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PBS Space Time
How We Know The Earth Is Ancient
Season 6
Episode 11
In astronomy we talk about billions of years like it’s no big deal. But how can we be sure about timescales so far beyond the capacity for human intuition? Our discovery of what we now call deep time is very recent - as recent as our discovery of the true spatial vastness of our universe. And it came as scientists tried to measure the age of the Earth. What they found was shocking and humbling.
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16:08
Here’s the story we like to tell about the beginning of the universe.
17:44
We’ve never seen a TDE in the Milky Way, but we’ve seen them in distant galaxies.
16:51
Let’s talk about quantum gravity experiments that can be done here on Earth!
19:25
What if gravity isn’t weirdly quantum at all, but rather … just a bit messy?
17:02
Have we reached the end of the line of discoverable elements?
15:32
Can we change the color of a black hole?
18:26
Learn about Nobel laureate Roger Penrose's idea of how consciousness is caused by quantum processes.
16:28
Faster than light travel may produce gravitational waves that we could see here on Earth.
20:07
All particles belong to two large groups: fermions and bosons.
16:11
Just how much stronger is this year’s solar activity going to get?
17:25
So you’ve decided to jump into a black hole...