Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains What Would Happen If You Fell into a Black Hole

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | February 11th, 2009

Per­haps you’ve pon­dered your own mor­tal­i­ty. But have you ever imag­ined per­ish­ing as you fall into a black hole? Prob­a­bly not. But if you’re intrigued by this admit­ted­ly unlike­ly sce­nario, then watch the clip above. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astro­physi­cist who heads up the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, breaks down the scene for you step-by-step and in a fair­ly humor­ous way. This talk is based on his well-reviewed book, Death by Black Hole: And Oth­er Cos­mic Quan­daries.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity: Now Live on YouTube and iTunes

in Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | January 15th, 2009

This week, Stan­ford has start­ed to roll out a new course, Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing physics minds, this course is the fourth of a six-part sequence — Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum — that traces the devel­op­ment of mod­ern physics, mov­ing from New­ton to Black Holes. As the title sug­gests, this course (which runs 20 hours in total) focus­es square­ly on the ground­break­ing work of Albert Ein­stein. And, it’s undoubt­ed­ly a plus that the course was pre­sent­ed in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that it’s tai­lored to smart non-spe­cial­ists like you. You can watch the first lec­ture on iTunes here, or YouTube below. The remain­ing lec­tures will be rolled out on a week­ly basis. If you would like to watch the longer sequence of cours­es, I have pro­vid­ed a com­plete list of links here. Enjoy.

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Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos (Including Boomerang in Zero Gravity)

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | September 8th, 2008

Wired Sci­ence gives you their favorites here. Below, we’ve post­ed a sam­ple: It’s called “Boomerang in Zero Grav­i­ty” and shows that, even in out­er space, a boomerang will always return to the per­son who threw it.

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Stephen Hawking Asks Big Questions About The Universe

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | August 19th, 2008

Speak­ing at the 2008 TED con­fer­ence, physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing asks some Big Ques­tions about our uni­verse: How did the uni­verse begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? And, dur­ing his ten minute talk, he offers some thoughts on how we might go about answer­ing these big enchi­la­da ques­tions. (We’ve added the clip to our YouTube playlist.)

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Physics for Future Presidents: Buy the Book, or Watch the Free Online Course

in Current Affairs, Online Courses, Physics, UC Berkeley | July 22nd, 2008

Richard Muller teach­es one of the most pop­u­lar under­grad­u­ate cours­es at UC Berke­ley: Physics for Future Pres­i­dents. You can watch it on YouTube (above). And now you can buy Muller’s new book. Just pub­lished by W.W. Nor­ton, Physics for Future Pres­i­dents: The Sci­ence Behind the Head­lines gives cit­i­zens the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge they need to under­stand crit­i­cal issues fac­ing our soci­ety — is “Iran’s nascent nuclear capa­bil­i­ty … a gen­uine threat to the West,” are there “viable alter­na­tives to fos­sil fuels that should be nur­tured and sup­port­ed by the gov­ern­ment,” and should “nuclear pow­er should be encour­aged”? These issues (and more) get tack­led here. For more info on the book, you can lis­ten to a good inter­view con­duct­ed this morn­ing (mp3) here in San Fran­cis­co.

Muller’s course, Physics for Future Pres­i­dents, has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Understanding Modern Physics: Download Leonard Susskind Video Lectures

in Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | July 20th, 2008

What’s the “the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum” for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics? Here’s your chance to find out. Below, you will find three cours­es (the first of even­tu­al­ly six) pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his new book on that sub­ject here). Freely avail­able on iTunes and YouTube (see below), these video lec­tures trace the begin­nings of mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, tak­ing you from Isaac New­ton (or New­ton­ian Mechan­ics) to Albert Ein­stein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Notably, these cours­es were orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that the con­tent was pitched to an audi­ence much like you — that is, smart peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have an exten­sive knowl­edge of physics. Watch the video below — the first lec­ture that kicks off the series of cours­es — and you will see what I mean.

Final­ly, in case you’re won­der­ing, the next three cours­es (cov­er­ing quan­tum mechan­ics, elec­tro­mag­net­ism, cos­mol­o­gy, black holes, and more) will be pre­sent­ed this com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year and, once taped, we will give you a heads up. Sign up for our RSS Feed and you will be sure to get an update. Also see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es for many more cours­es along these lines.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

  • Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics (Fall 2007) iTunes YouTube
  • Quan­tum Mechan­ics (Win­ter 2008)  iTunes YouTube
  • Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Spring 2008) iTunes YouTube
  • Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Fall 2009) iTunes YouTube
  • Cos­mol­o­gy iTunes — YouTube
  • Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics iTunes YouTube

Bonus Mate­r­i­al

In 2006–2007, Susskind taped a sep­a­rate series of lec­tures on Quan­tum Mechan­ics. You can down­load them as free video lec­tures as well:

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E=mc²: Einstein Explains His Famous Formula

in Physics, Science | July 14th, 2008

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Stephen Hawking’s Explosive New Theory

in Physics, Science | June 27th, 2008

Arti­cle begins: “Prof Stephen Hawk­ing has come up with a new idea to explain why the Big Bang of cre­ation led to the vast cos­mos that we can see today. Astronomers can deduce that the ear­ly uni­verse expand­ed at a mind-bog­gling rate because regions sep­a­rat­ed by vast dis­tances have sim­i­lar back­ground tem­per­a­tures. They have pro­posed a process of rapid expan­sion of neigh­bour­ing regions, with sim­i­lar cos­mic prop­er­ties, to explain this growth spurt which they call infla­tion. But that left a deep­er mys­tery: why did infla­tion occur in the first place?” The rest here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.