The Fast Fourier Transform is used everywhere but it has a fascinating origin story that could have ended the nuclear arms race. This video is sponsored by 80,000 Hours. Head to http://80000hours.org/veritasium to sign up for their newsletter and get sent a free copy of their in-depth career guide.
A huge thank you to Dr. Richard Garwin for taking the time to speak with us.
Thanks to Dr. Steve Brunton of the University of Washington for his help with understanding the Fast Fourier Transform.
Thanks to Dr. Cliff Thurber of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Paul Richards of Columbia University, and Dr. Steven Gibbons of the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute for their expertise.
Thanks to Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown for his helpful feedback on the script. His great video on the Fourier Transform is here - https://youtu.be/spUNpyF58BY
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References:
Kristensen, H.M., Korda, M. (2022). Status of World Nuclear Forces. Federation of American Scientists (FAS). https://ve42.co/Stockpile2022
Barth, K. H. (1998). Science and politics in early nuclear test ban negotiations. Physics Today, 51(3), 34-39. - https://ve42.co/Barth1998
Schmalberger, T. (1991). In pursuit of a nuclear test ban treaty - https://ve42.co/Schmalberger1991
Bowers, D., & Selby, N. D. (2009). Forensic seismology and the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 37, 209-236 - https://ve42.co/Bowers2009
Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS). (2022). How Often Do Earthquakes Occur? https://ve42.co/IRIS2022
Kimball, D. (2022). The Nuclear Testing Tally. Arms Control Association. https://ve42.co/TestTally2022
Kværna, T., & Ringdal, F. (2013). Detection capability of the seismic network of the International Monitoring System for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 103(2A), 759-772 - https://ve42.co/Kvrna2013
Sykes, L. R., & Evernden, J. F. (1982). The verification of a comprehensive nuclear test ban. Scientific American, 247(4), 47-55 - https://ve42.co/Sykes1982
Peterson, J., & Hutt, C. R. (2014). World-wide standardized seismograph network: a data users guide (p. 82). US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey. - https://ve42.co/Peterson2014
Richards, P. G., & Kim, W. Y. (2009). Monitoring for nuclear explosions. Scientific American, 300(3), 70-77 - https://ve42.co/Richards2009
Jacobsen, L. L., Fedorova, I., & Lajus, J. (2021). The seismograph as a diplomatic object: The Soviet–American exchange of instruments, 1958–1964. Centaurus, 63(2), 277-295 - https://ve42.co/Jacobsen2021
Schwartz S. I. (1998). The Hidden Costs Of Our Nuclear Arsenal: Overview Of Project Findings. The Brookings Institution - https://ve42.co/Schwartz1998
Ricón, J.L. (2016). The Soviet Union: Military Spending. Nintil - https://ve42.co/Nintil2016
Heideman, M. T., Johnson, D. H., & Burrus, C. S. (1985). Gauss and the history of the fast Fourier transform. Archive for history of exact sciences, 265-277 - https://ve42.co/Heideman1985
Ford, D. (2004). Richard Garwin - Session IV. American Institute of Physics (AIP). - https://ve42.co/Ford2004
Aaserud, F. (1986). Richard Garwin - Session I. American Institute of Physics (AIP). - https://ve42.co/Aaserud1986
Goldstein, A. (1997). James W. Cooley, an oral history. IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA - https://ve42.co/Goldstein1997
Cooley, J., Garwin, R., Rader, C., Bogert, B., & Stockham, T. (1969). The 1968 Arden House workshop on fast Fourier transform processing. IEEE Transactions on Audio and Electroacoustics, 17(2), 66-76 - https://ve42.co/Cooley1969
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Written by Derek Muller & Felicity Nelson
Filmed by Derek Muller & Raquel Nuno
Animation by Ivy Tello, Jakub Misiek, Alex Drakoulis, and Fabio Albertelli
Edited by Albert Leung & Derek Muller
Research Assistant: Katie Barnshaw
Additional video/photos supplied by Pond5 and Getty Images
Music from Epidemic Sound
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Emily Zhang
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@fluxiahq Says:
amazing
@botondszelpal4786 Says:
Thank you for this video!
