HackerTube.dev

Terence Tao: The Cosmic Distance Ladder, UCLA

UCLA · 203.6K views · 2010-10-26 · 1:16:17

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2022–2025

Topics

Cosmology & astrophysicsUniversity lectures & courses
Search by tags
astronomyparallaxterence taomeasurementpublic lecture

What people said

mathladder · 2025-02 · Strong recommendation

Cool collab. Tao’s oft given talk about the cosmic distance ladder has always been my favorite thing he has done. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
luc4sdreyer · 2024-03 · Recommendation

> 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. But it's incredible given that he didn't have lenses, the value of Pi, and that the Geocentric model was considered correct until 1800 years after his death. [LINK] Nice video about the cosmic distance ladder by Terence Tao: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
DavidSJ · 2022-10 · Reference

This very parallax effect. We know how far the Sun is from the Earth, and the Earth has moved twice this distance from January 1 to July 1. This in turn allows us to extrapolate distance to some of the nearest stars by their apparent motion relative to the other, "fixed" stars. [LINK] [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by UCLA, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources