PBS Space Time
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Episodes
The Oh My God Particle
This episode explores the "Oh My God particle," a cosmic ray detected in 1991 with energy levels that defy the GZK limit, challenging current understanding of extragalactic sources.
The Arrow of Time and How to Reverse It
This PBS Space Time episode explores the arrow of time, explaining why the universe moves forward despite time-symmetric physical laws.
Reversing Entropy with Maxwell's Demon
This episode explores the deep connection between entropy and information, using Maxwell's Demon to illustrate how knowledge can seemingly violate the second law of thermodynamics.
What if Singularities FAIL to Exist?
This episode explores a recent paper by physicist Roy Kerr that challenges the Penrose Singularity Theorem, suggesting black hole singularities may not exist within pure general relativity.
The Gravity Particle Ought to Be Real. So Where Is It?
PBS Space Time explores the theoretical necessity of the graviton, the hypothetical particle that mediates gravity, to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.
What If The Cosmological Constant Wasn't Truly Constant?
This episode explores the potential discovery that dark energy is not constant but is instead weakening over time, based on early data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI).
Suicide Space Robots
This episode memorializes robotic space probes that were destroyed or left behind during exploration, including the Soviet Venera landers on Venus,…
What If Space And Time Are Unreal?
This episode explores the historical and philosophical debate between Newton’s absolute space-time and Leibniz’s relational view, tracing how modern…
Heisenberg Made a Discovery in 1925. We Still Can't Fully Account for It
This episode explores the pivotal 1925 breakthroughs that established quantum mechanics, contrasting Werner Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics with Erwin Schrödinger’s wave mechanics.
The Edge of an Infinite Universe
This episode explores how physicists use conformal compactification to map infinite universes onto finite boundaries, introducing Penrose diagrams…
Can Interstellar Travel Be Possible?
This episode investigates whether interstellar travel is physically possible by analyzing the hazards of the interstellar medium, such as dust impacts and radiation, at relativistic speeds.
White Holes | Space Time
This episode explores the theoretical concept of white holes as time-reversed black holes, using the Schwarzschild metric and Penrose diagrams to illustrate their structure.
Does Space Materialize From A Holographic Boundary?
This episode explores the holographic principle, explaining how the fabric of space may emerge from a lower-dimensional boundary via black hole thermodynamics and AdS-CFT correspondence.
How Black Holes Kill Galaxies
This episode explores the tight correlation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, proposing that black hole feedback quenches star formation to limit galactic growth.
How We Know The Universe is Ancient
This episode explores how scientists determined the universe is 13.
What is a Theory of Everything: Livestream
Hosts Matt O'Dowd and Brian Keating join experimentalist James Beacham, cosmologist Stefan Alexander, and theorist Max Tegmark to debate the search for a theory of everything.
The Crisis in Cosmology
This episode explores the Hubble tension, a significant discrepancy between the Hubble constant measured via local supernovae and the value derived from the cosmic microwave background.
How Does The Nucleus Keep Together?
This episode explores how the strong force binds atomic nuclei through a residual interaction mediated by mesons, rather than directly via gluons.
Are You a Boltzmann Brain?
This episode explores Ludwig Boltzmann’s kinetic theory of gases and his statistical interpretation of entropy, explaining how the second law of thermodynamics arises from particle randomization.
What Caused the Big Bang?
This episode explores the physical mechanisms behind cosmic inflation, explaining how a hypothetical inflaton field in a false vacuum state drives…
What if Humans Are NOT Our Planet's First Civilization? | Silurian Hypothesis
This episode explores the Silurian hypothesis, a scientific framework proposing that pre-human industrial civilizations might have existed on Earth.
What Happens If A Black Hole Hits Earth?
This episode explores the hypothesis that primordial black holes could constitute dark matter, detailing how asteroid-mass black holes might pass through Earth without destroying it.
Does Axionic Dark Matter Fuse Galaxies Together?
This episode explores axionic dark matter as a viable alternative to WIMPs, explaining how ultralight axions can form a coherent superfluid that mimics standard cold dark matter on large scales.
Are Axions Dark Matter?
This episode explores the axion, a hypothetical particle proposed to solve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics.
How To Build The Universe in a Computer
This episode explores the evolution of astrophysical simulations, from Erik Holmberg’s 1941 light-bulb experiment to modern supercomputers capable of modeling 70 trillion particles.
Will Wormholes Allow Fast Interstellar Travel?
