Content about “

Big Bang

”

This podcast comes to you from a conference on the nature of time. We talk to philosophers of physics Jeremy Butterfield and David Wallace, as well as the eminent Roger Penrose about the puzzle time poses to physicists and what it has to do with the Big Bang and the second law of thermodynamics.

What's the mysterious stuff that makes up 70% of our Universe?

The mathematical maps in theoretical physics have been highly successful in guiding our understanding of the universe at the largest and smallest scales. Linking these two scales together is one of the golden goals of theoretical physics. But, at the very edges of our understanding of these fields, one of the most controversial areas of physics lies where these maps merge: the cosmological constant problem.

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded.

Cambridge celebrates 25 years since the first very early Universe workshop

A new mathematical model explores the time before the big bang

There might not be a Nobel Prize for mathematics, but maths is at the heart of the 2006 Nobel Prizes.

This issue of Plus is a special, marking the occasion of Stephen Hawking's 60th birthday. Plus attended his Birthday Conference in Cambridge, where we interviewed some of the world's most influential mathematicians and physicists.

What happens when one black hole meets another? Professor Kip Thorne shows us how to eavesdrop on these cosmic events by watching for telltale gravitational waves.

Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees gives Plus a whistlestop tour of some of the more extraordinary features of our cosmos, and explains how lucky we are that the universe is the way it is.

Plus is very proud to present Professor Stephen Hawking's own Birthday Symposium address.