PBS
What If Alien Life Were Silicon-Based?
Life as we know it is carbon-based, but does it have to be this way? There’s another element on the periodic table that shares some of the key properties of carbon but is far more abundant on most planets. I’m talking about silicon. So...
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...
PBS
Does Consciousness Influence Quantum Mechanics?
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PBS
Fermions Vs. Bosons Explained with Statistical Mechanics!
If I roll a pair of dice and you get to bet on one number, what do you choose? The smart choice is 7 because there are more ways for 2 dice to come up 7 than any other number. Well, it turns out that you can apply the same logic to...
PBS
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...
PBS
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...
PBS
Where Is The Center of The Universe?
Today we’re going to ask a simple-seeming question that will lead to so pretty wacky places. The question is this: If the universe has a center, where is it?
PBS
What If Charge is NOT Fundamental?
If you've studied any physics you know that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. But why? It's as though this thing - electric charge - is as fundamental a property of an object as its mass. It just sort of ... is. Well it...
PBS
What If Our Understanding of Gravity Is Wrong?
What if there is no such thing as dark matter? What if our understanding of gravity is just wrong? New work is taking another shot at that Einstein guy. Let’s see if we’ve finally scored a hit with Modified Newtonian Dynamics aka MOND.
PBS
How Electron Spin Makes Matter Possible
Today I’m going to explain why you’re not falling through your chair right now using one simple fact, and one object. The fact is that all electrons are the same as each other, and the object is a structurally critical item of my...
PBS
How Magnetism Shapes The Universe
How far can you follow a compass needle? As far as the north magnetic pole, where the needle starts spinning wildly? Compass needles align with magnetic field lines, and on the precise spot of magnetic north, those field lines are...
PBS
How To Know If It's Aliens
There’s one rule on Space Time: It’s never Aliens. But every rule has an exception and this rule is no exception because: It’s never aliens, until it is. So is it aliens yet? And on today’s Space Time we’re going to examine all the best...
PBS
Can We Break the Universe?
Today we’re going to delve into a couple of the most famous paradoxes of special relativity: the Twin Paradox, The Ladder Paradox (aka the Barn-Pole Paradox), and a paradox suggested by our very own viewers, which asks whether a...
PBS
Is The Future Predetermined By Quantum Mechanics?
Einstein’s special theory of relativity combines space and time into one dynamic, unified entity - spacetime. But if time is connected to space, could the universe be anything but deterministic? And does that mean that the future is...
PBS
Do the Past and Future Exist?
Is all that exists just whatever exists right now? Is the past erased and the future a void yet to be filled? Well, the answer lies in between the past and the future - in the elusive, ever-moving eye-blink that we call the present.
PBS
Solving Quantum Cryptography
Your extensive posting history on r/birdswitharms and your old fanfiction-heavy livejournal are both one tiny math problem away from becoming public knowledge. That math problem is prime number factoring, and the new era of quantum...
PBS
The Doomsday Argument
Since the dawn of humanity around 100 billion people have lived. How many will live in the future of our species? We might hope for a trillion times that if we colonize the galaxy. But a simple statistical argument tells us that the doom...
PBS
Neutron Stars: The Most Extreme Objects in the Universe
We’ve traveled to lots of weird places on this show - from the interiors of black holes to the time before the big bang. But today I want to take you on a journey to what has got to be the weirdest place in the modern universe - a place...
PBS
What If Black Holes ARE Dark Energy?
We tend to imagine there are connectings between things that we don’t understand. Quantum mechanics and consciousness, aliens and pyramids, black holes and dark matter, dark matter and dark energy, dark energy and black holes. Usually...