The results are in – on this weeks episode of Spacetime we reveal the answer to our Asteroid Challenge, as well as our T-shirt winners! Check out who saved the world!
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Congratulations To Our 5 Randomly Selected Winners!
Baptiste Loreau
Florian Jungbluth
Patrick Hanrahan
Andrés Daniel Wiegold Segalés
Degen Peter
If your name is listed above be sure to email pbsspacetime@gmail.com with your Full Name, Full Mailing Address, and preferred T-Shirt Size (small, medium, large, extra large etc.)
When it comes to dangerous asteroids striking Earth, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. We have begun to track projectiles large enough to destroy our planet, and we are in the clear for the foreseeable future. However, there are countless asteroids large enough to take out an entire city that we cannot see. Matthew O’Dowd goes over our defensive options in this week’s episode of Space Time!
Assumption: You have a state-of-the-art pulsed fusion rocket engine capable of exhaust velocities of 500 km/s
Important Fact #1: Your spaceship must fly ahead of the asteroid at a distance of 1 times the asteroid’s radius, 325m above the surface or 650m from the center of mass
Important Fact #2: The thrusters on this spacecraft are angled so that the ship’s propellant just misses a “spherical” Apophis.
With millions of Earth like planets around sun like stars in our galaxy alone, why don’t we see intelligent alien life? Or any other life for that matter? It gets especially weird when you factor in new scientific revelations that life on Earth occurred crazy fast! So if you want to help us theorize on the real reasons we haven’t found alien life, you should watch today’s episode of Space Time!
Inspired by Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, physicist Miguel Alcubierre set out to transform one of the cornerstones of science fiction iconography, the Warp Drive, into reality. But is it even possible? Can we “warp” the fabric of reality so that we can break the speed of light? And why is NASA actually exploring this potentiality? Join Matt on this week’s episode to learn the physics of what’s physically possible!
For the past 90 years, the predictions laid out Einstein’s general theory of relativity have continued to be confirmed by experimental science. The last hold out is gravitational waves – the idea that certain gravitational events cause actual ripples in Spacetime. The problem is that the effects are almost beyond microscopic, so they are incredibly hard to detect. But have scientist done it? Have gravitational waves finally been directly observed??? Watch the episode to find out.
The prospect of interstellar travel is no longer sci-fi. It COULD be achievable within our lifetime! But, how would an interstellar rocket-ship work? On this week’s episode of Space Time, Matt talks options for interstellar travel – from traditional rocket fuel to antimatter drives, could we travel to other star systems? Watch this episode of Space Time to find out!
The speed of light is often cited as the fastest anything can travel in our universe. While this might be true, the speed of light is the EFFECT and not the CAUSE of this phenomenon. So what’s the cause? On this week’s episode of Space Time, Matt helps explain what the speed of light REALLY is and why it’s the cosmic speed limit of our universe!
Lorentz Transformation without invariant speed of light, from relativity, isotropy, and consistency of frame transitions (closure group postulate):
von Ignatowsky, “Das Relativitatsprinzip,” Archiv der Mathematik und Physik 17, 1–24 (1911)
Pelissetto & Testa, American Journal of Physics, 83, 338, (2015) “Getting the Lorentz transformations without requiring an invariant speed” http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02423
Lots of people believe the Universe is infinite, but there’s a good possibility that might not be the case. Which means that there would be an actual edge of the Universe. What happens at that edge? Is there a restaurant? Join Matt on this week’s episode of Space Time as he explores the greatest expanses of our Universe. So what do you find when you reach the edge? More Universe? Bubble Universes? Back where you started?! Check out this episode of Space Time to find out!
SPACETIME IS BACK! And with this episode we welcome in Matt O’Dowd as the new host to rigorously take you through the mysteries of space, time, and the nature of reality. We’re starting off this new season with perhaps one of the most mysterious things of all — DARK MATTER. What is it? Where does it come from? And is it even real? Watch this episode of Space Time to find out!
