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
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
What Happens After the Universe Ends?
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is a story of the origin and the end of our universe from great mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose. It’s goes like this: the infinitely far future, when the universe has expanded exponentially to to an...
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
Is The Universe Finite?
Every time you walk out the door, light from the Big Bang strikes your face, enters your eyes. This is the cosmic microwave background radiation - the left-over heat-glow from the very early universe. We can’t see this microwave light...
PBS
How Do We Know What Stars Are Made Of?
Pin-pricks in the celestial sphere, through which shines the light of heaven? Or gods and heroes looking down from their constellations? Or lights kindled above middle earth by Varda Elbereth and brightened with the dew of the trees of...
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
Is ACTION The Most Fundamental Property in Physics?
It’s about time we discussed an obscure concept in physics that may be more fundamental than energy and entropy and perhaps time itself. That’s right - the time has come for Action.
PBS
Why Is 1/137 One of the Greatest Unsolved Problems In Physics?
The Fine Structure Constant is one the strangest numbers in all of physics. It’s the job of physicists to worry about numbers, but there’s one number that physicists have stressed about more than any other. That number is 0.00729735256 -...
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
What Caused the Big Bang?
Every astronomy textbook tells us that soon after the Big Bang, there was a period of exponentially accelerating expansion called cosmic inflation. In a tiny fraction of a second, inflationary expansion multiplied the size of the...
PBS
The Strange Universe of Gravitational Lensing
Niels Bohr, a Danish Physicist said “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded .” Is what we see perceived to be real or is it an illusion? In the world of our mind’s eye, light travels in a straight line. In...
PBS
How Black Holes Kill Galaxies
Black holes are really only dangerous if you get too close. Ha, who am I kidding. It turns out they may be responsible for ending star formation across the entire universe. When we first realized that black holes could have masses of...
PBS
Should We Build a Dyson Sphere? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
The Kepler telescope recently noticed a strange partial eclipse that some have speculated could be a Dyson Sphere. Are Dyson Sphere's possible? Are they practical? What other alternatives to futuristic energy capture do we have to choose...
PBS
The Trebuchet Challenge | Space Time
Kinetic and potential energy are defined as combinations of more basic quantities: position, velocity and mass. These combinations are chosen so that their sum is conserved. It’s actually remarkable that there’s any such combination of...
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
When We Tamed Fire
The ability to make and use fire has fundamentally changed the arc of our evolution. The bodies we have today were, in many ways, shaped by that time when we first tamed fire.
Be Smart
The Essentials of Energy
The world of energy is a confusing place. What's better, nuclear or solar? What's the difference between fluorescent bulbs and LEDs? What's the difference between energy and power? And what the heck is a kilowatt-hour?!
Be Smart
When Will We Stop Using Oil?
We've heard news of "peak oil" and "the end of the oil age" for years now, but we keep coming up with ways to find and pump more of it to the surface. Rising CO2 levels and the changing climate that results from burning fossil fuels mean...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: This is what happens when you hit the gas | Shannon Odell
In 2015, two men drove a Volkswagen across the US on just over 100 gallons of fuel. Their 81-mile-per-gallon performance doubled the car's estimated fuel rating, and set the record for the lowest fuel consumption ride of a diesel car....
TED Talks
TED: The first-ever cargo ship powered by green fuel | Morten Bo Christiansen
The shipping industry is vital to the global economy, but it's also a huge contributor to the climate crisis. Morten Bo Christiansen, a leader of the energy transition for the global shipping company A.P. Moller – Maersk, talks to TED's...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why your phone battery gets worse over time | George Zaidan
Almost all batteries, even single-use batteries, are theoretically rechargeable. That's because the metals and other chemicals are still there in the battery. So chemically speaking, a dead battery is actually not that different from a...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What's happening to Earth's core? | Shannon Odell
A hydrogen atom is traveling high within the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere. This particular atom first entered the exosphere millions of years ago, but today it overcomes Earth's gravitational pull and escapes, joining the...
TED Talks
TED: Why rivals are working together to transform shipping | Bo Cerup-Simonsen
What would it take to make global supply chains cleaner and greener? Bo Cerup-Simonsen -- who's helping decarbonize the maritime industry as CEO of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping -- discusses why tenacious...