The Fabric of the Cosmos (1/4): What Is Space? (2011)

Nova: The Fabric of the Cosmos miniseries - What Is Space?
Aired: November 2, 2011
Nova S39E05

Space separates matter and energy and exists everywhere in the universe. To most of us, it's nothing - it's completely empty and void of anything of interest.

To physicists, it's a new frontier rife with activity.

Brian Greene, acclaimed physicist and reknowned author, explores the very nature of reality itself in this mind-blowing series by Nova. Recalling the discoveries by historical figures such as Newton and Einstein that expanded our understanding of how things work, Greene shows the developments that led scientific understanding to the notion that space is actually a dynamic fabric that, like a sheet of plastic, can be bent and warped by gravitational influences.

Also covered are dark energy and how observations and musings of black holes expand how physicists see the universe. A recent discovery, for instance, is that space can be viewed as having 3 or 4 dimensions, but in reality likely only has two dimensions of space. (Not covered is the theory of time having multiple dimensions, for the simple reason that it's just too bloody weird.)

Fans of Nova and/or Greene will thoroughly enjoy this.

Read more at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html
Program description: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html#fabric-space

From the Web site:

Space. It separates you from me, one galaxy from the next, and atoms from one another. It is everywhere in the universe. But to most of us, space is nothing, an empty void. Well, it turns out space is not what it seems. From the passenger seat of a New York cab driving near the speed of light, to a pool hall where billiard tables do fantastical things, Brian Greene reveals space as a dynamic fabric that can stretch, twist, warp, and ripple under the influence of gravity. Stranger still is a newly discovered ingredient of space that actually makes up 70 percent of the universe. Physicists call it dark energy, because while they know it's out there, driving space to expand ever more quickly, they have no idea what it is.

Probing space on the smallest scales only makes the mysteries multiply. Down there, things are going on that physicists today can barely fathom—forces powerful enough to generate whole universes. To top it off, some of the strangest places in space, black holes, have led scientists to propose that like the hologram on your credit card, space may just be a projection of a deeper two-dimensional reality taking place on a distant surface that surrounds us. Space, far from being empty, is filled with some of the deepest mysteries of our time.

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