Episode list

Sixty Symbols

Creating the Elements - Sixty Symbols
Hyrdrogen and helium are primordial elements created in the Big Bang. Most other common elements up to the atomic weight of iron were created by nuclear fusion in the cores of stars. Heavier elements were created when massive stars exploded as supernovae.
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Asteroids - Sixty Symbols
Asteroids orbit the sun just like planets but are considerably smaller. Astronomer suspect they are collections of rock that never formed into planets.
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Antihydrogen - Sixty Symbols
Physicists at CERN have successfully captured a small number of atoms of anti-hydrogen consisting of an antiproton and a positron. Of interest is determining how much alike hydrogen and anti-hydrogen are. Any differences would be monumental.
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The Sixth Dimension - Sixty Symbols
Model of six dimensional space time were devised to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe. The concept has yet to be confirmed or refuted as of 2011.
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ar Side of the Moon - Sixty Symbols
The is a reasonably good chance that the Earth had a second moon for a time before the two 'gently' collided and merged. It's a pretty good hypothesis for explaining the wildly different terrain on the far side versus the near side of the moon.
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Vortex Nitron - Sixty Symbols
Nerf's latest projectile launcher features a spinning disk reminiscent of a mini Frisbee. Dr. Moriarty explains why the disk float through the air for long distances.
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Lagrange Points - Sixty Symbols
Dr. Merrifield explains the five Lagrange points points that permit three objects to remain roughly equidistant from one another in space and why they are useful for space telescopes.
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Entropy Confusion - Sixty Symbols
Dr. Moriarty explains, rather emphatically, that entropy is not simply a measure of disorder noting that highly ordered crystals form spontaneously.
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The Amazing Eta Carinae - Sixty Symbols
Eta Carinae is a rare massive star that is relatively nearby. It is thought to be near the end of its life and suddenly brightened in the 1840's when astronomers think it almost went supernova leaving behind a nebula. To keep it interesting until the next outburst it has a companion star that approaches it closely at one point in its orbit producing x-ray bursts.
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The s-Process - Sixty Symbols
The Slow Neutron Capture, S-Process, is one of the mechanisms for the production of heavy elements (heavier than iron) in the universe. It involves an atom absorbing free neutrons, until it becomes an unstable isotope when a neutron can decay into a proton to produce an atom one step higher on the Periodic Table of the Elements.
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Second Law of Thermodynamics - Sixty Symbols
The Second Law of Thermodynamics has been defined in a variety of ways. Heat naturally flows from hot objects to colder objects. Heat cannot be converted directly into an equivalent amount of work.
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Lightning is Complicated - Sixty Symbols
Professor Micahel Merrifield of the University of Nottingham does his best to explain the poorly understood phenomenon of lightening. But it doesn't help that the phenomenon of static electricity is not well understood either. Based on what is known, lightning shouldn't happen.
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How Smooth is a Neutron Star?
Professor Michael Merrifield discusses a new result from LIGO that detected no gravitational waves from known pulsars. This null result places interesting constraints of the shape and symmetry of neutron stars. Despite their rotation of hundreds of times per second they are near perfectly symmetrical spheres.
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The G-Dwarf Problem - Sixty Symbols
Initial models suggest today's galaxies should have many stars comprised mostly of mostly primordial gas, hydrogen and helium, and few with heavier elements. While this is true for dwarf galaxies the opposite is true for large galaxies. The resolution of this paradox is explained here.
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The Bullet Cluster (of Galaxies) - Sixty Symbols
Dr. Maggie Lieu describes the collision of two galaxy clusters known as the Bullet Cluster. It provides additional evidence for the theory of dark matter while disproving Modified Newtonian Dynamics. She describes another collision know as the Train Wreck Cluster that in turn poses challenges for the theory of dark matter.
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