What We Don't Know
‘What We Don’t Know’ is a podcast series that explores the boundaries of human knowledge, investigating the unanswered questions and theories that unravel them at the frontiers of science. During this podcast I hope to get you interested in new areas of science, maths and technology, teaching you about existing concepts and igniting a curiosity for the things we have yet to know.
Episodes
14 episodes
Core of a neutron star
Neutron stars are one of the most extreme astronomical objects in the universe. They are so dense that a single teaspoon, if you were strong enough to collect it, would weigh 4 billion tons. They can spin as fast as 43,000 times per minute, and...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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19:03
The fifth state of matter: Bose-Einstein condensates
Very early in our school career, we learn about the states of matter. This table is hard wood - it's solid. This water flows, we can drink it - it’s a liquid. And the air around us, even though we cannot see it, is a gas. But these three states...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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21:14
The Cambrian explosion
We often use the phrase ‘it’s the end of an era’ to signify some great change in our lives, like leaving school forever. But actual eras are far, far longer than our brains can comprehend, usually lasting several hundred million years, with dra...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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19:59
Black hole information paradox (part two)
When particles escape from a black hole via Hawking radiation, they only contain information on the mass, spin and charge of the black hole’s original material. Other information, that is needed to reconstruct the black hole’s past, seems to be...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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12:50
Black hole information paradox (part one)
Different areas of physics seem to be incompatible inside black holes. When combining general relativity, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, you get a paradox, which suggests that our knowledge of these areas is flawed. A solution, whatever ...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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13:11
Consciousness
What is consciousness? Who experiences it? Why? How?In this episode, I will first offer a definition of consciousness and consider the aspects that make it up. Then I’ll summarise some of the main questions we can ask about consciousnes...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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11:44
Dark matter
What is dark matter? Why do we need it, and how can we find it? Dark matter is notorious for how it evades detection, and its presence is one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Yet we think it must exist. Not only that, but we think it must...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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17:14
Protein folding
This episode is about protein folding, specifically the protein folding problem that has pervaded biochemistry since 1960, when the first atomic-resolution protein structure was presented. First I will explain what proteins are, why they are im...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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17:07
P vs NP problem
In this episode I’ll discuss one of the most important problems in computing: the P versus NP problem. This is one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, unsolved challenges in mathematics. The P vs NP problem concerns the field o...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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11:16
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)
This episode is a bit different to the previous ones because neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) have treatments, so their biology is not beyond the horizon of science. However, in sharp contrast to how curable they are, 1.7 billion people still...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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10:18
Quantum entanglement
This episode I will explore quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is itself not unknown – many experiments have proven it a pillar of the quantum world – but it does herald interesting practical applications and theories in other aspects o...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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11:32
Quantum gravity
This episode I’ll be exploring one of the greatest mysteries in physics: the incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein asserted that gravity is actually the effect caused by space-time curvature. It is very inconveni...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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10:44