A Superb Film About Our Universe and Modern Theories

equipped with his five senses man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] things around us aren't always what they seem [Music] and the everyday world we use a simple scale ourselves to know what's small and what's large [Music] but what about the worlds that live beyond what is truly large and truly small [Music] to explore to observe to understand the wider world we call the universe this is one of the great human adventures [Music] as we look out at the distant horizon we may ask ourselves what is our true place and the universe [Music] we are all travelers on an unending voyage of discovery [Music] more than 25 centuries ago among the Greek islands here at the vibrant crossroads of Africa Asia and Europe philosophers began to devise rationale theories about the world around them the wondrous ways and forms of nature they said could be understood [Music] one Greek thinker suggested that the earth actually moved around the Sun [Music] another thought that everything the work of man and nature was made of particles too small to see [Music] others estimated the sizes of the earth and the moon and the distances between them and reasoned that both were spheres but it would be many centuries before we have the tools to extend our vision and confirm the wisdom of these fairly thinkers in the meantime people around the world gazed on the Stars and gave them names most assumed that the earth was the center of an unchanging universe [Music] 2,000 years passed before revolutionary breakthrough was made by a mathematics professor in the ancient maritime Republic of Venice in 1609 Galileo Galilei demonstrated an instrument that would soon be called the telescope from the tallest bell towers he showed that this device could spot approaching ships hours before their sails were visible to the naked eye later when he aimed his telescope at the night sky Galileo discovered that the moon was a world with mountains Jupiter had his own moons and the Milky Way was a band of countless stars our own cosmic voyage begins here in the centre of Galileo's Venice st. Mark's Square since the universe is a big place we could easily get lost so we'll need signpost to give us a sense of scale to acrobats ring is one meter wide the crowd is ten times wider ten meters across larger by one power of ten now with every step every ring we travel ten times farther from Venice and our view of the universe is ten times wider the 100-meter ring surrounds st. marks and 1,000 meters one kilometer the city center as our speed increases for steps four powers of 10 reveal all the islands of Venice the Adriatic Sea and the mainland of northern Italy [Music] six steps taken Europe from central Germany across Italy to the Balkans [Music] and some we can see the entire planet our whole in space [Music] eight steps on our outward journey eight powers of ten and we passed the farthest reaches of human travel the moon [Music] if we visualize the past that the nine planets taken their orbits around the Sun at 13 steps from st. Mark's Square the entire solar system comes into view [Music] and with 15 steps 15 powers of 10 we can see that our Sun is just another star from here on our void will be measured in lightyears the distance light travels in an entire year only now do we fly past our nearest neighbor stars almost five light-years away the same journey at the speed of today's spacecraft would last 100,000 years [Music] as we crossed the perpetual night our voyage takes us up and out of our Suns neighborhood near the edge of a great pinwheel stars [Music] the Milky Way is actually a spiral galaxy and our homes Sun is just one of a hundred billion stars in it at this immense scale 23 powers of 10 each shining like we see is not a star but an entire galaxy composed of countless stars astronomers have discovered that the galaxies are flying away from one another the universe is expanding our own galaxy and all the others form clusters and superclusters of stupendous size hundreds of millions of light years across [Music] and here about 15 billion light years from Venice we approach the outer limits of the visible universe what lies beyond this cosmic horizon we cannot see and do not know [Music] while Galileo's telescope allowed us to take an outward voyage another innovation here in the Dutch town of Delft would lead us on an inward journey of discovery over three centuries ago Antony van Leeuwenhoek perfected the early microscope and used it to study droplets from the waterways of Holland [Applause] as students today make their own discoveries imagine the moment when van Leeuwenhoek peered through his more powerful instrument and discovered a living kingdom in a drop of water [Music] this busy world of single-celled paramecia there's only one millimeter across three pounds of ten smaller than a meter the microscope allows us to continue our journey into the realm of the very small as we move into the cell nucleus each new ring now reveals a world ten times smaller in diameter than the last deep within the nucleus we come upon truly remarkable constructions long spiraling molecules of DNA DNA holds the chemical codes for the reproduction of most organisms on the planet whether they're paramecia people or petunias [Music] verging on we see that molecules are made of even smaller parts called atoms the tiny world of the carbon atom is very strange indeed it's six electrons seem to swarm everywhere at once now our voyage takes us through a void that appears as vast as the space between the stars ahead lies the atomic nucleus so fantastically small that if the whole atom were the size of this theater its nucleus would be like a speck of dust yet the nucleus contains almost all of the atoms mass packed into particles called protons and neutrons [Music] and these in turn are made of still smaller mysterious things called the forks exploring this beginner frontier of the universe physicists wonder if quarks might contain even tinier building blocks of matter scientists are investigating this mystery in an underground tunnel near Chicago home of the giant Fermilab particle accelerator designed to create conditions like those that existed just after the birth of our universe millions of protons and antiprotons raced through these pipes and opposite