Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries – Dark Mysteries of the Universe

About This Episode

This episode is now extended with a cosmic conversation between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Matt O’Dowd, astrophysicist and host of PBS Space Time. Neil and Matt discuss space exploration without a set destination, how Neil would spend the science budget of an administration, “Star Trek,” and more. 

Join Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Leighann Lord as they explore the dark mysteries of our cosmos, from the infinitesimal electron to the higher dimensions of the multiverse. You’ll find out whether photons have mass, why the Moon doesn’t really orbit the Earth, and how many stars are born each day in our galaxy’s stellar nurseries. Neil explains how neutron stars could become black holes and why space is anything but dark, ablaze in microwaves and other energy beyond visible light. At times, the science borders on the philosophical, as when Neil proclaims, “We are the singularity writ large across the dimensions of the cosmos.” But there’s plenty of physics, too, as your own personal astrophysicist answers Cosmic Queries about the speed of gravity, the difference between “aether” and the Higgs field, what dark flow has to do with galactic expansion, and how long we have until we crash into the Andromeda galaxy.

NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries – Dark Mysteries of the Universe.