PBS Space Time
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Episodes
The Geometry of Causality
This episode explores the geometric structure of causality in special relativity, using space-time diagrams to illustrate how the invariant…
Telescopes of Tomorrow
This episode explores the next generation of astronomical observatories, detailing the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared capabilities for…
The Eye of Sauron Reveals a Forming Solar System!
This episode explores the young star Fomalort, which retains a massive debris ring decades after formation, offering insights into solar system origins.
The Treasures of Trappist-1 | Space Time
This episode explores the TRAPPIST-1 system, a nearby star hosting seven Earth-sized rocky planets discovered via the transit method.
The Race to a Habitable Exoplanet - Time Warp Challenge | Space Time
This PBS Space Time episode explores the theoretical link between faster-than-light travel and time travel using Lorentz transformations and spacetime diagrams.
Time Crystals!
This episode explores the theoretical proposal and subsequent laboratory synthesis of discrete time crystals, a state of matter that breaks time translational symmetry.
Superluminal Time Travel + Time Warp Challenge Answer
This episode explores the physics of faster-than-light travel using Minkowski spacetime diagrams to demonstrate how superluminal motion can create causal paradoxes.
How Time Becomes Space Inside a Black Hole | Space Time
This episode explores the concept of space-time dyslexia, explaining how the roles of space and time coordinates swap inside a black hole's event…
The Star at the End of Time
This episode explores the distant future of the galaxy, focusing on how red dwarf stars will sustain life for trillions of years after other stars die.
Could We Terraform Mars?
This episode explores the immense challenges of terraforming Mars, debunking the idea that releasing surface carbon dioxide is sufficient due to the planet's lost magnetic field.
Deciphering The Vast Scale of the Universe | STELLAR
This episode explores how Edwin Hubble’s 1924 discovery of Cepheid variables in Andromeda proved the existence of galaxies beyond the Milky Way, fundamentally expanding our view of the cosmos.
What If (Tiny) Black Holes Are Everywhere?
This episode explores the theoretical existence of Planck relics, stable remnants of black holes that may halt evaporation at the Planck scale.
How Does Gravity Warp the Flow of Time?
This episode explores the origin of gravitational time dilation, demonstrating how Einstein’s equivalence principle and the constancy of light speed…
Telescopes on the Moon
This episode explores the potential of the Moon as a prime location for astronomical observation, highlighting the Chang'e-3 lander's ultraviolet…
Interstellar Expansion WITHOUT Exceeding the Speed of Light
PBS Space Time explores the feasibility of building a generation ship to settle Proxima Centauri b within the next few decades.
Building Black Holes in a Lab
This episode explores analog black holes, physical systems like water vortices and Bose-Einstein condensates that mimic the behavior of real black holes.
Why Quantum Computing Requires Quantum Cryptography
This episode explores the foundations of the quantum internet, focusing on quantum cryptography and key distribution to secure communications against future quantum computers.
The Misunderstood Nature of Entropy
This episode explores the fundamental nature of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, tracing their origins from Carnot’s heat engines to Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics.
Is Dark Energy Getting Stronger?
This episode examines a new study suggesting the cosmological constant may not be constant, potentially indicating that dark energy is increasing and could lead to a Big Rip.
How Much Of The Universe Can Humanity Ever Witness?
This PBS Space Time episode explores the absolute limits of what we can ever see in the expanding universe.
The Supernova At The End of Time
This episode explores a new theory by astrophysicist Matt Kaplan suggesting that the universe will end with "black dwarf supernovae" rather than just black hole evaporation.
Scientists Have Detected the First Stars
This episode explores the recent detection of 21-centimeter absorption from the first stars, a discovery that implies the early universe's hydrogen gas was colder than predicted.
Extraterrestrial Superstorms
This episode explores the massive storms of the Jovian planets, contrasting their high-pressure, contraction-powered nature with Earth's low-pressure hurricanes.
Noether's Theorem and The Symmetries of Reality
This episode explores Noether's theorem, explaining how conservation laws emerge from continuous symmetries in nature.
How Eclipses Demonstrated Our Solar System
Hosts of PBS Space Time explore how ancient and early modern astronomers used eclipses and transits to map the solar system.
