PBS Space Time

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Space Time explores the outer reaches of space, the craziness of astrophysics, the possibilities of sci-fi, and anything else you can think of beyond Planet Earth with our astrophysicist host: Matthew O’Dowd. For all business inquiries and sponsorship opportunities please reach out to: pbsspacetime@lighthouseagents.com Matt O'Dowd spends his time studying the universe, especially really far-away things like quasars, super-massive black holes, and evolving galaxies. He uses telescopes in space to do it. Matt completed his Ph.D. at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute, followed by work at the University of Melbourne and Columbia University. He's now a pr...

Episodes(40 episodes)

Why The Multiverse Might Actually Be Real

Thanks to Displate for sponsoring the video. Use code SPACETIME at checkout for exclusive discounts on your order at https://displate.com/@spacetime 25% off for 1 Displate, 32% off for 2 to 3, 37% off for 4 and more. Valid on Textra. Not valid on Limited Edition & Lumino. The multiverse pops out of quite a few theories in physics, and has been proposed as a solution to certain vexing problems. But it’s also been argued that the very idea of a multiverse is just bad science. That it’s unfalsifiable and a dead-end to inquiry and as bad a violation of Occam’s razor as you co...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 28m 3s

What If Space is NOT Hollow?

To Learn More About Surfshark Check Out: http://surfshark.deals/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Spacetime on its smallest scales is a seething ocean of black holes and wormholes flickering into and out of existence—or so many physicists think has to be the case. But why should we take this spacetime foam seriously if we’ve never seen any evidence of it? Check out the Space Time...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 21m 48s

How Many Black Holes Reside In The Solar System?

Learn More About Anydesk: https://anydesk.com/spacetime Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Dark matter has eluded us for many decades. Even our most advanced particle colliders and sophisticated underground detectors have come up short. But it may be that we can finally solve this mystery with a much simpler experiment, involving a ray of light, a good clock, and the planet Mars. Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 28m 51s

What's Your Brain's Purpose in Producing Space & Time?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Physics is the business of figuring out the structure of the world. So are our brains. But sometimes physics comes to conclusions that are in direct conflict with concepts fundamental to our minds, such as the realness of space and time. How do we tell who’s correct? Are time and space objective realities or human-invented concepts? Episode Companion Playlist https://www.youtube.co...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 23m 26s

Are Room Temperature Superconductors UNACHIEVABLE?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Superconductive materials seem miraculous. Their resistanceless flow of electricity has been exploited in some powerful ways—from super-strong magnets used in MRIs, particle accelerators and fusion plants. And then there’s, their bizarre ability to levitate in magnetic fields. But the broader use of superconductors is limited because they need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to work. But what if we coul...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 24m 45s

Can We Break the Universe?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Today we’re going to delve into a couple of the most famous paradoxes of special relativity: the Twin Paradox, The Ladder Paradox (aka the Barn-Pole Paradox), and a paradox suggested by our very own viewers, which asks whether a spaceship could wrap around the universe & destroy itself. We’ll explore these paradoxes and see why, against our intuition, the universe...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 23m 27s

Are Many Worlds & Pilot Wave THE SAME Interpretation?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime It’s hard to interpret the strange results of quantum mechanics, though many have tried. Interpretations range from the outlandish—like the multiple universes of Many Worlds, to the almost mundane, like the very mechanical Pilot Wave Theory. But perhaps we’re converging on an answer, because some are arguing that these two interpretations are really the same thing. Check out the Space Time M...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 24m 9s

New Results in Quantum Tunneling vs. The Speed of Light

Learn More about Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/SpaceTime/ Paradoxically, the most promising prospects for moving matter around faster than light may be to put a metaphorical brick wall in its way. New efforts in quantum tunneling - both theory and experiment - show that superluminal motion may be possible, while still managing to avoid the paradox of superluminal signaling.Paradoxically, the most promising prospects for moving matter around faster than light may be to put a metaphorical brick wall in its way. New efforts in quantum tunneling - both theory and experiment - show that superluminal motion may be possible...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 24m 15s

What If Black Holes FUEL Dark Energy?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime We tend to imagine there are connectings between things that we don’t understand. Quantum mechanics and consciousness, aliens and pyramids, black holes and dark matter, dark matter and dark energy, dark energy and black holes. Usually there’s no real relationship whatsoever, but this last pair—black holes and dark energy being the same thing—has received some recent hype in the press. L...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 23m 32s

