On September 14th, 2015 LIGO announced the first detection of a gravitational wave. This was hailed at the time as the dawn of gravitational wave astronomy. However that’s only true if the we ever detect another gravitational wave. Now we have. On December 26th LIGO again observed the merger of two different black holes.
Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd
What you don’t know about Jupiter can’t hurt you. Or can it? And be sure to check out ShanksFX’s “Jupiter in a Jar” Episode! https://youtu.be/mwvkQK3R2LE
On July 4th 2016, the Juno spacecraft entered orbit around the planet Jupiter after leaving earth five years ago. The Juno probe will tell us what lies inside the mysterious gas giant and with this information we’ll better understand the formation of our solar system. In this episode, find out how Jupiter wreaked havoc through the solar system during its early formation and how without it the Earth as we know it would not exist.
Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
The Grand Tack Hypothesis
A low mass for Mars from Jupiter’s early gas-driven migration, Walsh et al. 2011 http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5177
On this episode of Space Time, we dive into a Challenge Question about Nuclear Physics. This includes traveling back into the phenomenon of Quantum Tunneling and discussing the most radioactive element on the periodic table; Polonium. Let’s get started.
Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
Challenge Answers
Submit your answers with full work to pbsspacetime@gmail.com by July 13 for a chance to win a Space Time t-shirt.
Make sure you use the subject title “Nuclear Physics Challenge” to be in the running.
To check out any of the lectures available from Great Courses Plus go to http://ow.ly/K9mK301cRdj and get ready to learn about everything from cooking to calculus.
Planck’s Length is the length below which the concept of length loses its meaning. What exactly does that mean and what are the incredible implications this fact has upon our reality? To find out check out this episode of Space Time where Matt digs into the early history of quantum mechanics.
Niels Bohr, a Danish Physicist said “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded .” Is what we see perceived to be real or is it an illusion?
In the world of our mind’s eye, light travels in a straight line. In reality, spacetime is deflected and magnified through the lens of gravity. Find out how this works and what it allows us to learn about our universe in this episode of Space Time.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider may have just discovered a new fundamental particle that could change the way we look at the universe. Is this Dark Energy? A giant Neutrino? The big brother of the Higgs Boson? Or could it be the mysterious Graviton? Matt also reveals the answer to the Dark Energy Challenge question and responds to comments from the Ice Age episode. We’ve got a lot going on, so check it out!
You can review a more in-depth explanation of the challenge answers at the link below. The first document is the main question solution described in this video, and the second is the extra credit. The third provides the details of an analytical solution to the integral. Special thanks to Pete Benzi, who is not only one of our winners but also but also generously provided the extra credit solution (incl. the integral) we link to here. His was much more clearly presented than ours!
Where are you right now? Until you interact with another particle you could be any number of places within a wave of probabilities. This is only one way that quantum mechanics challenges our perception of reality. Matt dives into these counter-intuitive ideas and explains the bizarre phenomenon known as quantum tunneling in this episode of Space Time.
We’re living in a brief window of time where our planet isn’t frozen underneath a giant layer of glaciers. How much longer will the moderate climate that we’ve come to know as “normal” continue? What causes these dramatic shifts in temperature that thaw our planet and then throw it back into a state of deep freeze? This episode looks at how the changes in our planet’s orbit and rotation impacts our climate.
What about dark energy allows it to resist the powerful inward pull of gravity and accelerate the rate of the universe’s expansion? Find out in this episode of Space Time. And watch our previous episodes on dark energy right here:
Part 1 – Will the Universe Expand Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZTb6…
Part 2 – Why the Universe Needs Dark Energy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Pay…
Part 3 – What Does Dark Energy Really Do? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUE_L…
We’ve come a long way in our understanding of dark energy. In previous episodes we’ve looked at how our universe is paradoxically flat and how dark energy is exponentially accelerating the expansion of the universe. In this episode of Space Time we dive into the true nature of dark energy and how its antigravity effect and its other properties are having such bizarre effects on our universe.
In the past few episodes we have delved deep into cosmology. We have been building up the tools we need to understand dark energy and its influence on the universe. In this episode we will discuss the balance between dark energy and matter. If you add up the energy in any large volume of space, about 70% is dark energy and the remaining 30 % is “regular” matter. However the universe has been dark for a relatively short period. At some point in the past there was a perfect balance between energy and matter. Dark Energy has dominated the universe only during the tenure of life on Earth, although it’s effect has been felt for longer than that.
Here’s your Challenge question: For How many of those 100 past doublings has dark energy had any significant effect? Let’s say at least 10% of the energy density. And how for many of those infinite future doublings will regular matter and energy have a significant effect – again, at least 10% of the energy density?
Extra Credit: Also tell me how many billion years ago dark energy started to have a significant effect, and how many billion years in the future matter will cease to … matter?
Prizes: 3 Correct Answers for the “simple” question and 3 Correct Answers for the extra credit parts will receive Space Time t-shirts. To be eligible please explain your reasoning and show your working. Feel free to propose any solutions you come up with for the apparent cosmological coincidence. Do NOT give answers in the comment section – that’ll disqualify you for this and future challenge questions. Email your answers to pbsspacetime@gmail.com with the subject line Dark Energy Challenge within two weeks. We will filter by subject line, so make sure sure you use exactly this phrase to be considered.
