The Key to the Cosmos • episode "S1E2" • Atom

110:10

Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation. E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905, including the completion of his special theory of relativity, his identification of proof that atoms exist, and his explanation of the nature of light, which would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among Einstein's ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous. Yet how many people know what it really means? In a thought-provoking and engrossing docudrama, NOVA illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unraveling the story of how it came to be.

NOVA PBS • 2005 • Physics

59:02

How studying the atom forced us to rethink the nature of reality itself.

S1E3 • Atom • Physics

64:50

What does quantum mechanics tell us about our world -- or are there many worlds due to probability waves? How does the general theory of relativity mesh with quantum mechanics? If you've wished you understood quantum mechanics (or at least grasped the basics) physicist Brian Greene can help!

S1E1 • Curiosity Retreats: 2015 Lectures • 2015 • Physics

61:25

On May 16, 2011, Professor of Physics Emeritus Walter Lewin returned to MIT lecture hall 26-100 for a physics talk and book signing, complete with some of his most famous physics demonstrations to celebrate the publication of his new book For The Love Of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics, written with Warren Goldstein.

2014 • Physics

58:15

Award-winning physicist Sean Carroll is known for his keen observations on the relationship between humanity and the laws of nature, and finding where human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific world view.

S1E8 • Curiosity Retreats: 2016 Lectures • 2016 • Physics

58:58

Ice is one of the strangest, most beguiling and mesmerising substances in the world. Full of contradictions, it is transparent, yet it can glow with colour, it is powerful enough to shatter rock, but it can melt in the blink of an eye. It takes many shapes, from the fleeting beauty of a snowflake to the multimillion-tonne vastness of a glacier and the eeriness of the ice fountains of far-flung moons. Science writer Dr Gabrielle Walker has been obsessed with ice ever since she first set foot on Arctic sea ice. In this programme, she searches out some of the secrets hidden deep within the ice crystal to try to discover how something so ephemeral has the power to sculpt landscapes, to preserve our past and inform our future.

2011 • Physics