Back to Show
PBS Space Time
Can We Break the Universe?
Season 7
Episode 5
We delve into a couple of the most famous paradoxes of special relativity: the Twin Paradox, The Ladder Paradox (aka the Barn-Pole Paradox), and a paradox suggested by our very own viewers, which asks whether a spaceship could wrap around the universe & destroy itself. We’ll explore these paradoxes and see why, against our intuition, the universe really does work in this seemingly nonsensical way.
Sign up now for inspiring and thought-provoking media delivered straight to your inbox.
Support Provided By

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...

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.

16:19
Today we are jumping into a black hole. Again.