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...

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...

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...

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.
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A few weeks ago a...

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...

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...

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.
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When we first realized that black holes could have...

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...

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.

It may be that for every star in the universe there are billions of microscopic black holes streaming through the solar system, the planet, even our bodies every second. Sounds horrible - but hey, at least we’d have explained dark matter.

Carl Sagan’s famous words: “We are star stuff” refers to a mind-blowing idea – that most atomic nuclei in our bodies were created in the nuclear furnace and the explosive deaths of stars that lived in the ancient universe. In recent...

Quantum computing is cool, but you know what would be extra awesome - a quantum internet. In fact if we want the first we’ll need the latter. And the first step to the quantum internet is quantum cryptography.

Looking up at the stars makes you wonder: what and who is out there? And why haven’t we seen any other intelligent civilizations given the vast size and age of the universe? They’re complicated questions and although we haven’t met any...

Why are trees and other plants green? Seems like a simple question. But the answer is full of surprises. Using a special camera that can pick up light just beyond the visible range, into the near-infrared, you’ll get to see trees like...

You know what a planet is, right? A big round thing that orbits a star. Uh, not so fast. The surprisingly vicious debate over the planetary status of Pluto has given us a fascinating glimpse into what a scientific definition really is....

We actually have a pretty good idea of what might have happened before the Big Bang. That is, as long as we define the Big Bang as the extremely hot, dense, rapidly expanding universe that is described by Einstein’s equations. That...

When we finally have a quantum internet you’ll be able to simultaneously like and dislike this video. But we don’t. So I hope you like it. The world is widely regarded as being well and truly into the digital age, also called the...

We’ve been failing to detect dark matter for decades. Finally, the latest failure to detect dark matter may have actually proved its existence. One of these is true: either most of the matter in the universe is invisible and formed of...

Have you ever asked “what is beyond the edge of the universe?” And have you ever been told that an infinite universe that has no edge? You were told wrong. In a sense. We can define a boundary to an infinite universe, at least...

The private space-race has been on for a while now. The attention has been on Space-X and Blue Origin with their reusable rockets. But there’s one private space program that’s been doing things a little differently. Richard Branson’s...

Challenge question: if 1kg of apples is $5 and 2kg is $10, how much is -1kg of apples? The answer? Priceless. Because you could use negative-mass apples to build warp drives, travel in time, and construct a perpetual motion machine. In...

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...

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Black holes are a paradox. They are paradoxical because they simultaneously must exist but can’t, and so they break physics as we know it. Many physicists will tell you that the best way to fix broken physics is with string. String...