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Can You Crush a Human Using the Atmosphere?
Air. I bet you never even notice that it’s there. Yet you are swimming in an ocean of it every day. If there’s a literal ton of air pressing down on you all the time, so why don’t we feel it? We look back at the history of physics to...
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4 Ways the Universe Might End (All of Them Are Bad)
I don’t want to alarm you, but the world is going to end. All of this. Gone. And scientists are certain all of this will happen. On the bright side this isn’t going to happen for 4-5 billion years. It makes me wonder: In a universe...
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Glass is Solid… So Why Is It Clear?
Glass is made of sand, which is a kind of rock. But glass is transparent, and rocks aren’t transparent. What’s up with that? Why is glass clear? And why can I sit on a chair? And why can we touch anything? Today we zoom down to the weird...
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Do Other Planets Have Seasons Too?
Earth has seasons, but what about the rest of the planets in the solar system? Let’s take a tour from Mercury to Pluto and see what seasons would be like on all our planetary neighbors. Bring a sweater!
PBS
Is Pluto a Planet?
You know what a planet is, right? A big round thing that orbits a star. Uh, not so fast. The surprisingly vicious debate over the planetary status of Pluto has given us a fascinating glimpse into what a scientific definition really is....
PBS
What Happened Before the Big Bang?
We actually have a pretty good idea of what might have happened before the Big Bang. That is, as long as we define the Big Bang as the extremely hot, dense, rapidly expanding universe that is described by Einstein’s equations. That...
PBS
The Quantum Internet
When we finally have a quantum internet you’ll be able to simultaneously like and dislike this video. But we don’t. So I hope you like it. The world is widely regarded as being well and truly into the digital age, also called the...
PBS
No Dark Matter = Proof of Dark Matter?
We’ve been failing to detect dark matter for decades. Finally, the latest failure to detect dark matter may have actually proved its existence. One of these is true: either most of the matter in the universe is invisible and formed of...
PBS
The Edge of an Infinite Universe
Have you ever asked “what is beyond the edge of the universe?” And have you ever been told that an infinite universe that has no edge? You were told wrong. In a sense. We can define a boundary to an infinite universe, at least...
PBS
Will You Travel to Space?
The private space-race has been on for a while now. The attention has been on Space-X and Blue Origin with their reusable rockets. But there’s one private space program that’s been doing things a little differently. Richard Branson’s...
PBS
Perpetual Motion From Negative Mass?
Challenge question: if 1kg of apples is $5 and 2kg is $10, how much is -1kg of apples? The answer? Priceless. Because you could use negative-mass apples to build warp drives, travel in time, and construct a perpetual motion machine. In...
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The Future of Gravitational Waves
On September 14th, 2015 LIGO announced the first detection of a gravitational wave. This was hailed at the time as the dawn of gravitational wave astronomy. However that’s only true if the we ever detect another gravitational wave. Now...
PBS
New Fundamental Particle Discovered?? + Challenge Winners!
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider may have just discovered a new fundamental particle that could change the way we look at the universe. Is this Dark Energy? A giant Neutrino? The big brother of the Higgs Boson? Or could it be the...
PBS
Space DOES NOT Expand Everywhere
Space is big, and it’s getting bigger. But where does all that new space actually come from? And is it popping into existence all around you right now? Is that why the remote control is always further away than I thought?
PBS
Mapping the Multiverse
This is a map of the multiverse. Or in physics-ese, it’s the maximally extended Penrose diagram of a Kerr spacetime. And in english: when you solve Einstein’s equations of general relativity for a rotating black hole, the universe does...
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Does Consciousness Influence Quantum Mechanics?
PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements!...
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How Much Of The Universe Can Humanity Ever See?
There’s an absolute limit to our access to the universe beyond our own galaxy. There’s a limit to what we can ever hope to explore or send signals to, and a very different limit to what we can ever hope to witness. Today we’re going to...
PBS
How Does The Nucleus Hold Together?
Two protons next to each other in an atomic nucleus are repelling each other electromagnetically with enough force to lift a medium-sized labradoodle off the ground. Release this energy and you have, well, you have a nuclear explosion....
PBS
How Earth REALLY Moves Through the Galaxy
Perhaps you’ve seen videos of how the planets of the solar system move through the universe in this cool helix. Not only are these misleading, but the Earth’s real motion - YOUR motion through the universe, is way more complicated and...
PBS
How Can Matter Be BOTH Liquid AND Gas?
Supercritical Fluids are one the strangest states of matter and yet they are found everywhere from Decaf Coffee, to dry cleaning, to the atmosphere of Jupiter. When we think of an exotic state of matter we tend to think of the really...
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The REAL Possibility of Mapping Alien Planets!
I’m going to tell you about the craziest proposal for an astrophysics mission that has a good chance of actually happening. A train of spacecraft sailing the sun’s light to a magical point out there in space where the Sun’s own gravity...
PBS
Have We SOLVED The Black Hole Information Paradox with Wormholes?
Black holes are very real, but are also a theoretical nightmare. It turns out that in order to make sense of their paradoxical nature, every black hole has to be thought of as a multitude of imaginary black holes, all connected by...