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)

Can Viruses Travel Between Planets?

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 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime With the global pandemic of Covid 19 still encompassing the world, we are generally not big fans of viruses right now. But we sure are thinking about them a lot...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 23m 54s

What If the Galactic Habitable Zone LIMITS Intelligent Life?

Check Out Matt on Fate & Fabled Here: https://youtu.be/utJZ8YmXOnc 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 Our solar system is a tiny bubble of habitability suspended in a vast universe that mostly wants to kill us. In fact, a good fraction of our own galaxy turns out to be utterly uninhabitable, even for sun—like stellar systems. Is this why .. most of us .. haven’t seen aliens? Chec...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 20m 50s

We Had It WRONG About the Quantum Eraser! ft. @LookingGlassUniverse

Thank you to Cyber GhostVPN for Supporting PBS. Learn More About Cyber GhostVPN: https://cyberghostvpn.com/PBSSpaceTime Does quantum mechanics allow the future to retroactively influence the past, as in the infamous delayed choice quantum eraser experiment? How about we get an actual quantum physicist--who many of you already know--to show us how to do this experiment at home, and hopefully set this matter to rest. Check Out Looking Glass Universe: https://www.youtube.com/@LookingGlassUniverse And Check Out Matt’s Conversation with Mithuna https://youtu.be/QPuVtvIOYcM?si=TQovlQ6kW_6PPxKy Sign Up on Patreon to get access to th...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 34m 11s

What If (Tiny) Black Holes Are Everywhere?

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime It’s fair to say that black holes may be the scariest objects in the universe. Happily for us, the nearest is probably many light-years away. Unless of course, Planck relics are a thing - in which case they might be literally everywhere. 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 Ma...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 21m 52s

The NEW Ultimate Energy Cap of the Universe

Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/SPACETIME and use code SPACETIME for 20% off DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com Is there a limit to how much energy you can cram into, or pull out of one patch of space? Well, we thought so, but the James Webb Space Telescope has found a quasar that simultaneously breaks a century-old theoretical limit and may explain the conundrum of gigantic black holes in the early universe. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime 15% Off the Entire Merch...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 24m 54s

Could the Higgs Boson Point Us Toward Dark Matter?

For more information please go ➼ https://nordvpn.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 The discovery of the Higgs boson ten years ago in the Large Hadron Collider was the culmination of decades of work and the collaboration of 1000s of brilliant and passionate people. It was the final piece needed to confirm the standard model of particle physics as it now stands. There are still many outstanding qu...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 20m 15s

At What Point Does Spacetime Shift Into Quantum?

Learn More About Anydesk: https://anydesk.com/spacetime To observe the quantum nature of gravity and of spacetime itself, we need a particle collider the size of the solar system. Or we could just physics smarter and build one on a lab bench. Here’s how. 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 mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime PBS Member Stations re...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 28m 22s

Do Neutron Stars Gleam Within Dark Matter?

👉 Head to https://brilliant.org/spacetime/ for a 30-day free trial + 20% off your annual subscription Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Neutron stars aren't dark matter--we figured that out a while ago. But new research is telling us that they may be dark matter factories. They may produce the exotic axion, one of the most popular dark matter candidates. 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/1a6eb8...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 22m 0s

How Supernovas Behave as the Universe's Greatest Particle Accelerators

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 Cern's Large Hadron Collider routinely collides particles at energies equivalent to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. If this worries you, then the following fact will either put you at ease or scare the hell out of you. And that's that a particle with the energy of an LHC collision hits every square kilometer of the Earth every single second. And we only relatively recently figured out where...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 19m 34s

What Happens During a Quantum Jump?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Erratum: Figures in episode should be Minev et al. (2019), not Minney et al. (2009). Our apologies to the authors! This is the experiment we talk about: To Catch and Reverse a Quantum Jump Mid-Flight Minev, Mundhada, Shankar, Reinhold, Gutiérrez-Jáuregui, Schoelkopf, Mirrahimi, Carmichael & Devoret (2019), Nature, v.570, p.200 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1287-z Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Since the very beginning of quantum mechan...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 17m 42s

Can Future Colliders Break the Standard Model?

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 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime If you wanna make an omelet you gotta break a few eggs. And by omelet I mean a theory of everything, and by eggs I mean a billion bill...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 24m 34s

Can 'Perpetual Motion' Exist in Superfluids?

Thank you to Brilliant for Supporting PBS. To learn more go to https://brilliant.org/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 The weird rules of quantum mechanics lead to all sorts of bizarre phenomena on tiny scales— particles teleporting through walls or being in multiple places at once or simultaneously existing and not. Shame all this magical behavior doesn’t happen on scales large enough for us to see...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 25m 7s

Could LIGO Find GIANT Alien Spacecraft?

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 Whenever we open a new window on the universe, we discover things that no one expected. Our newfound ability to measure ripples in the fabric of spacetime—gravitational waves—is a very new window, and so far we’ve seen a lot of wild stuff. We’ve observed black holes colliding, and their oddly high masses challenges our understanding of black hole formation and grow...

Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 23m 39s

What If Gravity is NOT An Elementary Force? | Entropic Gravity

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 There are four fundamental forces - the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity. Except maybe gravity is no more fundamental than the force of a stretched elastic band. Maybe gravity is just an entropic byproduct—an emergent effect of the universe’s tendency to disorder. If you allow entropy to keep you in your seat for a bit, I’ll tell you al...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 21m 11s

The NEW Crisis in Cosmology

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime I have good news and bad news. Bad news first: two years ago we reported on the Crisis in Cosmology. Since then, it’s only gotten worse. And actually, the good news is also that the crisis in cosmology has actually gotten worse, which means we may be onto something! The most exciting thing for any scientist is when something they thought they knew turns out to be wrong. So it’s no wonde...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 24m 53s

The FRESH SCIENCE of Moon Formation

To Learn More Languages Check Out: https://speakly.app.link/Speakly 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 Einstein once asked whether “the moon exists only when I look at it?". It was rhetorical objection to the idea that measurement in quantum mechanics causes reality to become real. But there was a time when the moon didn’t exist, and then hours later suddenly did. At least, according to the late...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 29m 2s

What Occurs Within a Proton?

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 If we ever want to simulate a universe, we should probably learn to simulate even a single atomic nucleus. But it’s taken some of the most incredible ingenuity of the past half-century to figure out how that out. All so that today I can teach you how to simulate a very very small universe. Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://ww...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 28m 0s

How Will We (Most Probably) Discover Extraterrestrial Life?

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 first discovery of extraterrestrial life will almost certainly NOT be when it visits us, nor when we visit it. It won’t be when we see it’s stray TV signals. It’ll be in the excruciatingly faint changes in the color of alien sunsets glimpsed hundreds of light years away. Today we’re going to talk about the first such hint, why it's...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 25m 40s

Space DOES NOT Expand Everywhere

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 Space is big, and it’s getting bigger. But where does all that new space actually come from? And is it popping into existence all around you right now? Is that why the remote control is always further away than I thought? Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign up for the mailing list to get episode no...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 24m 16s

What Happens After the Universe Ends?

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 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is a story of the origin and the end of our universe from great mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose. It’s goes like this: the infini...

Published: Jul 25, 2026Duration: 25m 14s