Every story has a beginning,
even the story of the Universe.
Some 13.7 million years ago,
a mysterious event forced the Universe in to motion,
in the Big Bang.
The ultimate creation every atom, every star
and every galaxy.
But this is our story,
how for thousands years we piece together a vision of the Universe,
made sense through science
and discover our place within it.
This is our story of everything,
from Shaman to scientists,
beyond The Big Bang.
For thousands of years we gathered our observations of the heaven
into books that would more than fill a library.
We build a vast body of knowledge about our Universe.
How it all began,
and how it will End
It is a work in progress.
The script still is being written
and the ink still is wet on the page.
Where do we began?
let's begin
at beginning.
Let's begin
with The Big Bang.
The Big Bang is a theory of cosmic evolution.
It tell us how the Universe evolved, how it changed
from a split second after whatever
brought it to the existence.
and still we do not know what that is
until today.
When you look out the Universe
and look the other distant galaxies, you see that all is flying away from us
they all moving outward,
at huge velocity.
You string that all the way back.
You see the one time, maybe
13 or 14 billions of years ago,
everything was must be compress in an inconceivably dense point.
We know we do not have the whole story
but we ever have whole story in the history of the physics.
We have series better and better of approaches
rebuilding , start building more and more beautiful and interesting truths.
The Big Bang is ours theory for the beginning of the Universe.
But for a long time,
people neither did not think about the origin of the Universe
or they assumed the universe had always existed
and was ever lasting.
Even the scientists, they were reluctant
at first to embrace the Big Bang.
It was meant to be a derisive term
However, the Big Bang is really a contradiction
because it wasn't big
and it was no Bang.
It wasn't big because we think that the Universe
started of a singularity of some sort
And it was no Bang because there was no air to carry the vibrations.
So Big Bang is in some sense a misnomer but the name stuck.
And so has the theory.
Right now Big Bang theory is a solid part of science we understand it.
Anybody who do not accept it will be
regard by most of the community as a crackpot.
But acceptance and understanding they are two different things.
The Big Bang theory doesn't yet provided
all the answers science seeks,
to explain how our Universe was born.
When cosmologists refer to talk about the Big Band theory,
it is really on description of aftermath The Big Band.
The conventional Big Bang theory say anything about
what Bang, why Bang
or what happened before Bang.
Right now, at this very second
we're in the aftermath of the Big Bang.
Everything what we see, and hear,
and taste, and smell, and touch is aftermath.
The Big Bang is really our evolving, expanding universe.
For us, mostly stuck on our rocky little planet
the view of the Universe begins with the Earth.
This is the Earth.
Silicon and oxygen based with metallic core.
The surface is mostly water.
It teems with life and rotate once every 24 hours
while orbit the star called sun
every 365 days.
This it is the Sun. Mostly hydrogen and helium.
Its surface temperature it is nearly 10,000 degrees F
For energy
our sun convert 700 million tons of hydrogen
into 695 million tons of helium every second.
The Sun is part of the Solar System,
Formed around 4.5 billion years ago,
that includes the Earth and 7 others orbiting planets.
From Mercury to Neptune.
And it isn't a static system.
Our Solar System is spanning,
flying thought space at 134 miles per second.
Turning in circles.
As part of a vast collection of stars and star systems.
There are maybe 200 billion stars
in this collection called Milky Way Galaxy.
And assumed 6 billions of these stars
with planetary system like ours.
Our Solar System orbit the center of the Milky Way,
on one of outer arms.
The Milky Way is one of more than 125 billions of galaxies,
that make up the observable Universe.
This it is the Universe.
It is really really big.
And it's getting greater.
it is expanding.
If the universe is expanding, then it used to be smaller.
Much smaller.
In fact, if we were backing time, we could watch it shrink.
That's far enough,
and Universe would be smaller than a galaxy.
Back , and the Universe smaller than our Solar System.
Further back and everything exists fits inside a studio,
a coffee cup,
an atom.
13.7 billion years ago
the Universal was smaller than the smallest part of an atom.
Unbelievably small.
Then something happened.
In a flash, each thing suddenly expanded.
This was how all began
the first moment of the existence,
what we now called
The Big Bang.
That's what we know it's be true, not because theories be invented
but because all the observations result.
We can predict the abundance of light elements
they agree over 10 orders of magnitude over what we see.