Does Gravity Require Extra Dimensions?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ It’s been 120 years since Henry Cavendish measured the gravitational constant with a pair of lead balls suspended by a wire. The fundamental nature of gravity still eludes our best minds - but those secrets may be revealed by turning back to the Cavendish experiment. That steampunk contraption may even reveal the existence of extra dimensions of space. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Sp...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 23m 26s

Breaking The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Quantum mechanics forbids us from measuring the universe beyond a certain level of precision. But that doesn’t stop us from trying. And in some cases succeeding, by squeezing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to its breaking point. Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Katie McCormick & Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Le...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 15m 46s

Why Is All DNA Oriented Rightward?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE The molecular basis of all life is mysteriously asymmetric, only using molecules on one side of what should be the equivalent mirrored pairs. The universe has a similar mirror asymmetry, and it may be that our very DNA inherited its twist from the underlying handedness of reality. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign up for the...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 28m 2s

The REAL Possibility of Imaging Alien Planets!

Go to https://squarespace.com/pbs to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime I’m going to tell you about the craziest proposal for an astrophysics mission that has a good chance of actually happening. A train of spacecraft sailing the sun’s light to a magical point out there in space where the Sun’s own gr...

Published: Jul 27, 2026Duration: 29m 0s

Are The Fundamental Constants Delicately Tuned? | The Naturalness Problem

Learn More About Anydesk: https://anydesk.com/spacetime Did God have any choice in creating the world? So asked Albert Einstein. He was being poetic. What he really meant, was whether the universe could have been any other way. Could it have had different laws of physics, driven by different fundamental constants. Or is this one vast and complex universe the inevitable result of an inevitable and unique underlying principle, perhaps expressible as a supremely elegant Theory of Everything. It certainly seems that Einstein thought this should be the case … that God had no choice in whether or how to cr...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 27m 52s

Can Space Time Keep Memory?

Thank you to Raycon for supporting PBS. Go to https://www.buyraycon.com/spacetime for up to 30% off your order, plus free shipping! Brought to you by Raycon. There are cosmic events so powerful that they leave permanent marks on the fabric of the universe itself. Imagine two colossal black holes spiraling into each other, yes they send ripples in the fabric of spacetime—gravitational waves that we’ve only recently learned to sense. Ripples pass, leaving the pond … or the universe … unchanged when they’re gone. But ripples aren’t the only type of wave. There’s another type of wave that l...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 20m 24s

The Crisis in Physics: Why the Higgs Boson Should Never Exist!

Learn More About Anydesk: https://anydesk.com/spacetime According to quantum physics, the universe should have collapsed on itself in the instant after the Big Bang due to all particles being 100 million billion times heavier. Recent observations of the universe existing suggest that this may not have happened. Even more recent experiments at the Large Hardron Collider have failed to find out why. In particular, why the Higgs boson is light enough to allow the universe to exist. This is part of something known as the hierarchy problem, and some consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 25m 43s

How To Identify Black Holes By Catching Neutrinos

Check out PIA's special Black Friday deal for Space Time fans https://www.piavpn.com/SpaceTime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Neutrinos are one of the most bizarre of known particles. Black holes are probably the most bizarre of astrophysical objects. Makes sense we should use one to study the other, no? Well, today we’re doing just that. Special Thanks to: Science Communication Lab for DESY for us...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 25m 29s

Is It IMPOSSIBLE To Penetrate The Event Horizon? | Black Hole Firewall Paradox

Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime So you’ve decided to jump into a black hole. Good news: as long as the black hole is big enough you can sail through the event horizon without harm and get to experience the interior of the black hole before you’re annihilated by the central singularity. Or so we once thought. These days, quite a few physicists believe that the only way to avoid horrible contradictions in fundamental physics gene...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 25m 19s

The Equation That Illuminates (Nearly) Everything!

Check Out Rogue History On PBS Origins: https://youtu.be/xuT35ud41QQ PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime The Standard Model of particle physics is arguably the most successful theory in the history of physics. It predicts the results of experiments with a numerical precision unmatched by any other branch of science, and it does so almost unfailingly. The theory is encapsulated in a single equation known as...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 23m 27s

How Can Humanity Evolve Into a Kardashev Type 1 Civilization?

Learn More About Anydesk: https://anydesk.com/spacetime Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Imagine a world where humanity masters every planetary resource available to it—our first step on the famous Kardeshev scale of technological advancement. How distant is that step? Will we even become a true Type-1 civilization, and how can we get there? Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/sp...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 30m 3s