in the age of big science, where more then one person with way more sophisticated tools than simple hand held tools or their eyes are making discoveries.
Well, there are new species discovered every day although it often turns out they were known to the locals all along.
The aerial view of the rocks is so good, and super helpful in seeing the mesh of the two types of rocks. Thank you so much for including that!
This just came into my recommendations and I have to say, this really rocked my world. Thanks for the enlightenment!
Another proof I will literally watch Tom Scott talk about anything! And not only watch it I will enjoy it! Thank you Tom!
I would say that the reasonably recent Mpemba effect definitely applies as one of those "low hanging fruit" you speak of, but yes, to your point, they must be very rare those which still exist.
whats the mpemba effect?
@@nathan._.h its part of a bigger group of discoveries called the ligma effect group
@@martinjokkinen1998 would ligma balls
Nah, Aristotle was on it *long* before the 1950s: "The fact that the water has previously been warmed contributes to its freezing quickly: for so it cools sooner. Hence many people, when they want to cool water quickly, begin by putting it in the sun. So the inhabitants of Pontus when they encamp on the ice to fish (they cut a hole in the ice and then fish) pour warm water round their reeds that it may freeze the quicker, for they use the ice like lead to fix the reeds."
discoveries nowadays are made in various other fields of study (DNA, mircroscopes, space telescopes, medicine, etc.)
I love this! They are very cool rocks :-) Back in the 90s, child-aged me was on a boat trip with a friend's family from Pease Bay, and "discovered" the formation there. Nobody else on the boat seemed at all bothered about it, but I took a (film!) photo to show my parents, and I was kind of disappoined to hear it was already well-known to geologists.
thats so cool, bet you were so proud off yourself at the time xd I do A-level geology and saw a programme on this last week then did it in college this morning so definitely wont forget this.
Nice
@@litchrye or as a geologist would say Gneiss XD
Noticing that kind of stuff as a non-geologist is a good example of your observation skills. Well done!
I would think the deep ocean floor may still have one or two surprises in store for us. Great video as always!
This reminds me of Crail beach in Fife! There are petrified tree stumps in their life position and arthropleura tracks, and caves! Please visit this place too and show people how amazing rocks in Scotland are :D
Other place, On east coast, with interesting green rocks, would be north end of Lunan bay!
I take it is due to large copper deposits?
I'm a Geology student, Tom Scott is one of my favourite RUclipsrs, this just made my day.
I can tell this means a lot to you, and it's a great message you're sending, followed by a great question. Thank you for getting me to watch literally 3 minutes where you talk about rocks.
I have visited Siccar Point often and I take my hat off to you that you got down, stayed on your feet and narrated that so fluently!
You always manage to entertain me even with things I never thought would be entertaining.
I have to say I simply love the way your videos end! Thank you for allowing the time to enjoy looking.
Even with this title, I guarentee this video will still get millions of views
Geology rocks!
Tom could talk about literally anything and make it interesting
Don’t forget about everything under water that we have a harder time seeing and haven’t found yet
From a geologist perspective, great concise video. Unconformities are part of the reason I fell in love with rocks.
These kinds of videos are something i'd picture myself getting sucked in for actually quite a while
I do
You can't post that kind of thing on RUclips! 😳
I work with autonomous underwater robotics, and I think such a discovery is highly likely to be made on the sea floor one day. We know more about space than we do of the sea floor but with the technology being developed today, underwater exploration will soon bring new knowledge of the planet we live on.
My money is on Atlantis.
Another tidbit of geologic history: the British Isles were once connected to mainland Europe, and in fact were just the "highest" parts of an entire region called "Doggerland." Eventually the seas rose and the surrounding areas were submerged, turning Britain into an island (a geologic Brexit)
I can't abide the word Brexit, but you used it very cleverly here!
My mother (a geologist) would absolutely love to go here. She’s been all sorts of places just to look at the rocks there.
As someone studying my bachleor's in geology right now I greatly appreciate this video.
I think there's plenty more discoveries like this to happen. So much we just take for given that we don't even think about it until someone asks the right question. We also have millions of years of biology that are barely explored because all we have is fossils from the hard parts and some extremely rare impressions of soft parts.
For example: We have zero direct evidence that ammonites had tentacles.
