SciShow
The Zombie Planet at the Center of the Earth
For years, geologists have been searching for an explanation for two strange blobs of Earth's mantle that are denser than the rest. It turns out, they may not be original parts of Earth at all.
SciShow
Where Did the Moon Come From?
SciShow Space takes you to the moon! Learn about the competing theories about how Earth's closest neighbor formed.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Something weird is happening in our galaxy | Ashkbiz Danehkar
In 2010, NASA announced the discovery of a never-before-seen galactic object: two gigantic gaseous bubbles, each emanating an impressive 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. Astronomers were perplexed: what created these...
PBS
Cosmic Microwave Background Challenge | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
If a photon leaves the train station shortly after the Big Bang ...
PBS
Hacking the Nature of Reality
In standard use, the S-matrix can be calculated if you understand the forces in the interaction region - for example, in the nucleus of an atom. But what if you don’t know those internal interaction forces? Heisenberg sought a way to...
PBS
Why the Muon g-2 Results Are So Exciting!
When a theory makes a prediction that disagrees with an experimental test, sometimes it means we should throw the theory away. But what if that theory has otherwise produced the most successful predictions in all of physics? Then, that...
PBS
The Holographic Universe Explained
The holographic principle emerged from many subtle clues – clues discovered over decades of theoretical exploration of the universe. Over the past several months on Space Time, we’ve seen those close clues, and we’ve built a the...
PBS
What If (Tiny) Black Holes Are Everywhere?
It’s fair to say that black holes may be the scariest objects in the universe. Happily for us, the nearest is probably many light-years away. Unless of course, Planck relics are a thing - in which case they might be literally everywhere.
PBS
The NEW Warp Drive Possibilities
That Einstein guy was a real bummer for our hopes of a star-hopping, science-fiction-y future. His whole “nothing travels faster than light” rule seems to ensure that exploration of even the local part of our galaxy will be an...
PBS
Loop Quantum Gravity Explained
The holy grail of physics is to connect our understanding of the tiny scales of atoms and subatomic particles with that of the vast scales of planets, galaxies, and the entire universe. To connect quantum physics with Einstein’s general...
PBS
What If The Universe Is Math?
In his essay “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”, the physicist Eugine Wigner said that “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious”. This statement was inspired by...
PBS
Why String Theory is Wrong
There’s this idea that beauty is a powerful guide to truth in the mathematics of physical theory. String theory is certainly beautiful in the eyes of many physicists. Beautiful enough to pursue even if it’s wrong? Hermann Weyl once said,...
PBS
Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist?
Life exists in our universe. There we go - one hopefully uncontroversial statement. Therefore our universe is capable of producing and supporting life. How am I going? Two for two? Let’s try for three: therefore there are countless...
PBS
Will Constructor Theory REWRITE Physics?
The people behind the greatest leaps in physics - Einstein, Newton, Heisenberg, all had the uncanny ability to see the fundamentals - see the deepest, underlying facts about the world, and from simple statements about reality they built...
PBS
How Quantum Entanglement Creates Entropy
Entropy is surely one of the most perplexing concepts in physics. It’s variously described as a measure of a system’s disorder - or as the amount of useful work that you can get from it - or as the information hidden by the system....
PBS
The Truth About Beauty in Physics
The great physicist Hermann Weyl once said: "My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful." But is this actually good advice for doing physics?
PBS
What Happens During a Quantum Jump?
Since the very beginning of quantum mechanics, a debate has raged about how to interpret its bizarre predictions. And at the heart and origin of that debate is the quantum jump or quantum leap - the seemingly miraculous and instantaneous...
PBS
How Luminiferous Aether Led to Relativity
As the 19th century came to a close, physicists were feeling pretty satisfied with the state of their science. The great edifice of physical theory seemed complete. A few minor experiments remained to verify everything. Little did those...
PBS
Are Virtual Particles A New Layer of Reality?
Sometimes our mathematical hacks point to strange new aspects of reality. For example Max Planck used a quantization trick to figure out the spectrum of light emitted by hot objects. The quantization part of his math trick was meant to...
PBS
Are Cosmic Strings Cracks in the Universe?
Reality has cracks in it. Universe-spanning filaments of ancient Big Bang energy, formed from topological defects in the quantum fields, aka cosmic strings. They have subatomic thickness but prodigious mass and they lash through space at...
PBS
Did Time Start at the Big Bang?
Our universe started with the big bang. But only for the right definition of “our universe”. And of “started” for that matter. In fact, probably the Big Bang is nothing like what you were taught. A hundred years ago we discovered the...
PBS
What’s Wrong With the Big Bang Theory? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
Now that we have a primer on the aspects of the Big Bang Theory that we know definitely happened, let’s look further into what we don’t yet know, and how the theory could progress in the future. Since there is a discrepancy between...
PBS
Will the Universe Expand Forever?
Throughout history, there has been much speculation about what the fate of the universe would be. Many theorized that the universe would eventually succumb to the pull of gravity, and reverse its expansion in what was being called ‘The...
PBS
How Pterosaurs Got Their Wings
When pterosaurs first took flight, you could say that it marked the beginning of the end for the winged reptiles. Because, strangely enough, the power of flight -- and the changes that it led to -- may have ultimately led to their downfall.