A quick reiteration for anyone reading this that doesn't know what Doctor Who is: it's basically a show about a time-travelling alien and his human companions (you really should watch if you haven't). My weekly blog posts are going to be about the physics of Doctor Who from episodes past and present. I'm not going to get into the physics of time travel just yet though.

I'm going to start with this:

So there is an average, run of the mill human being floating in space with nothing but her pajamas on. Except, physically that doesn't make any sense. In order for Amy (that's her name by way, and the man holding her foot is the Doctor- the alien who time travels) to be able to live in space there would need to an atmosphere, so that she had the oxygen necessary to breath, and there isn't one in space. Space is a vacuum which means there is no atmosphere and therefore Amy would not have air to breath and would be unable to live while floating in space like she is and yet she does. How is this explained then? On the show, the Doctor tells Amy that the T.A.R.D.I.S. (his time machine, the blue box) created an atmospheric shell, effectively creating a bubble around itself so that living beings can breath and thus Amy could breath. I don't believe this something that it is possible by today's standards but then again this show isn't always set in today's time. This would be an example of the writer cleverly working around the fact that 75% of what happens on the show defies at least some physics concept. Ok, that would be it for now, but I'm working more so stay tuned!