Zilch.
Not a single fossil or impression of their tentacles or how their soft body parts looked at all.
The only reason we think they had tentacles is because we can see a progression of shells into an internal shell like cuttlefish's, and a separate lineage that we can sorta trace to nautiluses.
But we're still to find a fossil that decidedly proves they had tentacles, and even then we'd still have the mystery of when and how did those tentacles evolve.
Someone might have found rocks with those exact impressions and just thought it's a neat pattern, brought it home, only for their spouse to throw it away because they thought it was just a rock of no value, or used it to decorate their backyard.
I think there's still countless discoveries like this out there waiting. Staring us in the face while we're completely oblivious to it until someone realizes what they mean and happens upon it.
Interesting fact on the evidence of tentacle-less ammonites, or lack of evidence of tentacled ones!
So, I always have to ask myself is; “Am I looking for what I expect to find, and does that inform, or corrupt, my search criteria, and more so, my observations and interpretations of what I experience?”
It reminds me of some of the stories I've read on some blog reposted to some other site- stuff like the weird circle of bricks in old houses that *still existed in modern houses in the area* (it's for chicken herding), and unidentified bone implements that turned out to still be in use in modern professions and *still made out of bone*.
On behalf of the stone community, this truly shines a light on the true greatness a simple rock can have. Thank you
For discoveries waiting in plain sight, I'd argue that they will be larger in scale. That is, as we survey other planets in our local system we may learn stunning truths about our own and as we look at the stars and galaxies, new truths are to be found. Of course, there are probably discoveries to be made at the very very small scale as well.
bro i love your videos so much. so much. after seconds of watching, my interest peaks more than it already had, and none of it is boring. ever except when the video hasn't started. and like 2 seconds in
There’s lots of areas of the oceans that we haven’t properly explored yet, I bet there’s some undiscovered and interesting stuff down there!
Came here for 3 minutes of Tom literally talking about rocks.
Was not disappointed.
Me, who is studying geology for about 2 years: if I would only lose 3 minutes to these unfortunately interesting rocks...
But well done, interesting short video about an essential topic!
*lose. "Loose" is when something isn't fastened correctly, like a loose wheel.
do you have any geology youtuber recommendations? 😊
@@FriedEgg101 Thanks! Obviously I'm not a native speaker, so thank you for the correction
@@epicormic_bud I'm sure there are some good geology related RUclipsrs out there but I don't know them
@@jakob206 Lots of native speakers make the same mistake. English is weird.
Hutton’s uncomformity is in every beginners geology textbook! So glad you paid it a visit
i clicked on this video because of the pure honesty. no clickbait, just "hey, i like these rocks, lets talk about it.". and that disserves to be rewarded.
Literally just 3 minutes of talking about rocks. And I didn't skip a second of it. :)
This is the most Tom Scott video
the drone shots, tom struggling against the terrain, the unusual subject. Love it
I'm a geologist! This is a really good summary of the topic.
Something about his videos is just so peaceful and soothing. I would love to discover places with this guy!
I’ve got an excellent book, called ‘The Floating Egg’, by Roger Osborne, that covers some similar subjects to those Tom is looking at here. It’s a collection of short stories, all with a link to Yorkshire, that range across a variety of topics related to scientific discoveries made through good old fashioned observation of the world around us combined with the application of scientific methods. Well worth a look if you’re into these sorts of things!
Respect to the guy who not only figured out this theory but also had the will and resources to go out and try to prove it with merely the technology available hundreds of years ago. I hope he was proud of what he had achieved.
As if doing a video in one take while walking wasn't hard enough, hats off to you for adding the extra challenge and doing on sloping uneven rocks!
Nice video, Scott! I'm a geologist in CA and Siccar Point is on my list of places to see!
GEOLOGY ISN'TA REAL SCIENCE!!! 😱
😋
I do geology A-level xd
I live near Vasquez rocks and want to at least head to Lassen once while I'm still young.
As a scotsman, I love that scotland is home to so much content yet not much to speak of at the same time. also love the literal title, made me chuckle
But are you a true scotsman?
geology is my passion, its awsome to see anyone cover bits of it!
this is how you make geography interesting, by just having this avaliable and allowing people's curiosity to be what allows them to learn
because being curious about something helps someone learn a lot more than forcing someone to read textbooks does
I see Tom's playing the meta-game with reverse clickbait titles now, very clever.
