PBS Space Time

Can We Create New Elements Beyond the Periodic Table

Scientists have been slowly extending the periodic table one element at a time, pushing to higher and higher masses, and have discovered some incredibly useful materials along the way. But the elements at the current end of the table are so unstable that they decay almost as soon as they’re created in our particle accelerators. Astronomers have found a cosmic phenomenon that may populate table.

Can We Create New Elements Beyond the Periodic Table

17m 2s

  • Does Infinity - Infinity = an Electron: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Does Infinity - Infinity = an Electron

    S10 E30 - 15m 35s

    What do you get if you take something that’s infinitely massive and combining with something else that’s negative infinitely massive? You get a single electron, at least that’s what it looks like in our most precise way of describing the quantum world.

  • What Does An Electron Actually Look Like?: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    What Does An Electron Actually Look Like?

    S10 E29 - 13m 39s

    What does an electron really look like? I mean, if we zoom in all the way. Is it a sizeless speck of charge? Is it a multidimensional vortex of quantum strangeness? Is it the boundary of a tiny universe with universe-electrons of its own? Let’s find out.

  • Does the Planck Length Break E=MC^2?: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Does the Planck Length Break E=MC^2?

    S10 E27 - 17m 19s

    Every good nerd knows that E=mc^2. Every great nerd knows that, really, E^2=m^2c^4+p^2c^2 Want to know what that even means? Sure, I’ll tell you, but today I’d like to invite you to an even higher level of nerdom with extra bits to Einstein’s famous equation that will make even the greatest nerds quiver in their … space time merch if they turn out to be real.

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