Starts With A Bang podcast

On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse occurred over the continental United States for the first time in nearly 39 years, when half the current US population wasn't even born. For many of us, it was our first opportunity to ever experience a sight like this for ourselves, and not only lived up to the hype, it was something that even a scientist couldn't fully anticipate. Here's a first-person account of what the experience was like, and how to enjoy it to the fullest, yourself, the next time one comes around!

On August 21, 2017, a coast-to-coast total eclipse across the United States will occur, the first one in 99 years. As the Moon's shadow hits the Earth and speeds across it, there's so much to see and enjoy, but only if you're prepared. What should you look for? Where should you go? How can you stay safe? And what's the science behind it? Come get the full story on the latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast! More information: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/07/27/the-sights-safety-and-science-of-the-great-american-eclipse/

At a fundamental level, everything we know of in this Universe is made of the same few fundamental particles: quarks, gluons, electrons and photons, which combine to give us atoms, which in turn make up all the molecules, cells, organs and living creatures inhabiting our world today. But how do we go from these tiny scales where everything looks so similar to the huge diversity of what exists at a larger, more macroscopic scale? The secret is encoded in a single quantum rule that governs how it all works: the Pauli exclusion principle. Come get the scoop here on the latest Starts With A Bang podcast!

Have you ever wondered how the Universe will end? In the far future, everything that we know, see, measure and perceive today will someday decay away, becoming something very different from what we know it as today. The Earth will cease to harbor life, the Sun will die, the galaxies will merge and recede, and eventually everything will fade to black. But beyond that, space itself will push everything apart, stellar remnants will get ejected, and even the most massive objects at all will decay into nothingness. In just 20 minutes, you can experience the entire future of everything to come.

Is time travel possible? Of course it's inevitable in some sense, as we always move through the Universe at the "boring" rate of one second per second. But what about traveling into the future? If we go, can we ever come back? And what about back in time? Would it be possible to alter the past, or revisit a historical event as an observer? The mathematics of relativity opens the door to a lot of possibilities, but the physical Universe has a lot to say about it, too.

In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto: our Solar System's ninth planet. For over 60 years, the Plutonian system was the only one known beyond Neptune, and Pluto retained its planetary status for all that time despite its diminutive size. Yet an explosion of exoplanets and of other Trans-Neptunian Objects within our own Solar System beginning in the 1990s meant that we'd need to reconsider what it means to truly be a "planet". The debate still rages today, but astronomers agree: when it comes to the planetary club, Pluto simply doesn't belong. Here's why!

Our Universe was born pristine, with no stars, galaxies, molecules or even stable atoms, some 13.8 billion years ago. Yet today, we're filled with all the complex structure we see today, including with planets, organics and even something as complex and differentiated as a human being. So how did we get here? We had to form stars and galaxies, and evolve the Universe to a point where the raw ingredients to make us existed in great enough abundances and in the right conditions. There are some steps we're still learning about in this story, including how the very first stars came to be. Want to learn about it? Find out on this latest Starts With A Bang podcast!

The discovery almost 100 years ago that the Universe was expanding was a revolution for science, for cosmology and for our conception of existence. Hubble discovered what Einstein's couldn't imagine, and after that, the race was on to learn exactly what those observations meant for our cosmic origins. After decades of controversies, we now have a better picture of our Universe than ever before, yet questions remain. What will be the ultimate answer? Find out the possibilities, and what the limits of our knowledge tell us is possible, on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

Black holes are incredibly massive objects that are so dense that, from within a given region of space, nothing can escape, not even light. Yet it's arguable that from our point of view, nothing can escape our observable Universe. Moreover, even though our Universe is huge, it's also incredibly massive, and since it's expanding, it was denser and smaller in the past. Could our Universe be the inside of a black hole? And do we have evidence either supporting this or ruling it out? Find out on the latest episode of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

Ever since we first uncovered the quantum nature of our Universe, humanity has struggled to interpret it. Is there a wavefunction that collapses? Is it the quantum operators themselves that change? Does the end state evolve? Or are there an infinite number of parallel Universes that correspond to all the possible outcomes? This last possibility may actually be plausible, and this podcast is a deep dive into the adventure that ensues if they're real. But beware, there are a lot of assumptions needed to get there!