PBS
Venus May Have Life!
If you rank the most habitable places in our solar system Venus lands pretty low, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead and sulphuric acid rain. And yet it may have just jumped to the front of the pack. In fact, we may have...
PBS
Was the Milky Way a Quasar?
The Milky Way galaxy is relatively calm by the destructive standards of the rest of the Universe, and compared to its own very violent past. But just recently we discovered that its violent past was much more recent than we thought - and...
PBS
Building Black Holes in a Lab
Black holes are about the worst subjects for direct study in the universe. But at this stage, it’s all we can do to convince ourselves of their existence. Actually studying the physics of real black holes is much, much harder. I mean, we...
PBS
Is Time Travel Impossible?
Time travel stories are cool because both the past and future are somehow more interesting that the present and because everyone wants a redo. But so far it appears we’re doomed to live consumed by regret in the eternal, boring present....
PBS
Does Antimatter Explain Why There's Something Rather Than Nothing?
The most precious substance in our universe is not gold, nor oil. It’s not even printer ink. It’s antimatter. But it’s worth every penny of it’s very high cost, because it may hold the answer to the question of why anything exists in our...
PBS
How Vacuum Decay Would Destroy The Universe
The universe is going to end. But of all the possible ends of the universe vacuum decay would have to be the most thorough - because it could totally rewrite the laws of physics. Today I hope to help you understand exactly how terrified...
PBS
Is the Proxima System Our Best Hope For Another Earth?
At just four light years away, Proxima Centauri is our closest solar neighbor. The recent discovery of the new exoplanet Proxima D, has reopened the discussion of whether the proxima system is our best chance at reaching another Earth....
PBS
How Many Universes Are There?
The universe is big, but it’s peanuts compared to the eternally inflating multiverse. But just how many universes are there? What are they like? And most importantly, what can they tell us about … aliens? Imagine it: the observable part...
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
Is 'Perpetual Motion' Possible with Superfluids?
The weird rules of quantum mechanics lead to all sorts of bizarre phenomena on tiny scales— particles teleporting through walls or being in multiple places at once or simultaneously existing and not. Shame all this magical behavior...
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
Is The Wave Function The Building Block of Reality?
Objective Collapse Theories offer a explanation of quantum mechanics that is at once brand new and based in classical mechanics. In the world of quantum mechanics, it’s no big deal for particles to be in multiple different states at the...
PBS
Science of the James Webb Telescope Explained!
You’ve probably heard about the James Webb Space Telescope and seen some cool pictures. But why should astronomers have all the fun? How do we get to use this new toy ourselves?
PBS
The Boundary Between Black Holes & Neutron Stars
When we detected the very first gravitational wave, a new window was opened to the mysteries of the universe. We knew we’d see things previously thought impossible. And we just did - an object on the boundary between neutron stars and...
PBS
Could The Universe Be Inside A Black Hole?
What is inside a black hole? Inevitable crushing doom? Gateways to other universes? Weird, multidimensional libraries? If you’ve ever wanted to know then you might be in luck - Some physicists have argued that you’re inside one right now.
Curated Video
Why Did Quantum Entanglement Win the Nobel Prize in Physics?
The Nobel prize in physics is typically awarded to scientists who make sense of nature; those whose discoveries render the universe more comprehensible. But the 2022 Nobel has been awarded to three physicists who revealed that the...
PBS
Can Space Be Infinitely Divided?
How many times can I half the distance between my hands? Assume perfect coordination and the ability to localize my palms to the quantum level. 15 halvings gets them to within a cell’s width. 33 to within a single atom, 50 and they’re a...
PBS
What If Dark Energy is a New Quantum Field?
What is Quintessence? Well we know that something is up with the way the universe is expanding - there’s some kind of anti-gravitational effect that’s causing the expansion to accelerate. We don’t know what it is - just that it competes...
PBS
How An Extreme New Star Could Change All Cosmology
A new white dwarf has been discovered (poetically named: ZTF J1901+1458) that’s doing some stuff that no white dwarf should ever be able to do. In fact, it has multiple properties that are so extreme that it almost certainly did NOT form...
PBS
How to Find ALIEN Dyson Spheres
On our search for alien lifeforms we scan for primitive biosignatures, and wait and hope for their errant signals to happen by the Earth. But that may not be the best way. Any energy-hungry civilization more advanced than our own may...
PBS
What If the Galactic Habitable Zone LIMITS Intelligent Life?
Our solar system is a tiny bubble of habitability suspended in a vast universe that mostly wants to kill us. In fact, a good fraction of our own galaxy turns out to be utterly uninhabitable, even for sun—like stellar systems. Is this why...
PBS
How the Higgs Mechanism Give Things Mass
Fermilab physicists really care about the mass of the W boson. They spent nearly a decade recording collisions in the Tevatron collider and another decade analysing the data. This culminated in the April 7 announcement that this obscure...
PBS
Where Are The Worlds In Many Worlds?
Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics proposes that every time a quantum event gets decided, the universe splits so that every possible outcome really does occur. But where exactly are those worlds, and can we ever see them?