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Can We Break the Universe?

Season 7 Episode 5 | 12m 32s

We delve into a couple of the most famous paradoxes of special relativity: the Twin Paradox, The Ladder Paradox (aka the Barn-Pole Paradox), and a paradox suggested by our very own viewers, which asks whether a spaceship could wrap around the universe & destroy itself. We’ll explore these paradoxes and see why, against our intuition, the universe really does work in this seemingly nonsensical way.

Aired: 01/18/21
Extras
Could sending a quantum twin across the galaxy make you both old and young at the same time?
It's possible that an event horizon is forming right behind and you won't know until its too late.
Are there no alien signals to find... or do we need to update how we search for them?
Physicists hope Planck stars can save us from black hole singularities and paradoxes.
Galaxies older than the universe? Webb's findings keep defying our best explanations.
Earth's core: solid or liquid? Yes — we know more about distant galaxies than our own interior.
Gödel found a time-travel solution in General Relativity, revealing spacetime can loop on itself.
Tardigrades can survive almost anything—even most of Mars. But one Martian chemical stops even them.
The Higgs boson may open a portal to hidden particles that could explain dark matter.
The universe expands faster. “Dark energy” may not be constant after all.
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Could sending a quantum twin across the galaxy make you both old and young at the same time?
It's possible that an event horizon is forming right behind and you won't know until its too late.
Are there no alien signals to find... or do we need to update how we search for them?
Physicists hope Planck stars can save us from black hole singularities and paradoxes.
Galaxies older than the universe? Webb's findings keep defying our best explanations.
Earth's core: solid or liquid? Yes — we know more about distant galaxies than our own interior.
Gödel found a time-travel solution in General Relativity, revealing spacetime can loop on itself.
Tardigrades can survive almost anything—even most of Mars. But one Martian chemical stops even them.
The Higgs boson may open a portal to hidden particles that could explain dark matter.
The universe expands faster. “Dark energy” may not be constant after all.