How To Blow Up A Planet • 2009 • episode "S1E3" • Physics of the Impossible

59:09

Scientists genuinely don't know what most of our universe is made of. The atoms we're made from only make up four per cent. The rest is dark matter and dark energy (for 'dark', read 'don't know'). The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been upgraded. When it's switched on in March 2015, its collisions will have twice the energy they did before. The hope is that scientists will discover the identity of dark matter in the debris. The stakes are high - because if dark matter fails to show itself, it might mean that physics itself needs a rethink.

Horizon • Physics

58:31

Early Earth was a canvas for the vast new palette of the colours of life, with the diversity of human skin tones telling the story of how humanity spread and ultimately conquered the planet. Dr Helen Czerski explores the true masters of colour - which are often the smallest and most elusive - travelling to the mountains of Tennessee to witness the colourful mating display of fireflies, and revealing the marine creatures that can change the colour of their skin in order to hide from the world.

2/3 • Colour: The Spectrum of Science • 2015 • Physics

56:41

One of science’s great odd couples — British minister Joseph Priestley and French tax administrator Antoine Lavoisier — together discover a fantastic new gas called oxygen, overturning the reigning theory of chemistry and triggering a worldwide search for new elements. Soon caught up in the hunt is science’s first great showman, a precocious British chemist named Humphry Davy, who dazzles London audiences with his lectures, introduces them to laughing gas and turns the battery into a powerful tool in the search for new elements.

Part 1 • The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements • 2015 • Physics

46:43

The human race has succeeded in explaining nearly everything in this universe using mathematical formulae. Yet there is one place that remains shrouded in mystery -– black holes. Physicists believe that if they could discover a formula that explains the center of black holes, the last remaining mystery of the universe could finally be unraveled -– how the universe came into being. Their attempts have been mired by unforeseen pitfalls but with the development of superstring theory, physicists have arrived at a formula that could finally end their century-long search. What the formula described was a world beyond our wildest imaginations. This is the incredible story of physicists like Einstein, Hawking and the superstring theorists who have endeavored to solve the mystery of the origin of the universe.

2/2 • The Ultimate Formula • 2016 • Physics

46:06

For over a century, physicists have searched for a blueprint of the universe in the form of a single mathematical formula. This ultimate formula would explain the fundamental building blocks of the universe -– the elementary particles and the different forces that govern them. In their quest, physicists dedicated themselves to the pursuit of mathematical beauty but they were to be met with unexpected setbacks. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 at last confirmed the Standard Model –- a culmination of the theories of various physicists that finally seemed to explain what this universe is made of. But is this where the story ends...? Using the latest computer graphics and interviews with Nobel Prize-winning physicists, we look at the fascinating and dramatic story of the search for the ultimate formula.

1/2 • The Ultimate Formula • 2016 • Physics

4:41

When you think of Archimedes’ Eureka moment, you probably imagine a man in a bathtub, right? As it turns out, there's much more to the story. Armand D'Angour tells the story of Archimedes' biggest assignment -- an enormous floating palace commissioned by a king -- that helped him find Eureka.

TED-Ed • Physics