This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

Got a minute?

On tonight's new episode of the hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory,

a mock copy of Scientific American magazine becomes a big plot point,

which makes today a good time to hear from UCLA physicist David Salzburg.

He's the show's science advisor. I recorded a talk he gave at the City University

of New York's graduate center all the way back in 2010. Here's a clip.

We have about 15 million viewers each episode.

And it's not the same 15 million viewers each episode.

So I can go out and get lectures on public lectures on science with 100 people in them every week for 100,000 weeks to get to 10 million people.

So, you know, this is brief, but it's a huge audience and people do watch television with their

laptops around and hopefully they will Google something and that may be a chance to get the idea

that they're dark matter out there, especially if they're working on week after week and people do care about the characters.

There's a pretty good chance people are googling what's going on.

For more from David Salzburg,

check out the latest episode of the Science Talk

podcast and go to our website to read a new Q&A

with the Big Bang Theory showrunner Stephen Malaro.

Thanks for the minute.

For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Steve Mursky.