PBS
How We Know The Universe is Ancient
The universe is precisely 13.8 billion year old - or so our best scientific methods tell us. But how do you learn the age of the universe when there’s no trace left of its beginnings?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Sound Waves from the Beginning of Time
Invisible to the naked eye, our night sky is scattered with the 100s of billions of galaxies the fill the known universe. Like the stars, these galaxies form constellations – hidden patterns that echo the reverberations of matter and...
PBS
Did Time Start at the Big Bang?
Our universe started with the big bang. But only for the right definition of “our universe”. And of “started” for that matter. In fact, probably the Big Bang is nothing like what you were taught. A hundred years ago we discovered the...
PBS
What’s Wrong With the Big Bang Theory? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
Now that we have a primer on the aspects of the Big Bang Theory that we know definitely happened, let’s look further into what we don’t yet know, and how the theory could progress in the future. Since there is a discrepancy between...
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...
SciShow
The Weight of “Nothing” Could Mean Everything (to Physics)
Deep in a Sardinian mine, researchers are constructing an experiment that hopes to solve what's known as The Worst Prediction In The History of Physics, and pin down the true identity of dark energy.
SciShow
When The Universe Will End
Hank serves up a buffet of news items that includes an approximate date for the end of everything, scientific proof that when it comes to sex bigger IS better, and a look behind how the London Olympics are going green. Bon appetit!
PBS
Anti-gravity and the True Nature of Dark Energy
We've come a long way in our understanding of dark energy. In previous episodes we've looked at how our universe is paradoxically flat and how dark energy is exponentially accelerating the expansion of the universe. Now, let's dive into...
PBS
Did Dark Energy Just Disappear?
Why are we talking about dark energy again? Because another team has just announced a new analysis of updated supernova data. They claim that the data are consistent with there being NO dark energy - no accelerating expansion. They...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Three ways the universe could end - Venus Keus
Our universe started with the Big Bang, but how will it end? Explore cosmologists’ three possible scenarios: the Big Crunch, the Big Freeze and the Big Rip. -- We know about our universe’s past: the Big Bang theory predicts that all...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What is the universe expanding into? - Sajan Saini
The universe began in a Big Bang nearly fourteen billion years ago, and has been expanding ever since. But how does the universe expand and what is it expanding into? Sajan Saini explains the existing theories around the Big Bang and...
SciShow
What If Dark Energy Doesn’t Exist?
Dark Energy is what we call the mysterious force that seems to be pushing the universe apart. By some calculations, it makes up 70% of everything in nature. Or...maybe it doesn’t exist at all! Plus, Juno’s observations give us new...