PBS Space Time
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Episodes
The Future of Space Telescopes
This episode explores NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts for next-generation telescopes, including the starshade for imaging exoplanets, the…
Why Did Attosecond Physics Take Home the NOBEL PRIZE?
This episode explores the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini, and Ferenc Krausz for pioneering attosecond physics.
How Close To The Sun Can Humanity Get?
This episode details the Parker Solar Probe mission, which will fly closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft to study the solar corona and wind using four specialized instruments.
Why Magnetic Monopoles SHOULD Exist
This episode explores the theoretical existence of magnetic monopoles, explaining why classical electromagnetism forbids them while quantum mechanics…
How Can Matter Be BOTH Liquid AND Gaseous State?
This episode explores supercritical fluids, a unique state of matter that exists beyond the critical point on a phase diagram, combining the density of liquids with the flow properties of gases.
Is Gravity RANDOM Not Quantized?
This episode explores Jonathan Oppenheim’s post-quantum gravity hypothesis, which proposes that gravity remains fundamentally classical but…
The Great American Eclipse
This episode explains the mechanics of solar and lunar eclipses, detailing why the August 21st total solar eclipse is rare due to orbital alignment and shadow size.
Why Did Quantum Entanglement Secure the Nobel Prize in Physics?
This episode explores the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger for their experiments proving quantum entanglement.
What If The Universe DID NOT Emerge From The Big Bang?
This episode explores whether the universe had a true beginning by examining the Big Bang singularity through the lens of geodesic incompleteness and curvature tests.
Gravitational Wave Background Discovered?
This episode explores the tentative detection of the gravitational wave background by the NANOGrav collaboration using a galaxy-spanning Pulsar Timing Array.
How Astrophysics Can (LITERALLY) Preserve Civilization
This episode explains how astronomers determine the impact probability of near-Earth asteroids, using the recent discovery of 2024 YR4 as a case study.
Your DNA's Codes Are (Almost Certainly) From Outer Space
This episode explores the concept of pseudopanspermia, arguing that complex organic molecules like amino acids and nucleobases likely formed in space before seeding early Earth.
Can Viruses Travel Between Planets?
This episode explores the emerging field of astrovirology, examining how viruses influence planetary evolution and potentially predate cellular life.
Kronos: Devourer Of Worlds
This episode of Space Time Journal Club explores the discovery of a wide binary star system, Kronos and Krios, where one star appears to have consumed its own terrestrial planets.
How Luminiferous Aether Led to Relativity
This episode explores the history of the luminiferous ether, tracing its origins from ancient Greek philosophy to the 19th-century wave theory of light.
What If Space is NOT Hollow?
This episode explores the concept of spacetime foam, a theoretical structure where the fabric of spacetime becomes turbulent and foamy at the Planck…
Did JWST Identify Dark Matter Stars?
This episode explores the discovery of four extremely distant objects by JWST, which may be the first evidence of "dark stars" powered by dark matter annihilation rather than nuclear fusion.
Are there Infinite Versions of You?
This episode explores the cosmological implications of an infinite universe, arguing that such a scenario inevitably contains infinite duplicates of…
How Are Quasiparticles Separate From Particles?
This PBS Space Time episode explores quasiparticles, emergent behaviors in matter that enable modern technology.
Are the Fundamental Constants Changing?
This episode explores the possibility that fundamental physical constants, specifically the dimensionless fine structure constant, may vary across space and time.
Why Quantum Information is Never Destroyed
This episode explores why conservation of information is a fundamental requirement of quantum mechanics, linking it to time reversal symmetry and the principle of unitarity.
How a One-in-a-Billion Blunder Made the Universe Possible
This episode explores the mystery of why the universe contains matter rather than nothing, focusing on the matter-antimatter asymmetry.
How An Extreme New Star Could Change All Cosmology
This episode explores the discovery of ZTF J1901+1458, a moon-sized white dwarf that is unusually massive, rapidly spinning, and highly magnetized.
Does Quantum Immortality Save Schrödinger's Cat?
This episode explores the limitations of decoherence in solving the quantum measurement problem, introducing the "quantum immortality" thought experiment to test the many-worlds interpretation.
