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)

What If The Speed of Light Were NOT CONSTANT?

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 One of the most fundamental physics facts is that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant for all observers. But can we really be sure that the speed of light wasn’t different in the past, or perhaps in other parts of the universe? In fact, variable speed of light theories have long been used to try to explain everything from da...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 27m 58s

Does Consciousness Influence Quantum Mechanics?

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 Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ It’s not surprising that the profound weirdness of the quantum world has inspired some outlandish explanations - nor that these have strayed into the realm of what we might call mystic...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 23m 1s

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: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 21m 26s

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: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 27m 51s

Is The Universe Finite?

Thanks to Brilliant for supporting PBS. Learn more at: https://www.brilliant.org/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE The universe is big, really, really big. Although according to a new paper, it may literally be infinitely smaller than we previously thought. 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/ Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer & Adriano Leal Directed by...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 21m 23s

What If A Black Hole Dwelt Inside The Sun? | Hawking Stars

Check out the NEW Space Time Merch Store: https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Use Code: PBS at Checkout for 15% off in December 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 A fun nightmare sci-fi scenario is the sun being consumed by a black hole. Fortunately the chance of a black hole randomly wandering into our solar system is pretty tiny. That’s good news. But what if it’s already here, hidi...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 24m 9s

Why Life on Mars Will RUIN Humanity

Click this link: https://www.boot.dev/?promo=spacetime and use my code SPACETIME to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev Recent findings have brought us closer than we’ve ever been to confirming life beyond the Earth. As we wait for confirmation or otherwise, let’s think about what this will tell us about life everywhere, and also about our own imminent destruction. 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...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 28m 0s

Is Dark Matter Made of Particles?

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Check out Weathered on PBS Terra: https://youtu.be/q1hj9RCWuH0 Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime By the time you've read this, a billion billion dark matter particles may have streamed through your body like ghosts. The particle or particles of the dark sector make up the vast majority of the mass of the universe - so to them, we're the ghostly ones. Today we'r...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 21m 35s

The Quantum Internet

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime When we finally have a quantum internet you’ll be able to simultaneously like and dislike this video. But we don’t. So I hope you like it. The world is widely regarded as being well and truly into the digital age, also called the information age. No longer are economies and industries solely characterised by the phys...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 20m 4s

The Most Significant Satellite You've (Probably) Never Heard Of

Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/SPACETIME One of the most important reasons we go to space is to know our own planet better. Today I'm going to tell you about an orbiting facility that literally watches Earth's biosphere breath and grow and die with incredible resolution. I'll talk about its profound existential and economic importance, and about why it's in danger of being lost. 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...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 19m 49s

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: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 23m 15s

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: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 21m 26s

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: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 28m 0s

The Crisis In Physics: Are We Failing To Detect 17 Layers of Reality?

Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/SPACETIME Big things are made of smaller things, and those smaller things are made of smaller things still. That’s reductionism in a nutshell, and digging our way to the smallest layer has been one of the primary goals of physics for ever. But what if, just before we reach the bottom, we find out that reductionism fails? 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 fo...

Published: Sep 10, 2026Duration: 25m 57s

How To Capture Black Holes

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 Space Time Mailing List https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Black holes are awesome - but how about black holes being captured by the screaming vortex of a quasar, where they merge and grow like some monstrous version of a solar system. This insane hypothesis is getting clos...

Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 19m 42s

Is The Wave Function The Building Block of Reality?

Thank you to Wren for supporting PBS. To learn more, go to https://wren.co/start/spacetime Take the Space Time Fan Survey Here: https://forms.gle/wS4bj9o3rvyhfKzUA 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 Objective Collapse Theories offer a explanation of quantum mechanics that is at once brand new and based in classical mechanics. In the world of quantum mechanics, it’s no big deal for pa...

Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 26m 0s

Do Black Holes Create New Universes?

Thanks to Brilliant for supporting PBS. Learn more at: https://brilliant.org/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE What if every single black hole that formed in our universe sparked the big bang of a new universe? Cosmological natural selection proposes exactly this - but even better, it claims to be able to test the hypothesis. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear...

Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 24m 14s

What’s On The Other Side Of A Black Hole?

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 Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Normal maps are useless inside black holes. At the event horizon - the ultimate point of no return as you approach a black hole - time and space themselves change their char...

Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 19m 59s

How Black Holes Spin Space Time

Thank you to World of Warships for supporting PBS, go to: http://go.thoughtleaders.io/1691420200309 and use the code: BATTLESTATIONS2020 to let them know we sent you. 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 Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ If there’s one thing cooler than a...

Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 18m 43s

How Quantum Entanglement Creates Entropy

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Entropy is surely one of the most perplexing concepts in physics. It’s variously described as a measure of a system’s disorder - or as the amount of useful work that you can get from it - or as the information hidden by the system. Despite the seeming ambiguity in its definition, many physicists hold entropy to be behind one of the most fundamental laws of physics. Entropy Explained Playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCzNFNDwxIug8q1Zz0Mj60H Check out...

Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 25m 20s