directions nearly at the speed of light and kind of subatomic demolition derby [Music] now our cosmic voyage enters another dimension the dimension of time where knowledge is much less certain studying traces of quarks from these collisions physicists try to learn what our universe was like when it began after the explosion known as the Big Bang one of them outlines the theory welcome to Fermilab today astronomers see the universe expanding imagine running the expansion backwards billions of years ago everything must have been packed together at enormous density it seems incredible but we think that the matter making up everything we see in the universe today everything the buildings trees people planets stars out to the most distant galaxies was once crammed together into a volume smaller than this and then space itself exploded in a burst of radiant energy in those first dazzling moments the newborn universe began to expand and crew quarks combined into protons and neutrons which later attracted electrons to form atoms and the best fall [Music] [Music] for hundreds of millions of years the force of gravity slowly through matter together into a gigantic web the architecture of the cosmos [Music] two billion years past clouds of gas and dust condensed like giant water drops along the cosmic strands and formed galaxies [Music] where the great ridges of matter crossed galaxies came together in clusters [Music] some galaxies evolved into gigantic discs and spirals of stars gas and dust neighboring galaxies trapped by their mutual gravity draw together in a fantastic collision in real time it would last a billion years [Music] the force of gravity strips long tails of gas and stars from the huge new galaxy [Music] and yet stars almost never collide so fast are the distances between them perhaps 10 billion years pass and we encounter our own galaxy the Milky Way in it stars are formed and some have died stars are nuclear furnaces they shine until they use up their fuel massive stars end explosively these exploding stars or supernovas send out the elements of life the oxygen we breathe the carbon in our muscles the iron in our blood now a cloud of cosmic gas sprinkled with these elements comes together in the grip of gravity a new star our Sun ignites around it planets form [Music] and their infancy over four billion years ago our earth and moon were bombarded constantly by cosmic dust asteroids and comets with violent impacts volcanic gases acid rain and potent ultraviolet radiation from the Sun the young earth was a very hostile world and yet the basic ingredients of life are already here carbon scientists speculate technologies sheltered by the sea somehow combined multiplied and gave rise to life for millions of years Earth's only elven isms were tiny bacteria some called Bluegreen bacteria slowly released tiny bubbles of oxygen and profoundly changed the atmosphere above the clouds some of this oxygen formed a thin layer of ozone blocking most of the sun's ultraviolet rays then this changed environment new organisms flourished to the Earth's waters colonies of green algae produced more oxygen [Music] then organisms evolved an astonishing variety of forms zom with shells or skeletons for protection and support [Music] others evolved complex life cycles like this tiny crustacean and the shallow waters of the Seas filled with a teeming diversity of life forms [Music] life's next challenge was to colonize the harsh dry land bacteria were first followed by algae plants and animals [Music] vertebrates appeared on land feeding on both plants and animals and gave rise to larger and larger life-forms some of them cantered the realm of the air and others the great open plains [Music] our cosmic voyage from the Big Bang to the appearance of humans took about 15 billion years from the beginning we were explorers inventors and technicians and in a few thousand years just intense tons of cosmic time curiosity and technology would take us back towards the Stars since it was launched into orbit the Hubble Space Telescope has captured images that reveal ever more beautiful and mysterious regions of the universe where stars are dying out and within the Eagle Nebula strange towers of glowing gas are giving birth to new stars in the great Orion Nebula discs of dust seem to be turning into solar systems just like our own the grand adventure of cosmic exploration is accelerating rapidly taking us into realms at once were the stuff of science fiction like the mysterious black hole here a red giant star is slowly being consumed its gases swirling into the depths of a black hole [Music] some black holes maybe collapsed cause of very massive stars with gravity so powerful not even light can escape them but they can be detected when they attract and swallow realized on us [Music] for the first time in our history we now have strong evidence that there are planets orbiting other stars scientists think there could be millions of earth-like planets in our galaxy alone [Music] if so do any of them have life some radio telescopes search for signals that may reveal the presence of alien civilizations it's a daunting task but if one day we should receive a signal it would forever change our view of ourselves and our universe [Music] telescopes such as the giant kick Observatory in Hawaii I like time machines capturing the faint light that has traveled towards us through all of cosmic history the deeper astronomers look into space the farther back they see in time [Music] the more we learn about the universe the more new mysteries we uncover profound questions for future generations of cosmic explorers will the universe go on expanding forever exactly how did life arrives would there be other universes beyond our cosmic horizon and are there of us elsewhere in the universe asking the same things even to ask such questions is ambitious but look how far we've traveled since our ancestors took the first steps in our cosmic voyage [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Space & The Universe HD

Views: 754,014

Rating: 4.616797 out of 5

Keywords: our universe, modern theories, universe documentary, solar system, cosmos, exploding supernovas, greatest scientific discoveries, space discovery documentary

Id: AOc3vAdSNBs

Length: 35min 43sec (2143 seconds)

Published: Sun May 27 2018