Can We Break the Universe?

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Today we’re going to delve into a couple of the most famous paradoxes of special relativity: the Twin Paradox, The Ladder Paradox (aka the Barn-Pole Paradox), and a paradox suggested by our very own viewers, which asks whether a spaceship could wrap around the universe & destroy itself. We’ll explore these paradoxes and see why, against our intuition, the universe really does work in this seemingly nonsensical way. But the point of this episode is to go much further - we’re going to try to break the universe by pushing these paradoxes beyond the limit.

Special Thanks to our Patreon Supporters Hank & Mark for suggesting the questions that inspired this episode!

#space #relativity #paradox

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd

Written by Matt O'Dowd

Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, Pedro Osinski, Adriano Leal & Stephanie Faria

Directed by Andrew Kornhaber

Assistant Producer: Setare Gholipour

Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber

End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg

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