There’s a deep connection between gravity and time – gravitational fields seem to slow the pace of time in what we call gravitational time dilation. And today we’ll explore the origin of this effect. And ultimately, we’ll use what we learn to understand how curvature in time – this gradient of time dilation – can be thought of as the true source of the force of gravity. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space-Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Guest AuthorAll Guest Author Posts are submitted or additional content Wave Chronicle has added to the website. To be a Guest Author please visit our "Post Your Article" page.More Posts -…

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 really does work in this seemingly nonsensical way. But the point of this episode is to go much further – we’re going to try to break the universe by pushing these paradoxes beyond the limit. Special Thanks to our Patreon Supporters Hank & Mark for suggesting the questions that inspired…

Erratum: Figures in the 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/s41586-019-12… Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space-Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Since the very beginning of quantum mechanics, a debate has raged about how to interpret its bizarre predictions. And at the heart and origin of that debate is the quantum jump or quantum leap – the seemingly miraculous and instantaneous transitions of quantum systems that have always…

We often think of quantum mechanics as only affecting only the smallest scales of reality, with classical reality taking over at some intermediate level. But in his 1944 book, What is Life?, the quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger suggested that “incredibly small groups of atoms, much too small to display exact statistical laws, do play a dominating role in the very orderly and lawful events within a living organism.” Schrodinger was a visionary – and perhaps very specifically in this case. Because it turns out we might need all the weirdness of quantum mechanics to explain birds. Check out the Space-Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Sign up for the mailing list to…

Good news everyone: it looks like the universe is going to end with a series of catastrophic explosions. The very, very long story short is that the universe ends in heat death, as it approaches maximum entropy, and its eternal exponential expansion drives it to effective utter emptiness and absolute cold. But new calculations have revealed we may be able to look forward to one last source of astrophysical cataclysms – a new type of supernova that can only happen at the end of the universe. 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://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Guest AuthorAll…

Physicists have a long history of sticking our noses where they don’t belong – and one of our favorite places to step beyond our expertise is the question of consciousness and free will. Sometimes our musings are insightful, sometimes incoherent, and usually at least somewhat naive. Which a fair description of this show, so of course Space-Time needs to weigh in physics and free will.. 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://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Guest AuthorAll Guest Author Posts are submitted or additional content Wave Chronicle has added to the website. To be a Guest Author please…

The Nobel prize in physics this year went to black holes. Generally speaking. Specifically, it was shared by the astronomers who revealed to us the Milky Way’s central black hole and by Roger Penrose, who proved that in general relativity, every black hole contains a place of infinite gravity – a singularity. But the true impact of Penrose’s singularity theorem would is much deeper – it leads us to the limits Einstein’s great theory and to the origin of the universe. 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…

Einstein’s special theory of relativity combines space and time into one dynamic, unified entity – spacetime. But if time is connected to space, could the universe be anything but deterministic? And does that mean that the future is predestined? 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://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Guest AuthorAll Guest Author Posts are submitted or additional content Wave Chronicle has added to the website. To be a Guest Author please visit our "Post Your Article" page.More Posts - Website

If you rank the most habitable places in our solar system Venus lands pretty low, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead and sulphuric acid rain. And yet it may have just jumped to the front of the pack. In fact, we may have detected the signature of alien life – Venusian life -for the first time. If you rank the most habitable places in our solar system Venus lands pretty low, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead and sulphuric acid rain. And yet it may have just jumped to the front of the pack. In fact, we may have detected the signature of alien life –…