THE VIDEO SHELF · cosmic distance ladder
Terence Tao: The Cosmic Distance Ladder, UCLA
Terence Tao's AMS Einstein Public Lecture at UCLA on the cosmic distance ladder, the chain of methods astronomers use to measure distances from the Earth to distant galaxies. It is aimed at a general audience.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as an accessible and elegant tour of how indirect reasoning builds up cosmic measurements, with one commenter calling it their favorite Tao work.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- UCLA
- Topic
- cosmic distance ladder
- Format
- lecture
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2022–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Cool collab. Tao’s oft given talk about the cosmic distance ladder has always been my favorite thing he has done. [VIDEO]
mathladder on Hacker News · 2025-02
In Terence Tao on how we measure the cosmos, Part 1 [video]> Nobody had a clue In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus calculated that the Sun was between 18 and 20 times farther away from the Earth than the Moon, and proposed the Heliocentric model as a result. The true value is instead approximately 400 times. …
luc4sdreyer on Hacker News · 2024-03
In Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.
