Public Broadcasting for Northwest Indiana & Chicagoland since 1987
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Crisis in Cosmology

Season 5 Episode 9 | 13m 17s

The search for a single number: the hubble constant, which is the rate of expansion of our universe, has consumed astronomers for generations. Finally, two powerful and independent methods have refined its measurement to unprecedented precision. The only problem is that they don’t agree. This calls into question some of our most basic assumptions about the universe.

Aired: 01/22/19
Gödel found a time-travel solution in General Relativity, revealing spacetime can loop on itself.
Tardigrades can survive almost anything—even most of Mars. But one Martian chemical stops even them.
The Higgs boson may open a portal to hidden particles that could explain dark matter.
The universe expands faster. “Dark energy” may not be constant after all.
There’s a new generation of experiments that may unlock the gravity particle.
The universe thrums with quantum fields, except something may be missing: the sterile neutrino.
Gravitons, the particle of quantum gravity, may be impossible to detect.
2025 was the international year of quantum science, but today we examine its origins.
We’ve found lots of “habitable” worlds but we don’t know what factors are needed for life.
What is the graviton, and does it even exist?