Starts With A Bang podcast

Have you ever wondered what's out there in the Universe, on the largest scales, beyond what we can even observe? Or what lies down below the tiniest distance scales we've ever probed? Is there a smallest fundamental length scale in the Universe, like the Planck scale, or can we go down even farther? Is space discrete or continuous? And is the Universe fundamentally blurred; can we even distinguish? Thinking about the limits of space, on both small and large scales, is a mind-bending game to play, but we're up to the challenge on this latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

There are three very different ways humanity is searching for alien life beyond Earth. We can directly search the various planets and moons in our Solar System for past or present biological signatures simply by sending decontaminated probes, and looking for the evidence in situ. We can indirectly look at distant worlds around other stars, searching for the characteristic changes to the atmosphere and surface that life would bring. And, most optimistically, we can search for intelligent signatures created, perhaps willfully, by a technologically advanced alien species. These are our three hopes for finding alien life, and we're actively pursuing all three. Here's how the different searches work, along with some speculation about what we're likely to find, and what motivates us to look!

There are some incredibly big questions that humanity has been asking about the Universe since we first began looking upwards: what is the Universe like, how did it get to be this way, where did it all come from, and what is its eventual fate? There were huge advances that were needed in order to answer these questions, such as understanding what the Universe was made of, how fast it was expanding, and what the laws governing it were. But once we know that, not only can we answer these questions, but we can do it with a single equation. It's known as the First Friedmann equation, and I call it the most important equation in the Universe. Find out why on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

In memory of Stephen Hawking's life, I've decided to share the physics behind his greatest discovery: Hawking radiation. For a long time, in the context of relativity, we thought that black holes were static, unchanging objects defined only by their mass, charge, and angular momentum. A number of developments led us to understand that black holes needed to have entropy, temperature, and therefore, they needed to radiate. But Hawking was the one to put that puzzle together, and describe the physics of the radiation and its consequences for black holes. It goes much further than that, with the famed (and still unresolved) black hole information paradox arising from his work. Who will be the ones who take the next great leap? Come learn what we know and where the frontiers are on this special edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

When you fall inside the event horizon of a black hole, there's no escaping, no matter what you do or how you accelerate. Even if you travel at the Universe's speed limit, the speed of light, there's simply no way to get any closer to the exit. Instead, scientists say, you have no choice but to fall inevitably towards the singularity at the center. But why must you arrive at a singularity? Couldn't you wind up at some degenerate object instead? We don't think so, and here's the science behind why. Find out what's at the center of a black hole today!

A simple, innocent question that I received had me thinking for days about how to answer it. The question? "If humans were made in God's image, whose image were aliens made in?" There's so much to say from a science perspective about how humans were made, and how aliens might be made, that I couldn't resist giving it my absolute best! Do you agree? Comment below!

Ever wonder about the biggest questions that there are? You know the ones I mean: about what is the Universe, where does it come from, and what is its fate? For millennia, these were questions for poets, philosophers, and theologians. Yet, despite all the "answers" that they offered, there was no way to test or verify whether they were correct. Enter science. After countless lifetimes struggling mightily with these, we have the answers, and they're spectacular. What do we know? How do we know it? And why is science so powerful at giving these answers? Find out, on this latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

Ever dream of traveling back in time? According to all the laws of special relativity, all you can do is travel forwards through time, controlling your rate by controlling your motion through space. But in General Relativity, the curvature of spacetime allows you to play with those rules a little more flexibly. You can make it back in time, but you still can't kill your own grandpa before your parents were conceived. Find out why on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast! Video version (for the first time): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhCxtdxa8nI

Our current best theories describing the Universe, general relativity for gravity, quantum field theory for electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, do a fantastic job independently and together. But there are fundamental questions that go unanswered if we take these as the final answers. What happens to the gravitational field of an electron passing through a double slit? What happens to the information on a black hole's surface when it decays? And what happens close by a gravitational singularity? Without a quantum theory of gravity, we can't know. Yet we're on a path to try and figure it out! Where are we, and how far do we have to go? Find out, on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

Right around one year from today, the James Webb Space Telescope will launch to a position 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, deploying into a quasi-stable orbit around the L2 Lagrange point. Its magnificent, 5-layer sunshield will unfold, allowing it to passively cool down to temperatures cold enough to turn nitrogen into a liquid. Beyond that, it will have on-board coolant taking it down to 7 Kelvin, allowing us to observe light that's 50 times as long as the wavelengths the human eye can see. The gold mirrors are ideal for reflecting infrared light, and will allow us to view the Universe as never before. This isn't the "next Hubble" as some are saying, but rather the first James Webb! Here's what's in store, and what makes it so magnificent.