This episode explores the physics of wormholes, tracing their theoretical origins from the Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein-Rosen bridge.
What Makes The Strong Force Powerful?
This episode explores quantum chromodynamics, explaining how the strong nuclear force holds atomic nuclei together despite electromagnetic repulsion.
Are Dark Matter And Dark Energy The Same?
PBS Space Time examines Dr.
Why Antimatter Engines Could Blast Off In Your Lifetime
This episode explores the physics and engineering challenges of antimatter propulsion, explaining how annihilation releases immense energy and why…
Fermions Vs. Bosons Explained by Statistical Mechanics!
This episode explores statistical mechanics, explaining how counting particle microstates reveals the origins of thermodynamic laws and exotic matter.
Neutron Stars Collide in New LIGO Signal?
This episode explores the rumored LIGO detection of a neutron star merger, analyzing evidence from gamma-ray bursts and Hubble observations to confirm the event.
Did JWST EXPLAIN The Mystery of Supermassive Black Hole Origins?
PBS Space Time explores the discovery of UHZ1, the most distant quasar ever found, which challenges theories on how supermassive black holes formed.
Our Antimatter, Mirrored, Time-Reversed Universe
This episode explores the violation of fundamental symmetries in physics, explaining how the breaking of parity and CP symmetry necessitates the…
Can a Particle Be Neither Matter Nor a Force?
This episode explores the theoretical existence of anyons, particles that are neither bosons nor fermions, by analyzing particle exchange symmetry in lower-dimensional spaces.
The Andromeda-Milky Way Collision
This episode explores the future collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, detailing how Edwin Hubble and modern astronomers measured their distance and velocity.
Why Is The World Returning To The Moon So Quickly?
This episode explores how the Moon serves as humanity's crucial stepping stone to the universe, detailing its role in early scientific discoveries like gravity and celestial mapping.
How Many Universes Are There?
This episode explores the implications of eternal inflation, calculating the exponential rate of bubble universe formation and discussing how varying…
Are We Living in an Ancestor Simulation? ft. Neil deGrasse Tyson | Space Time
Host Leo Zua explores Nick Bostrom's "simulation argument," which posits that if advanced civilizations can run realistic ancestor simulations, simulated minds likely vastly outnumber biological ones.
Can The Crisis in Cosmology Be EXPLAINED By Cosmic Voids?
This episode explores whether cosmic voids and large-scale matter clumpiness could resolve the Hubble tension or explain dark energy.
The End of the Habitable Zone
This episode explores how the Sun’s gradual brightening will eventually render Earth uninhabitable, explaining the physics behind stellar evolution and the "faint young sun" paradox.
First Detection of Light from Behind a Black Hole
This episode features a journal club discussion of a Nature paper claiming the first detection of light from behind a black hole in I Zwicky 1.
What If Humanity Ranks Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?
This episode explores a new study by Robin Hanson and colleagues that uses the "grabby aliens" model to estimate humanity's position in cosmic history.
Supersymmetric Particle Found?
This episode explores a potential anomaly in ANITA data where two high-energy radio bursts suggest particles passed through the Earth, possibly indicating the existence of supersymmetric staus.
How Decoherence Splits The Quantum Multiverse
This episode explores quantum decoherence as the mechanism explaining why macroscopic objects appear classical rather than quantum.
Do We Live in the Most Exceptional Solar System In The Universe? We're about to find out!
This episode explores the rarity of Earth-like systems by examining the history of exoplanet detection methods, including Doppler shifts and transits.
Do We Need an UPDATED Dark Matter Model?
This episode explores the ongoing debate over the cold dark matter model, which faced significant challenges from the "missing satellites" and "cusp-core" problems.
Citizen Science + Zero-Point Challenge Answer | Space Time
This episode explores the vital role of citizen scientists in astronomy, highlighting how amateurs discover comets, supernovae, and variable stars using accessible tools.
The Unruh Effect
This episode explores the Unruh effect, explaining how acceleration creates a Rindler horizon that makes the quantum vacuum appear as a warm bath of particles to an accelerating observer.
What If Dark Energy is an Undiscovered Quantum Field?
This episode explores the nature of dark energy, contrasting the standard cosmological constant model with the alternative theory of quintessence.
Does Many Worlds Justify Quantum Probabilities?
This episode explores how the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics can derive the Born rule, which calculates measurement probabilities, without assuming it as an axiom.