Season 2015
23 episodes · 2015
1What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?
David Kaplan explores one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the apparent contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
2Freeman Dyson: A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D.
A wide-ranging interview with the legendary mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson in which he discusses his work with Richard Feynman, his attempts to build a spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs and his controversial views on climate change.
3Artur Avila: A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos
A video profile of the mathematician Artur Avila, whose solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have earned him Brazil’s first Fields Medal in 2014.
4Manjul Bhargava: The Musical, Magical Number Theorist
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava, whose search for artistic truth and beauty has led to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory.
5Where Did the Universe Come From?
Where did the universe come from? David Kaplan explores the leading cosmological explanation with the help of a baking metaphor.
6Yitang Zhang: An Unlikely Math Star Rises
The opening scene from George Csicsery’s film "Counting From Infinity," about Yitang Zhang, a previously unknown mathematician who two years ago solved a major problem in number theory that catapulted him to mathematical stardom.
7Martin Hairer: In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Martin Hairer, whose epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis, experts say, “created a whole world.”
8Maryam Mirzakhani: A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, whose monumental work draws deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems.
9Subhash Khot: A Grand Vision for the Impossible
A video profile of the 2014 Nevanlinna Prize winner Subhash Khot, whose bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.
10Alan Guth: How Many Two-Headed Cows in a Multiverse?
In an infinitely branching multiverse, says MIT cosmologist Alan Guth, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”
11Hiranya Peiris: How to Test If We Live in a Multiverse
University College London physicist Hiranya Peiris explains the seemingly impossible -- how the multiverse can be experimentally tested.
12How Did Life Begin on Earth?
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explores the leading theories for the origin of life on our planet.
13Fly-Vac: Groundhog Day for Fruit Flies
Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University developed a device called the fly-vac to study individual behavior. Upon entering a chamber, the fly must choose to walk toward the light or dark end. A vacuum then sucks it back to the starting point, and it makes the choice again.
14Why Do Flies Walk This Way?
In a device in Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University, a fly wanders through a tiny Y-shaped maze, choosing at the Y’s vertex whether to walk left or right. This array of Y-mazes allows researchers to track individual behavior in many flies simultaneously.
15How Symmetry Shapes Nature’s Laws
In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explains how the search for hidden symmetries leads to discoveries like the Higgs boson.
16James Bullock: The Case for Complex Dark Matter
James Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, explains why dark matter might be more complicated than astronomers have assumed.
17Nancy Moran: An Explorer of Life’s Deepest Partnerships
Nancy Moran, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explains how colony collapse disorder led her to study the bacteria that live in the guts of bees.
18Nima Arkani-Hamed's Visions of Future Physics
Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, makes his "big-picture" case for building a 100-TeV particle collider.
19What Is a Species?
David Kaplan explains why a simple definition of 'species' is hard to come by in our fifth In Theory video.
20Gabriela González: Searching the Sky for the Wobbles of Gravity
Gabriela González explains how to measure black-hole collisions using gravitational waves.
21Joan Strassmann: The Woman Who Stared at Wasps
Joan Strassmann explains the benefits of studying social amoebas.
22Christoph Adami: The Information Theory of Life
Christoph Adami explains how information theory can explain the persistence of life.
23Richard Dawid: Why Trust a Theory?
Richard Dawid discusses the fine line between science and speculation.