{"id":519699,"date":"2026-04-08T14:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/519699\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T14:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:46:10","slug":"what-star-trek-space-time-and-subatomic-particles-have-in-common-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/519699\/","title":{"rendered":"What Star Trek, space-time, and subatomic particles have in common : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cover<\/p>\n

\n What do subatomic particles, black holes, and the Big Bang have in common? They’re all covered in Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s new book, The Edge of Space-Time.<\/p>\n

Pantheon Books<\/p>\n

hide caption\n <\/p>\n

toggle caption<\/p>\n

Pantheon Books<\/p>\n

Subatomic particles, gravity wells and the beginning of the universe \u2013 these are difficult and mysterious concepts that are better understood with storytelling and metaphor. That’s exactly theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein<\/a>‘s tack in the new book The Edge of Space-Time<\/a>: use metaphor and wonder to bridge the gap between people’s confusion and excitement with quantum physics.<\/p>\n

In this episode we talk about Star Trek, how first year physics students are taught and how theoretical physics affects your everyday life.<\/p>\n

Interested in more space science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org\/shortwave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do subatomic particles, black holes, and the Big Bang have in common? They’re all covered in Chanda…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2302,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-519699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}