SciShow
Our Galaxy May Be 10 Times Bigger Than We Thought
The Milky Way is often described as measuring 100,000 light years across and containing the mass of a trillion Suns. But our home galaxy is actually far bigger, and might be much less massive. Astronomers aren't sure what the exact stats...
SciShow
Can an Equation Really Tell Us How Many Aliens Exist?
In 1961, the astronomer Frank Drake wrote down what is now known as the Drake Equation. It's so important to the culture surrounding the search for extraterrestrial life that scientists have carved it into the upcoming Europa Clipper...
MinutePhysics
How Do We Know The Universe Is Accelerating?
The universe is expanding – this we know from looking at red shifts of distant galaxies – but the acceleration of the universe's expansion is harder to measure. It requires measuring the change of recession velocity over time, and it's...
SciShow
The Universe Runs on Vibes
As much as we like to talk about vibes, actual vibrations underlie pretty much everything about the universe. From the patterns of galaxies created by the Big Bang to the existence of subatomic particles, here's how the universe runs on...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Something weird is happening in our galaxy | Ashkbiz Danehkar
In 2010, NASA announced the discovery of a never-before-seen galactic object: two gigantic gaseous bubbles, each emanating an impressive 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. Astronomers were perplexed: what created these...
SciShow
How to Move the Sky
The earth is always moving, and our view of the night sky is slowly but surely changing.
SciShow
Goodbye SOFIA, Thanks for All the Discoveries
SOFIA or The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy is coming to an end, but let's look back on some of the amazing discoveries of this flying telescope.
SciShow
The Spacecraft That Wasn't Designed To Land, But Did
Many space missions take billions of dollars and decades of work to get develop, but 25 years ago this spacecraft delivered stunning results on a shoestring budget and a minimal development timeline.
SciShow
This Year in Space News (That Isn't JWST)
If you’ve been distracted looking at the amazing photos The James Webb Space Telescope has taken, not to worry. Here are three other stellar stories from the last year of space science!
SciShow
Space Superlatives of 2022
As we wrap up 2022, we'd like to celebrate a few of the cosmic “winners” discovered this year, at least while they still hold their titles.
SciShow
A Big Bang Beginner’s Guide | Compilation
While there's still a lot that astrophysicists don't know about the Big Bang, there are some things we do know. So today, let's get caught up on the Big Bang basics.
PBS
How Stars Destroy Each Other
Our galaxy is full of dysfunctional stellar relationships. With more than half of all stars existing in binary orbits, it’s inevitable that many stellar remnants will end up in parasitic spirals with their partners. Today we’re going to...
PBS
NEW DISCOVERY About Supermassive Black Holes Explained!
Astrophysicists have discovered a black hole that for millions of years has been blasting vast particle beams in opposite directions across the sky. And has recently swiveled to point its one of these jets directly at us. Is this an...
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
Can You Observe a Typical Universe?
The moment you started observing reality, you hopelessly polluted any conclusions you might make about it. The anthropic principle guarantees that you are NOT seeing the universe in most typical state. But used correctly, this highly...
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
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
Gravitational Wave Background Discovered?
It was pretty impressive when LIGO detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes. Well we’ve just taken that to the next level with a galaxy-spanning gravitational wave detector that may have detected a foundational element of...
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
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
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...
SciShow
Most Planets Don't Orbit Stars!?
Hunting for rogue planets is like hunting for an invisible needle in a haystack. But we're getting a much clearer view thanks to gravitational microlensing surveys. And it looks like there are a LOT more of them out there than we thought.
SciShow
What Are These Weird Rings In Space?
Over the past few years, astronomers have discovered their own kind of UFO called Odd Radio Circles, aka ORCs. They're a little too round, and a little too invisible at non-radio wavelengths, to immediately know what they are and what's...
MinutePhysics
How to Simulate the Universe on your Laptop
One Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in one minute!