Back to Show
PBS Space Time
Are Cosmic Strings Cracks in the Universe?
Season 8
Episode 7
Reality has cracks in it. Universe-spanning filaments of ancient Big Bang energy, formed from topological defects in the quantum fields, aka cosmic strings. They have subatomic thickness but prodigious mass and they lash through space at a close to the speed of light. They could be the most bizarre undiscovered entities that actually exist.
Support Provided By
17:02
Have we reached the end of the line of discoverable elements?
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...
12:51
We only recently figured out where cosmic rays are coming from.
13:28
Black hole complementarity may force us to rethink what it means to say that it exists.
20:15
To travel the stars without faster than light travel we’re going to need a generation ship.
15:36
The Moon: humanity’s first destination beyond our atmosphere.