Tom, you'll never see this but id like to just say that you're an incredible writer. You really know how to write an engaging Informational
This is the most interesting rock-related video on this platform. You did a great job explaining all of this. Your ending stinger involving new discoveries leaves me wondering what that next big discovery could be, if we ever find one like it.
Tom. TOM. You took a topic that I'm excited about- I was told this story just a few years ago in the beginning of my Geology major- made it understandable and exciting for everyone, then posed a unique and interesting question about the nature of discovery. Incredible food for thought. Thank you!
And all in under four minutes. WOW
As a geologist, I very much approve of the concise and to the point explanation of this unconformity! Very well done! And a spectacular sight to see. I will visit this place, should I find myself in the area.
Tom can make anything and everything sound deep and interesting.
People can see something like this and still find an "alternative" hypothesis that can't be tested or falsified.
rock people
Think about the Chicxulub crater, and how that was only discovered in the 70s (and accepted widely in the 90s) by a geologist working for an oil company who was taking core samples and figured out what they meant. Now we know why the dinosaurs died off.
If I had to guess: a lot of the counterintuitive things in quantum physics will probably be solved, and future generations will laugh at our silly ideas of superposition. Remember, we don't know what we don't know.
"we don't know what we don't know"
Words to live & remain humble by 😊
This is how I think dark matter and dark energy will be remembered, as silly ideas made when we were missing some crucial pieces of information about the universe
@@alexsiemers7898 Yes! Great example, couldn't agree more.
I think you’re one of my favorite youtubers tbh. Such a simple video but absolutely stellar content wrapped up in it. The perfect example of something having real substance from start to end.
Your videos are never this short, I love this so much
Tom is the only person on this platform brave enough to talk about deeply controversial topics like this. We desperately need to get more public figures literally talking about rocks, even for just 3 minutes.
I didn't see anything in this video that could even remotely be considered controversial.
@@cobba42 that's the joke
There is nothing deeply controversial about it - certainly not in scientific circles. What Tom describes is accepted fact. You are forced to venture away from science to find any level of controversy, but in doing so, you end up in the hands of charlatans, the deeply uneducated, or the profoundly ignorant. In other words, fools who should be ignored.
@@hgbnkbggj2915 I believe in an old Earth, but I think that's deeply unfair to those that don't. "A creator liked the way the rocks looked and made them that way" is as completely explanatory as a belief that those rocks were created by a long process. I don't think it helps anything to insult them, and indeed simply drives them away from considering any other point of view. There is absolutely no need to demand that people give up their religion to accept science, and if you do, then don't whine and complain if they then decide to not accept science.
@@hgbnkbggj2915 Mate.. I think it's a joke.
There was an impact crater discovered recently (2018) in Greenland beneath the Hiawatha Glacier. Maybe not as ground-breaking, but these types of discoveries do still happen.
Many small asteroids are found there too simply due to being easy to spot against a white terrain.
@@hgbnkbggj2915 I believe this crater was an impression on the rock _below_ the glacial ice
An impact crater is literally ground-breaking. As tectonics. Geology rocks!
@@marcondespaulo Thanks for pointing that out! Totally agree.
@@gavinminion8515 "lose friends, but never lose a joke" is my motto
It's entirely possible that there's something about that very rock which you wouldn't even think to ask a question about, yet will be a point of great scientific discovery centuries from now.
i could listen to you talking about anything for hours honestly
Just watched Michael Portillo visit Siccar Point last week as part of his great coastal railway journeys! I lived so close to it for so many years of my childhood and never knew about it. Now I want to take a trip there…but I’m 4000 miles away!
Tom can literally make anything interesting
Tom can literally make rocks entertaining
I do enjoy British Rocks.
In an exotic kind of way
You know a 3 minute video is good when it feels like it's gone too fast and leaves you with more questions than answers.
Please do more videos like this! These are extremely interesting, entertaining and informative!
Oh Tom, you have captured our sense of beauty, wonder, history, innovation, and what it means to be curious humans. Can't thank you enough.