Martian Evolution
This episode explores the potential for human evolution on Mars, examining how low gravity, radiation, and isolation could lead to distinct physical…
What If Charge is NOT Fundamental?
This episode explores why electric charge is not truly fundamental by tracing its origins to the weak nuclear force.
Quantum Gravity and the Hardest Problem in Physics | Space Time
This episode explores the fundamental conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics, explaining why their unification remains elusive.
What Survives Inside A Black Hole?
This episode explores the "no-hair" conjecture, explaining why black holes are defined solely by mass, charge, and angular momentum.
What If The Universe Is Arithmetic?
This episode explores Max Tegmark’s mathematical universe hypothesis, which posits that physical reality is fundamentally a mathematical structure rather than just described by math.
Will The Sun's Magnetic Poles Flip This Year?
PBS Space Time explores the unexpected intensity of the current solar cycle, which is far stronger than predicted despite historical trends toward weakening.
The Holographic Universe Explained
This episode explores the holographic principle, explaining how our 3+1 dimensional universe might be encoded on a lower-dimensional surface.
Could Life Evolve Inside Stars?
This episode explores a speculative proposal by physicists Luis Antrodecki and Eugene Chudnovsky suggesting that life could exist within stars,…
Year End Q&A
Host Matt O'Dowd leads a 2022 year-end AMA, reviewing the show's coverage of topics ranging from black holes to quantum mechanics.
How Will the Universe End? | Space Time
This episode explores the universe's ultimate fate, tracing its decay from the death of the last stars through the degenerate age and galaxy dissolution.
Sound Waves from the Beginning of Time
This episode explores baryon acoustic oscillations, the fossilized sound waves from the early universe imprinted on the distribution of galaxies.
The Universe Itself Might Be Veiling the Gravity Particle From Us
This episode explores the extreme difficulty of detecting the graviton, the quantum particle of gravity, by examining why standard methods like LIGO…
Navigating with Quantum Entanglement
This episode explores the quantum mechanical basis of avian magnetoreception, proposing that birds navigate using entangled radical pairs in cryptochrome proteins within their eyes.
Why String Theory is Right
This PBS Space Time episode explores why string theory remains a compelling obsession for physicists, focusing on its mathematical elegance and the way it naturally incorporates gravity.
Black Hole Harmonics
This episode explores the concept of gravitational wave spectroscopy, analyzing the harmonic oscillations, or overtones, in the ringdown of merged black holes.
Is Our Model of Dark Energy BROKEN? | New 4.2σ Results
This episode explores the DESI survey’s recent findings suggesting dark energy may be weakening over time, challenging the standard Lambda-CDM model.
What If Dark Matter Is Just Black Holes?
This episode explores the hypothesis that dark matter could consist of primordial black holes, systematically ruling out most mass ranges using astrophysical evidence.
What Transpires To Quantum Information Inside A Black Hole?
This episode explores the black hole information paradox by analyzing the conflicting observations of Alice, who falls into a supermassive black…
The Nature of Space and Time AMA
Host Chris Lintner explores the fundamental nature of space and time in this "Ask Me Almost Everything" episode.
The Fate of the First Stars
This episode explores the nature of Population III stars, the first stars in the universe, explaining why their lack of heavy elements led to massive sizes and short lifespans.
Could the Higgs Boson Point Us Toward Dark Matter?
This episode explores how the Higgs boson may serve as a "portal" to detect dark matter, a particle that remains elusive despite its gravitational influence.
Theory of Everything Livestreams with Amazing Guests
PBS Space Time announces a two-part webinar series exploring the search for a unified theory of everything.
Did Life on Earth Come from Space?
This episode explores the panspermia hypothesis, examining whether life on Earth originated from space by analyzing the survivability of microbes…
Did AI Invalidate Our Proton Model WRONG?
This episode explores the complex internal structure of protons, explaining how high-energy scattering experiments reveal a "quark sea" rather than just three static quarks.
What is Energy?
This episode explores the history and physics of energy, tracing its evolution from Leibniz's vis-viva to modern quantum mechanics and highlighting…
Exploring Arecibo in VR 180
This PBS Space Time episode features a visual tour of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, highlighting its massive spherical dish and unique engineering.