How many views did “99 Years Later... We Solved It” get?

Physics Girl · published 2022-06-01 · TubeCount #83, played 2026-09-02

Why this one

Physics Girl is Dianna Cowern — 3.54 million subscribers, a per-video baseline of 1.35 million views, a channel audience built on genuine physics curiosity and tolerance for counterintuitive results. '99 Years Later... We Solved It' covers the Dzhanibekov effect: a rigid body rotating in zero gravity that spontaneously flips its axis at regular intervals. The Soviet cosmonaut who first observed it in 1985 was told to keep it classified because the implication — that the phenomenon might apply at planetary scale — was considered destabilising. Fourteen million people watched a 3.54-million-subscriber science channel explain a classified Soviet space observation. The mechanism is the title: '99 Years' signals suppressed history, 'We Solved It' promises resolution. A video that functions as the answer to a question you didn't know you had circulates as a link, not a recommendation; this one spread through science blogs and physics Twitter to people who had never clicked on a Physics Girl video before.

How everyone did

14 players called this one. The average score was 39 out of 100, and on the thumbnail alone people were typically 7.4× off.