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Can We Break the Universe?

PBS Space Time

Season 2021Episode 2Aired 2021-01-19
Can We Break the Universe?

Can We Break the Universe?

Today we’re going to 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. But the point of this episode is to go much further - we’re going to try to break the universe by pushing these paradoxes beyond the limit.