PBS Space Time

Supercritical Fluids are one the strangest states of matter and yet they are found everywhere from Decaf Coffee, to dry cleaning, to the atmosphere of Jupiter. But it's not solid, liquid or gas, but is also not confined to extreme or rare environments. In fact, there are planets in our solar system completely covered with oceans of the stuff, and you’ve often been the beneficiary of its powers.

The device you’re watching this video on is best understood by thinking about positive and negative charges moving around a circuit of diodes and transistors. But the only elementary particle actually flowing in the circuit is the negatively charged electron. And yet those flowing positive charges are there, in the form of a particle you may never have heard of.

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, we’re doing just that.

Adamantium, bolognium, dilithium. Element Zero, Kryptonite. Mythril, Netherite, Orichalcum, Unobtanium. We love the idea of fictional elements with miraculous properties that science has yet to discover. But is it really possible that new elements exist beyond the periodic table?

Half of the universe is filled with expansionist alien civilizations, and it’s only a matter of time before they’ll reach us. OK, that sounded a little sensationalist. But it’s also the conclusion of a recent astrophysics paper. Let’s see how they figure this, and whether we should take it seriously

The Nobel prize in physics is typically awarded to scientists who make sense of nature; those whose discoveries render the universe more comprehensible. But the 2022 Nobel has been awarded to three physicists who revealed that the universe is even stranger than we thought thanks to Quantum Entanglement.

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 the Standard Model Lagrangian. We’re going to explain to you how it works!

This is 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 gravity turns it into a gigantic lens. What could such a solar-system-sized telescope do? Pretty much anything. But definitely map the surfaces of alien worlds.

The Fine Structure Constant is one the strangest numbers in all of physics. It’s the job of physicists to worry about numbers, but there’s one number that physicists have stressed about more than any other. That number is 0.00729735256 - approximately 1/137. This is the fine structure constant, and it appears everywhere in our equations of quantum physics, and we’re still trying to figure out why.

You’ve probably heard about the James Webb Space Telescope and seen some cool pictures. But why should astronomers have all the fun? How do we get to use this new toy ourselves?

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. The discovery of the Higgs wasn’t the end of particle physics - but it may be the way forward. Many physicists think that the secret to finding the elusive dark matter particle will come by studying the Higgs.

Quantum mechanics gets weirder as you go to smaller sizes and higher energies. It’s strange enough for atoms, but positively bizarre when we get to the atomic nucleus. And today we’re going nuclear, as we dive into the weird world of quantum chromodynamics and the strong force.