Invisible Worlds

You can’t see it, but it’s there, whether an atom, a gravity wave, or the bottom of the ocean … but we have technology that allows us to detect what eludes our sight. When we do, whole worlds open up.

Without telescopes, asteroids become visible only three seconds before they slam into the Earth. Find out how we track them long before that happens. Also, could pulsars help us detect the gravity waves that Einstein’s theory predicts?

Plus, why string theory and parallel universes may remain just interesting ideas … the story of the woman who mapped the ocean floor … and why the disappearance of honeybees may change what you eat.

Guests:

•  David Morrison – NASA space scientist and Director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute

•  May Berenbaum – Entomologist, University of Illinois

•  Scott Ransom – Astronomer, National Radio Astronomy Observatory

•  Lee Smolin – Theoretical physicist, Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, Canada, author of Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe

•  Hali Felt – Author of Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor

First released September 23, 2013.

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