A few things that I recently understood or read about.
- Fermi Paradox - with help of chatgpt https://imgur.com/a/LuVV6iK
- How the age of universe was calculated.
- Redshift
- How age of solar system was calculated. I previously thought just like the universe is expanding, so is solar system. Turns out that is not the case. The distances have been more or less fixed. (i thought sun would be losing some mass, weakening gravitation for that to happen, nothing like that).
- Exo-planets.
- a lot of nuclear physics.
- Parallel universe theory according to quantum mechanics.
- gravitational waves (how to measure ripples in spacetime https://www.wired.co.uk/article/catching-cosmic-rays-virgo-i...)
- Theories around nuclear fusion and how ML, High Temp super conductivity and more precise chips are making advances possible.
And so on.
Will add one special mention to this: https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-new-calcula... (this universe exists because it has the highest entropy is a layman summary of the article)