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
Secrets of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Hook up an old antenna to your TV and scan between channels. The static buzz you hear is mostly due to the ambient radio produced by our noisy pre-galactic civilization. But around one percent of that buzz is something very different –...
PBS
The Crisis in Cosmology
The search for a single number: the hubble constant, which is the rate of expansion of our universe, has consumed astronomers for generations. Finally, two powerful and independent methods have refined its measurement to unprecedented...
PBS
100 Years of Relativity + Challenge Winners!
The results are in - on this weeks episode of Spacetime we reveal the answer to our Asteroid Challenge, as well as our T-shirt winners! Check out who saved the world!
PBS
How To Become an Astrophysicist + Challenge Question!
Do you want to major in Astrophysics? Are you thinking about becoming (or ever just wondered how one becomes) an Astrophysicists? Do you want to know Matt O’Dowd’s origin story? Then buckle up and enjoy the ride and try your astrophysics...
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
The Impossibility of Perpetual Motion Machines
Bad ideas come and go in physics. But there’s one bit of nonsense that is perhaps more persistent than all others: the perpetual motion machine. No working perpetual motion machine has ever been experiment verified. All break the laws of...
PBS
Are Dark Matter And Dark Energy The Same?
Astronomers are the worst at naming things. Dark energy AND dark matter? Who can remember which is which. But perhaps one astronomer has just fixed it, with a theory that says perhaps actually they are they same stuff.
PBS
Is Dark Energy Getting Stronger?
The power of Dark Energy may be increasing as the universe ages. Subtle clues are emerging that the accepted model for the nature of dark energy and dark matter may not be all that. We saw the first such clue recently in our recent...
PBS
Could the Universe End by Tearing Apart Every Atom?
The universe is expanding, and that expansion is accelerating. We don’t know what’s causing that acceleration, but that hasn’t stopped us from giving it a name. We call this unknown influence dark energy. The observed acceleration is,...
PBS
How Far Beyond Earth Could Humanity Spread?
We humans have always been explorers. The great civilizations that have arisen across the world are owed to our restless ancestors. These days, there’s not much of Earth left to explore. But if we look up, there’s a whole universe out...
PBS
The Quasar from The Beginning of Time | STELLAR
Recently, the oldest quasar ever seen was discovered by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, as well as the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. In this first episode of the...
PBS
The Real Science of the EHT Black Hole
So, how do you take a picture of a black hole? The beast in question is the supermassive black hole in the center of this – the M87 elliptical galaxy. It has an estimated mass of several billion times that of the Sun, which gives it an...
PBS
The Cosmic Dark Ages
In astronomy we study things that are very far away. It’s a powerful challenge because even the brightest objects are almost impossibly faint when you view them from the other side of the universe. But there’s an up side. If the light...
PBS
Pulsar Starquakes Make Fast Radio Bursts? + Challenge Winners! | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
Fast Radio Bursts were puzzling physicist for quite some time. They were thought to be the result of large cataclysmic events such as supernovae, but this theory was proven wrong when it was discovered that they could repeat themselves....
PBS
First Detection of Light from Behind a Black Hole
How do you see the unseeable - how do you explore the inescapable? Our cleverest astronomers have figured out ways to catch light that skims the very edge of black holes. Let’s find out what they learned. A few weeks ago a story made the...
PBS
Our Antimatter, Mirrored, Time-Reversed Universe
The foundations of quantum theory rests on its symmetries. For example, it should be impossible to distinguish our universe from one that is that is the perfect mirror opposite in charge, handedness, and the direction of time. But one by...
PBS
How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon
The Amazon rainforest of South America is a paradise for flowering plants. But long ago, the landscape that we now think of as the Amazon looked very different. And would you believe that the entire revolution of the Amazon began with...
PBS
How Horses Went From Food To Friends
Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient...
PBS
How 7,000 Years of Epic Floods Changed the World (w/ SciShow!)
Strange geologic landmarks in the Pacific Northwest are the lingering remains of a mystery that took nearly half a century to solve. These features turned out to be a result one of the most powerful and bizarre episodes in geologic...
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
Breaking The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Quantum mechanics forbids us from measuring the universe beyond a certain level of precision. But that doesn’t stop us from trying. And in some cases succeeding, by squeezing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to its breaking point.
PBS
Could the Higgs Boson Lead Us to Dark Matter?
The discovery of the Higgs boson ten years ago in the Large Hadron Collider was the culmination of decades of work and the collaboration of 1000s of brilliant and passionate people. It was the final piece needed to confirm the standard...
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,...