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PBS Space Time

Space Time explores the outer reaches of space, the craziness of astrophysics, the possibilities of sci-fi, and anything else you can think of beyond Planet Earth with our astrophysicist host: Matthew O’Dowd. For all business inquiries and sponsorship opportunities please reach out to: pbsspacetime@lighthouseagents.com Matt O"Dowd spends his time studying the universe, especially really far-away things like quasars, super-massive black holes, and evolving galaxies. He uses telescopes in space to

science astronomy

All Episodes

13:56

Deciphering The Vast Scale of the Universe | STELLAR

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/23

Thank you to Draper and its Hack the Moon initiative for supporting PBS Digital Studios | Learn more at https://wehackthemoon.com. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE One of the fundamental questions humanity has always asked is how big is our Universe? For much of human history, people believed that Planet Earth was the very center of the entire universe. And Earth is pretty big. But compared the rest of the universe,

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18:12

What Caused the Big Bang?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/22

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Every astronomy textbook tells us that soon after the Big Bang, there was a period of exponentially accelerating expansion called cosmic inflation. In a tiny fraction of a second, inflationary expansion multiplied the size of the

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8:15

Exploring Arecibo in VR 180

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/21

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ This is a VR180 video so pop on your Google Cardboard or VR Headset to be totally immersed in our world! No headset? No problem. Move your mobile phone around and catch the total 180 experience. Have fun looking down from the catwalk! How can you build a telescope that can see the entire night sky without moving its dish? Well in this special episode of Space Time

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19:35

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/20

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime We actually have a pretty good idea of what might have happened before the Big Bang. That is, as long as we define the Big Bang as the extremely hot, dense, rapidly expanding universe that is described by Einstein’s equations. That

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17:43

How To Become an Astrophysicist + Challenge Question!

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/20

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Do you want to major in Astrophysics? Are you thinking about becoming (or ever just wondered how one becomes) an Astrophysicists? Do you want to know Matt O’Dowd’s origin story? Then buckle up and enjoy the ride and try your

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19:57

Is Earth's Magnetic Field Reversing?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/19

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Please Take the PBS Digital Studios Annual Survey Here: https://www.pbsresearch.org/c/r/ST_YTvideo It's very helpful and you could win a free T-Shirt! Support Space Time on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the new Space Time Merch Store! https://pbsspacetime.com/ Earth’s magnetic field protects us from deadly space radiation. What if it

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27:22

Could We Terraform Mars?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/18

To discover more go to http://lego.build/CITYSpace PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Humanity’s future is glorious. As we master space travel, we’ll hop from one lifeless world to the next. Life will blossom in our path and the galaxy with shimmer with beautiful Earth-like orbs. Hmmm… maybe. This won’t sound so far fetched if we prove we can do it at least once. If we successfully terraform Mars. Hosted by Matt

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25:01

Is Pluto a Planet?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/18

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime You know what a planet is, right? A big round thing that orbits a star. Uh, not so fast. The surprisingly vicious debate over the

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25:29

How Many Universes Are There?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/17

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ The universe is big, but it’s peanuts compared to the eternally inflating multiverse. But just how many universes are there? What are they like? And most importantly, what can they tell us about …

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20:03

Black Hole Harmonics

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/16

Learn more at https://www.brilliant.org/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Black holes are crazy enough on their own – but crash two together and you end up with a roiling blob of inescapable space that vibrates like a beaten drum. And the rich harmonics of those vibrations, seen through gravitational waves, could hold the secrets to the nature of the fabric of spacetime itself. Today on space time journal

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24:17

Loop Quantum Gravity Explained

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/15

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ It’s time we talked about loop quantum gravity. What exactly is it? What are the loops? And can it really defeat string theory in our quest for a Theory of Everything? Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by

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17:45

Is Time Travel Impossible?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/15

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Invitation to Time Travelers: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgzeIA0O00-bVioxU4t4AaABCQ Time travel stories are cool because both the past and future are somehow more interesting that the present and because

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21:43

Why We Might Be Alone in the Universe

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/14

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Why does it appear, that humanity is the lone intelligence in the universe? The answer might be that planet Earth is more unique than we've previously assumed. The rare earth hypothesis posits exactly this

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24:08

Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/13

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Life exists in our universe. There we go - one hopefully uncontroversial statement. Therefore our universe is capable of producing and supporting life. How am I going? Two for two? Let’s try for three:

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25:13

Can You Observe a Typical Universe?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/12

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ The moment you started observing reality, you hopelessly polluted any conclusions you might make about it. The anthropic principle guarantees that you are NOT seeing the universe in most typical state. But

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23:23

Is The Universe Finite?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/12

Thanks to Brilliant for supporting PBS. Learn more at: https://www.brilliant.org/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE The universe is big, really, really big. Although according to a new paper, it may literally be infinitely smaller than we previously thought. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch

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24:34

The Doomsday Argument

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/11

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Since the dawn of humanity around 100 billion people have lived. How many

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25:14

Do Black Holes Create New Universes?

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/10

Thanks to Brilliant for supporting PBS. Learn more at: https://brilliant.org/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE What if every single black hole that formed in our universe sparked the big bang of a new universe? Cosmological natural selection proposes exactly this - but even better, it claims to be able to test the hypothesis. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord

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13:50

How To Detect a Neutrino

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/10

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Explore the Fermilab YT Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/fermilab Why is there something rather than nothing? Well the answer may be found in the weakest particle in the universe: the neutrino. For over half a century Fermilab has been the premier particle accelerator facility of the United States and we got to visit with Don Lincoln to explore it’s

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20:42

How To Capture Black Holes

PBS Space Time ·

2026/08/09

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Sign Up for the Space Time Mailing List https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Black holes are awesome - but how about black holes being captured by the screaming vortex of a quasar, where they merge and grow like

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