So the fundamentals picture of Universe is expanding,
emerging, got a hot ,
dense universe, find that time in the past
it is the the Big Bang picture.
The theory of Big Bang isn't sort of thing you can figure out over night.
It takes years.
Centuries of accumulated wisdom.
Mankind has been thinking about it for a long time.
Even before we realized , we were thinking about it.
Everytime we looked at stars, we will thinking about it.
How do we know what we now know?
How do we figure it all out?
That is the heart of our story.
The story of how ours concept of the Universe evolved.
We stock pilled the discoveries of the most
brilliants members of our species, allowing us
however strain and whatever struggle it involves
to slowly ascend the ladder of knowledge.
Maybe compensating the fact, anyone of us
it's just too stupid to figure it all out
So where do we began?
Today, professional astronomers and physicists on camps like
the Massachusets Institute of Technology
and Cambridge University in England
wage debate about the Big Bang theory.
But the conversation began a long time ago.
Before anyone ever heard about The Big Bang.
Before anyone knew what heaven is really were.
Away before that science exist
or with even contemplation in the mind of anybody
people asking questions about origin.
When early man look at the sky
He saw dominated it by the warming , life giving sun
At night, he saw the Moon and the stars.
This was the Universe -- harsh, hostile and chaotic.
With a drifting sun shifted cross the sky
the season one from warm to cold
The primitive people needed to understand their world
in order to survive it.
People has absolutely no control of the nature.
The balance of expected and unexpected made people
make nature into Gods
in order to establish some kind of relation with them.
Without telescopes as modern observatories
primitive people relies in the simple structures
to help them to understand skies.
At places like Stonehenge, in England
or Chichen Itza, in Mexico
they attemped to connected into heaven
the perceived home of the Gods.
This were simple instruments of observation
and tools of analysis
that help to make sense for dancing universe
We are here is Eastern part of Germany and 700 km south of Berlin
in a little village, called Gosek.
One of the oldest monuments, dedicated to the sun and stars
it was found here.
This is the solar observatory of Gosek.
It was build 7000 years ago,
and was used by early farmer to tell the time of the year.
Constructed 2000 years before Stonehenge and reconstructed here
this is the Europe oldest known calendar.
During the winter and summer solstices
the shortest and longest day of the year
the setting sun lights up with gate in the parlances.
The knowledge of days
helped this people understand the life giving sun.
The nice sky is a clock.
it is a gigantic clock staring you at face that allowed the ancient
to calculate when to plant, when to harvest.
In other words, they are very livelihood depended on their understanding
of the motions of the sun and the heavens
This idea of astronomy predicting the behavior of the natural world
based on the motion of the heavens,
gets mixed with the dogma of the astrology
the belief that the motion of heavens predetermined our fate.
That meteor signal military victory.
A new star, the birth of a king.
Back there astronomy was predicted the motion of stars.
Astrology was predicted how the stars effected us.
And it's real hard in the ancient may to separate this two.
If you understand the clock works on heavens you understand how our fate are going to be.
The astrologers divide the skies in regions as early as 6 century B.C.
They saw shapes in the stars
and named the regions after the shapes.
Aries
Taurus
and Geminis
among others.
But the astrologers give a story sky to divied their fate.
They also watched and learned how the heaven moved.
From superstitious models comes to baby steps
of the scientific observation.
I see science as a journey
that ours species has been on for
roughly 2500 years to try to contiguous
deep way as possible with the universe
the laws of the universe, structure of the universe, what make things up
how they evolve and what's their force, their govern changes.
But sometimes, the simple observation
can leave fundamental worry conclusions.
When you look out the Universe
the first sight you get is we are the center of the earth,
that universe is revolved around us,
Stars goes cross the night sky, the sun goes cross the day,
and the sight was the Earth was fixed and the heaven was rotated about us.
But that perception is completely wrong.
Earth is not fixed, it is not the center of anything.
The whole history of cosmology
it is the relentless retreat of Earth from center stage.
Nevertheless, the gathering of knowledge move forward.
Using the mathematics
The ancient Greeks provided more detailed information
about our dominant celestial neighbors the Sun and the Moon.
Even back then, 2000 years ago, they knew the Earth curves.
By look at the shades, they calculated the size of the Earth
to within about 10% accuracy.
They actually calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon
and rough dimension of the distance from the Earth to the Sun
so in other words, the ancient were no fools.