Where Are The Worlds In Many Worlds?
This PBS Space Time episode explores the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics by using the analogy of pond ripples to explain wave superposition.
Horizon Radiation
This episode explores how horizons in spacetime make the concept of particles observer-dependent within quantum field theory.
Have We SOLVED The Black Hole Information Paradox with Wormholes?
This episode explores the black hole information paradox and a recent breakthrough using the gravitational path integral to resolve it.
How To Simulate The Universe With DFT
This episode explores how physicists overcome the exponential computational complexity of quantum mechanics using Density Functional Theory (DFT).
Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist?
This episode explores the fine-tuning of the universe's fundamental constants, arguing that slight variations in forces or particle masses would…
Electroweak Theory and the Origin of the Fundamental Forces
This PBS Space Time episode explores electroweak unification, explaining how the electromagnetic and weak forces were once a single entity governed by a grand symmetry.
Here's Why I Love PBS
Matt from PBS Space Time addresses a proposal to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, emphasizing the vital role of PBS in education and the arts.
Is ACTION The Most Fundamental Property in Physics?
PBS Space Time explores the principle of least action, tracing its evolution from Heron’s optics to Lagrange’s mechanics, general relativity, and Feynman’s path integral formulation.
Zero-Point Energy Demystified
This episode clarifies the physics of zero-point energy, debunking pseudoscientific claims that the quantum vacuum can power free energy devices or warp drives.
Will We Ever Find Alien Life?
This episode explores the Fermi Paradox, using recent exoplanet surveys and the absence of detectable alien signals to constrain the likelihood of advanced civilizations.
Could We Decipher Alien Physics?
This episode explores the potential pitfalls of decoding alien physics, specifically how arbitrary conventions like electric charge sign, particle…
Is Pluto a Planet?
This episode explores the history and scientific rationale behind Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet, arguing that the term "planet" is a useful but arbitrary taxonomic label.
How Much Information is in the Universe?
This episode explores the Bekenstein bound and holographic principle, calculating the maximum information capacity of the observable universe by analyzing particle counts and black hole entropy.
Can Black Holes Integrate General Relativity & Quantum Mechanics?
This episode explores the black hole information paradox and the proposed solution of black hole complementarity, which suggests that quantum…
RECENT DISCOVERY About Supermassive Black Holes Explained!
PBS Space Time explores the discovery of a black hole that has recently swiveled its particle jets to point directly at Earth, transforming it from a radio galaxy into a blazar.
Does Antimatter Yield Anti-Gravity?
This episode explores whether antimatter possesses negative gravitational mass, which could theoretically enable anti-gravity.
First Detection of Life
This episode explores the 1990 Galileo experiment, which successfully detected life on Earth from space, as a blueprint for finding extraterrestrial life.
What If Gravity Remains Non-Quantum?
PBS Space Time explores the immense difficulty of proving gravity is quantum by examining Freeman Dyson's arguments against detecting individual gravitons.
The Alchemy of Neutron Star Collisions
This episode explores the origin of heavy elements, explaining that most precious metals were forged in neutron star mergers rather than supernovae.
What Supernova Distance Would Initiate Mass Extinction?
This episode explores the mechanics and potential dangers of supernovae, explaining how core-collapse and Type Ia explosions can threaten Earth via ozone depletion and cosmic rays.
Space DOES NOT Expand Everywhere
This episode explores the physical nature of cosmic expansion, explaining why the universe grows without stretching space thin or snapping like taffy.
Does Infinity - Infinity = an Electron?
This episode introduces the hierarchy problem by explaining why the Higgs boson’s unexpectedly small mass remains a major mystery in physics.
How We Know The Earth Is Ancient
This episode explores the history of determining Earth's age, tracing the journey from ancient cosmogonies and Bishop Usser's biblical calculations to James Hutton's concept of deep time.
How Earth ACTUALLY Moves Across the Galaxy
This episode debunks the "corkscrew" myth of planetary motion, explaining that Earth’s path is best understood through multiple reference frames, from the solar barycenter to the galactic center.
The Universe Itself Might Be Withholding the Gravity Particle From Us
This episode explores the fundamental challenges of detecting the graviton, the quantum particle of gravity, using a Poincaré Prize lecture as a starting point.