PickVidsBest Cosmology & astrophysics Videos
The 108 Cosmology & astrophysics videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 10 introductory, 8 intermediate, 88 for a general viewer, and 2 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are an explainer. What they share is that one picture or analogy is used to supply a missing concept. Channels you will keep seeing include PBS Space Time, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, Isaac Arthur.
The Maths of General Relativity (1/8) - Spacetime and Worldlines
The first of an eight-part ScienceClic series building general relativity, covering worldlines, proper time and coordinate systems with animated visualizations.
Terence Tao: The Cosmic Distance Ladder, UCLA
Terence Tao's AMS Einstein Public Lecture at UCLA on the cosmic distance ladder, the chain of methods astronomers use to measure distances from the Earth to distant galaxies.
Fermi Paradox: The Dyson Dilemma v2.0
Isaac Arthur examines the Dyson Dilemma, the puzzle of why we see no Dyson spheres or megastructures if growth-oriented civilizations should build them.
Stanford Professor Andrei Linde celebrates physics breakthrough
A short Stanford video in which Chao-Lin Kuo surprises Professor Andrei Linde with BICEP2 evidence supporting cosmic inflation, the first apparent images of primordial gravitational waves.
The Absurdity of Detecting Gravitational Waves
Veritasium explains in detail how LIGO detects gravitational waves, with a laser interferometer measuring displacements smaller than a proton.
Why is Time a One-Way Street?
Leonard Susskind's Santa Fe Institute talk on the arrow of time: why the past differs from the future when physics equations are time-symmetric.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
A short video built around an animation of the roughly 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, placed at their measured redshift distances.
Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua | Lex Fridman Podcast #154
Lex Fridman interviews Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb about the interstellar object Oumuamua, aliens and black holes.
The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2)
Kurzgesagt introduces the Fermi paradox: with so many stars and planets, why do we see no sign of aliens?
The Geometry of Causality
PBS Space Time explains how spacetime geometry and light cones determine the order of events and what can cause what.
Dark Matter: The Situation has Changed
Sabine Hossenfelder explains how her opinion on dark matter has shifted, weighing the evidence for and against it and the case for modified gravity.
I Think Faster Than Light Travel is Possible. Here's Why.
Sabine Hossenfelder explains why she thinks faster-than-light travel may not be ruled out.
The Black Hole Information Paradox
PBS Space Time episode on the black hole information paradox, covering how black holes seem to destroy information, the no-hair conjecture and the proposed role of the event horizon.
Tiny meteorites are everywhere. Here’s how to find them.
Verge Science's pilot of its Trial & Error series follows amateur scientist Jon Larsen on a hunt for micrometeorites.
Sir Roger Penrose & William Lane Craig • The Universe: How did it get here & why are we part of it?
Physicist Roger Penrose and philosopher William Lane Craig discuss the origin of the universe on the Unbelievable?
Why Quantum Information is Never Destroyed
A PBS Space Time episode asking whether the universe's information can ever truly be lost, tying quantum mechanics, determinism and black holes together.
Superluminal Time Travel + Time Warp Challenge Answer
A PBS Space Time episode explaining why faster-than-light travel is equivalent to travelling back in time, using relativity and Minkowski diagrams for different observers.
What Happens After the Universe Ends?
PBS Space Time explains Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology, in which the far future of our universe becomes the big bang of the next.
The Case for String Theory - Sixty Symbols
Sixty Symbols interviews Nottingham cosmologist Tony Padilla, who says string theory deserves to be taken seriously.
Black Hole Star – The Star That Shouldn't Exist
Kurzgesagt explains black hole stars, a hypothesized kind of giant star with a black hole at its core that could be a route to early supermassive black holes.
We all move at the Speed of Light
ScienceClic explains why nothing can go faster than light by treating motion through space and time together, so everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime.
Humanity was born way ahead of its time. The reason is grabby aliens.
Rational Animations explains Robin Hanson's grabby aliens model, which argues that humanity looks suspiciously early in cosmic history.
The Unreasonable Efficiency of Black Holes
Minutephysics compares how efficiently different processes convert mass to energy per E=mc^2, from fire and fission to fusion, antimatter and black holes, which can convert a large fraction of mass to energy.
The Black Hole Bomb and Black Hole Civilizations
Kurzgesagt explains the black hole bomb and how far-future civilizations might extract energy from spinning black holes, including Dyson-sphere-style ideas.