@benceszecsi23 Says:
I appreciate the effort you put into these videos!
@akosnagy6530 Says:
It is really helpful finding theese videos online for free, they are very interesting. Thanks for the video!
@zsomborparagi4417 Says:
Thank you for this video
@luckihhh Says:
"math" and it is just newton, euler, or gauss yet again
@mahuhalabi Says:
3:48 poor Japanese
@adrianparsons1185 Says:
He mentions that the USA and the USSR each spent $10T on nuclear weapons, what if that wealth had been spent on something else, would we be living in a beautiful, peaceful, healthy, educated world or would we be living in a polluted, trashed world with rampant global warning because we spent the wealth on consuming resources.
@isaacosaretin Says:
5:09 "I wish I was making this up." Type of moment. Cause what is this?
@brettbaker9027 Says:
TLDR, it was Gauss the whole time... again...
@dlinorbit1887 Says:
17:37 & 17:45 *Cosine waves (not sine waves)
@alighieribosch Says:
4:35 what is on the Y axis bruh
@Bob94390 Says:
Calling FFT "The Most Important Algorithm Of All Time" is strange. Most people will think that an algorithm for adding numbers is more important.
@devilchild12323 Says:
This works well with your butterfly effect video😂
@alex1507er Says:
Your history is imprecise. FFT was first published by Lanczos and Danielson in 1942. Tukey and Colley did not know this when they published their own paper, but later gave them full credit. Carl Runge also had this algorithm in 1903.
@robertgraham1049 Says:
I very seriously doubt it would have stopped anything. If people wanna kill each other theyre gonna do it.
@saalamin1869 Says:
Gauss is beyond legendary.
@mohammadshaqibsiddique9291 Says:
23:25
misinformation fft is not popular choice to save the image in compressed form.
DCT( discrete cosine transformation) is being used currently.
@Pad2Paper Says:
No need for a Faustian bargain when you were born as a DaVinci, an Euler, an Einstein, or a Gauss. That amount of intellect is seismic.
@lexbrice1953 Says:
Talk about the the right video at the right time. I have been trying to work on a spectrum analyzer from scratch for my woofer which led me to Fourier transform and one thing led to another and now I am here watching a video I have been ignoring for the longest time. Life really is beautiful in its mysteries
@FoodieFunCart Says:
Genius!
@artnotes Says:
That FFT is 2 point FFT. Since it you always have a middle point but something time you do not have this structure like 24 points in final you will have a 3 point since it’s 2*2*2*3. Key of FFT is DFT has two type of symmetric structure. Allow you to factor it in to smaller problem (divide and conquer) , you can pad if it small but usually pad is inefficient. In FFT usually 4 point is the best approach. Since unit is 1 -1, i, -i which is can be implemented easily(pure real and pure imag).
@Ali-_.-_.CE21 Says:
Furry transfem
@luyandambele7691 Says:
this is cool
@Jace_Beleren Says:
19:54 I appreciate the recognition that ‘Israel’ does undoubtedly have nukes
@puru108g Says:
Please understand the biasing. They were open to western countries to discuss. All othe4 countries they still think the way they use to 200yrs ago....from colonists mindset.
@carlos-trouts Says:
5:05 - or CESPDVPASNT, for short
@sdsa007 Says:
Quantumly, are you saying that we are living in a alternative universe where we didn’t listen carefully to what one of the greatest mathematical scientist was observing and discovering? And even worse, a really dumb alternative universe were fake blondies rip up agreements to ban nukes? And insist that climate change is a scam? How do we get back to enlightened Guassian universe? Are we trapped in darkness? We might need time travel.
@igpprojects2105 Says:
Hello everyone from Russia. I decided to check out this video to see the comments. And... the differences are very noticeable. The comments here are mostly about Gauss, while the Russian translation's comments are mostly about political battles.
