As the theories on quantum mechanics begin to take shape, the 1927 Solvay Conference becomes a battleground for new scientific ideas. The world’s most brilliant minds, including Einstein and Bohr, try to crack the nature of the subatomic world. Join Brian Greene in exploring this fascinating period.
Theoretical physicist and best-selling author Brian Greene takes us on a journey through the discoveries of quantum physics. How is it that Newtonian mechanics gave way to the more complex and modern world of quantum mechanics?
2016 • Physics
As the theories on quantum mechanics begin to take shape, the 1927 Solvay Conference becomes a battleground for new scientific ideas. The world’s most brilliant minds, including Einstein and Bohr, try to crack the nature of the subatomic world. Join Brian Greene in exploring this fascinating period.
2016 • Physics
The quantum mechanics revolution has revolutionized modern technology. Renowned physicist Brian Greene takes us on a journey through the modern electronic age, from transistors to fiber optics, all made possible through quantum mechanics.
2016 • Physics
James May rapidly and easily explains all you need to know about speed.
S2E4 • James May's Things You Need to Know • 2012 • Physics
Where Am I? Is a new documentary about the skills we use to find our way around. Whether you are an Inuit hunter, a foraging insect, or just someone out for a stroll, your brain is performing one of its most fundamental services – it’s navigating. Why are some of us good at finding our way, while others are not? Good navigators are able to use both memory and imagination…remembering where they have been, and imagining where they’re going. Some researchers believe we build a cognitive or mental map when we navigate, a kind of bird’s eye view of our surroundings, a view that can be rotated and examined in our mind. There has been about sixty years of argument amongst scientists about whether humans and other mammals actually form these cognitive maps or not. The advent of GPS or Global Positioning Systems has changed the discussion about navigation. GPS triggers a simpler, more automatic navigational technique that does not involve building a mental map. With GPS, we simply respond to directions and may not truly understand where we are.
S53E09 • The Nature of Things • 2013 • Physics
Zach charts a journey to determine whether time travel is possible. He meets a man who claims to have traveled back in time due to a secret government program and a group of people living in Liverpool known as “time slippers.” Zach then makes an visit to the CERN headquarters in Geneva, where he attempts to understand the origins of the universe and the dimension of time. Equipped with this new knowledge, Zach tests his own perception of time with an elaborate skydiving experiment to see if he can slow down time itself.
2018 • Physics
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell describes how she discovered pulsars, the by-products of supernova explosions which make life in the universe possible. She describes the moments of despair and jubilation as the discovery unfolded and her excitement as pulsars took the scientific world by storm. Reflecting on the nature of scientific discovery, she talks about the connections between religion and science and how she sees science as a search for understanding rather than as a quest for truth.
S1E1 • Beautiful Minds • 2010 • Physics
Let’s talk about the best evidence we have that the theories of quantum physics truly represent the underlying workings of reality.
PBS Space Time • 2018 • Physics
Adam Savage walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods anyone could have followed -- Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference around 200 BC and Hippolyte Fizeau's measurement of the speed of light in 1849.
2012 • Physics