Science with Sabine

What does physics say about time travel? Surprisingly enough it doesn't just say it's impossible, it's more complicated than that. In this video I'll sort out what Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics tell us about time travel. And is MIT really building a time machine to find dark matter? We'll get to that.

In this week's science news, I talk about a new candidate for a cosmic string, the mysterious shrinking of planet Mercury, a nuclear clock, the first quantum engine, a simulator for human diseases, whether we can find new physics with spinning black holes, AI that wants to help find aliens, how to compute with photons, and of course, the telephone will ring.

Today we’ll talk about the Nobel Prize in physics, yet another superconductor retraction, whether Integrated Information theory is pseudoscience, why antimatter doesn’t anti-gravitate, sand that flows uphill which I swear has nothing to do with antigravity, the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, how life could come about on other planets, why we might go extinct sooner than expected, and of course, the telephone will ring.

This episode comes with a quiz that you can take here.

Today we talk about raisins. Yes, raisins. Quasars with dark matter halos, pink diamonds, the last moments of a dying satellite, a new type of qubit, maybe, how to measure the length of the day with lasers, a new treatment method for brain cancer that’s got something to do with quantum mechanics, whether climate change drives migration, and of course, the telephone will ring.

The quiz for this episode is here.

If people knew one thing about Steven Weinberg, it’d be a quote from one of his books: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” In this episode, I want to speculate about what he might have meant. Is the universe pointless?

Today we talk about the possibly first evidence for life on an exoplanet, with some caveats, chaos at the centre of the Milky Way, earthquake lights, a really old rock, noise cancellation for qubits, good news about air pollution, wifi that can see through walls, origami robots, the 2024 Breakthrough Prizes, and of course, the telephone will ring.

Today I talk about how we talk, or how we communicate information on social media in general. Why is it so difficult to communicate on social media, what’s a parasocial relationship, and what are the problems with it? Interestingly enough, it's a question that scientists have studied.

Today we talk about a bubble of galaxies, a climate scientist who made his own paper worse, double magic oxygen, a chemical reaction slowed down 100 billion times, Maxwell’s demon in biology, intelligent life on earth, the launch of a new X-ray space mission, drone racing, and of course the telephone will ring.

What is web3? I've tried to figure it out and here is my summary of what I have learned about NFTs and cryptocurrencies, about dapps and defi and blockchains, and all that.