@becklite Says:
M.I.A.O.A.T
@unnamedgrungeband Says:
10:27 GUYS ITS LITERALLY THE RIZZLER
@arimatter8975 Says:
And the SOVIETS were RIGHT, NOT to TRUST the WESTERN ALLIES!!! The AMIs after all GAVE NUKES to ISRAEL!!!
@NextplusBodhi-g3o Says:
What makes a person a genius is the kind of questions and answers they seek to solve. Necessity, the mother of all inventions!
@NextplusBodhi-g3o Says:
Back 100yrs, less porn, less internet, more intellectuals, smarter geniuses. Maybe we should ban internet and phones jn schools, jntil kids are over 20?
@lenav.5851 Says:
If I was the USSR I wouldn't have trusted the 'Muricans about nuclear bombs either.
@illuminum8576 Says:
That is an incredible explanation of the FFT and fourier transform in general
@skipads5141 Says:
😢 I thought Veritasium had finally broken the YouTube algorithm.
@UngaBunga126 Says:
This, is why humanity is extant
@msresu Says:
Sorry but no.. USA to give up nuclear weapons.!!!!. the country that drop nuclear weapon on civilians ...
@GaviviTeaches Says:
Thank you very much for this amazing video! I am confused about a particular detail in the signal digitization explanation. You implied that the non-precise seismograph makes the signal inherently discrete (11:06). The output from the seismograph is, in fact, continuous, until we preferably discretize the signal (ADC) for digital processing by digital computers.
@drmiteshtrivedi Says:
Sooo were those earthquakes around Russia a few months ago nukes or earthquakes?
@Dezdichado1000 Says:
Even if we ignore all other uses of the FFT and only focus on the fact that it's what enabled audio compression which means I could save songs to my MP3 player back in 2006 during my emo phase, it's the greatest invention of all time already. Could not survive my hormonal teenager phase without them songs on my MP3.
@JordanBuck-s3l Says:
Everyone talking about how smart gauss was, nobody talking about the genius who made the camera that survived a nuclear blast when the house got blown to splinters.
Jk, I know it was staged for propaganda purposes.
@nocgod Says:
Question: do you think if known a full ban is possible, would they've actually sat down to talk? Or was the partial ban a way to direct testing underground into a controlled and eventually traceable environment while not stopping the testing and armament process?
@kymz_808 Says:
Also from the CMB because of are localized systems always “socializing” this is are counter CFT which does not have a term yet (this is why we take opposite stances over logic)
@Studiacapta-qo2bo Says:
You should do a video about the Kalman filter
Probably equally important if not more so
@joseph_soseph9611 Says:
Castle Bravo is what inspired Godzilla. This seems to have been forgotten by most. Godzilla is a whole lot more artistically valuable than the modern fascination with mere big monsters seems to imply, and people should remember that.
@GuyLakeman Says:
USA has never been socially responsible
@mrgokhanunal Says:
FFT algoritmasının veriyi analiz etme hızıyla evrendeki karmaşıklığı nasıl sadeleştirdiğini görmek büyüleyici. Tıpkı bizim canlılık dediğimiz o karmaşık sinyali anlamaya çalışırken aslında onu oluşturan biyokimyasal dalga boylarını ayıklamaya çalışmamız gibi. Laboratuvarımda kuracağım bakteri biyokütle üretim tesisinde de, karmaşık biyolojik süreçleri analiz etmek için muhtemelen bu algoritmanın modern türevlerini kullanacağım. Gauss'un bu algoritmayı 1805'te keşfedip önemsiz görerek yayınlamaması ise bilginin paylaşılmamasının insanlık tarihine (nükleer silahlanma gibi) ne kadar büyük bedeller ödetebileceğinin kanıtı. Canlılık tanımlarının geçici uzlaşmalar olması gibi, algoritmalar da bizim evreni anlama çabamızdaki geçici ama güçlü araçlardır
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