The ancient Greeks also recognized 2 types of stars.
The most was fixed and small and moved together.
A few were larger and moved half-hazardly so was seem.
This were the planets
And predict thire motion become centuries long goal.
With just the naked eye to scan the skies.
the Greeks saw only 5 planets
naming each their Gods.
Today we more familiar with the Roman denominations:
Mercury, Venus
Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.
Ancient astronomy assumed a concept of the universe
proposed by the 4 century B.C. Greek philosopher Aristotle
who imagined the Earth at center of the Universe,
with a sun, moon, stars and planets
all revolved elegant around it
in perfect crystalline spheres.
Aristotle's universe was finite, it was a big sphere
actually was like an onion, was like an onion with many concept spheres
First century astronomy Tolomeo
Improved on Aristotle
by actually trace path of planets.
which don't move half-hazardly at all
Using complex circular motion calls epicitios
Tolomeo could predict proscribe patterns and changing velocitys.
In other words Tolomeo's system reliably predicted
the future behavior of the planets.
Another step in man's journey
to understand and control the Universe.
The Tolomeo's system was extremely complex
it had all this planets goin loops
and works builtfuly but was just worry.
The idea that you can predict something
doesn't mean you understand fundamental principles behind that.
Tolomeo's system did not actually review the universe
but it did try.
He essentially showed that the positions of planets
could be calculated for any time past or future
It was a tour de force of the mathematics understanding.
Interestingly
the astronomy seemed to stand still for centuries after that.
In fact after the claps of Rome in the 476 A.D.
the astronomy actually lose the ground.
Europe fragmented into smaller powers
and a lot of wisdom of Greek was lost.
Thousand years later, a new theory would confront the accepted beliefs
about how the heaven worked
and would move man kind one step closer to the theory of the Big Bang
During 15 century A.D.
an idea called heliocentrism,
claimed the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the Universe.
This horrified the Christian clergy
who felt contradicted the word of God.
If God created the Earth and man his own image
then Earth and its devotee inhabitants
must be the center of everything.
Ironically, the champion of the sun center universe
was devotee church deacon from Frombork, Poland.
name Nicolas Copernicus.
He was a cathedral administrator.
Working to help collect the rents, helping people who were sick.
But in between he was working on astronomy.
Copernicus was troubled by Tolomeo's complex heavenly mechanics.
But he found an elegant solution.
When he moved the Earth from center of the Solar System
And replaced it with the Sun at heart at all.
When Copernicus put the planets going around the sun
He discovered that planet Mercury, which goes around about 3 months
Ultimately fell close to the sun.
Saturn, the slowest planet, which goes around about 30 years,
ultimately fell the outside edge.
Copernicus wrote:in no other way
do we find such harmonious connection
between the size of the orbit and its period.
That seemed almost magic.
Copernicus also insisted that the Earth was rotated
that it spun completely around its axis every 24 hours.
The heaven did not move, we did.
The stars chasing across sky each night,
was mearly an illusion created by the rotating Earth.
likely, afraid of Church reprisals.
Copernicus abstained from to publish his theory
until he was on his death bed in 1543.
But his book "Concerning the revolution of celestial orbit"
paved the way for Johannes Kepler,
born in 1571
the champion of observational science.
Kepler was the true hero here, because he was the one really come out, trumpeted to the world
the Sun has to be the center.
Kepler had his disposition a trove of astronomical data,
collected through years staring of sky
When he checked his observations and did calculations, and realized
that's not only was the sun center of the Solar System
but the perfect circles were a figment also.
Maybe it's uglyer philosophically, but it really match the data.
Kepler improved on Copernicus's system
by hypothesis that planets traveled
not in perfect circles,
but in ellipses around the sun.
Kepler's data also pointed a strange phenomenon
struggled but fault to understand.
As the planets approached the Sun, they speed up.
for their away, they slow down.
Together, the sun centered Universe
and the variable speed of the planets,
best explained what we see here in the Earth.
Suddenly and for the first time, the sun centered pictures,
gives better predictions than Earth centered pictures.
And you have normal something trace by data,
but does something scientist suppose to do
which is make predictions, which is good.
But it's a cosmic riddle seemed solved, another remained.
Kepler saw that the sun influenced speed of planets
as they traveled through the space. But how?
Before anyone address this mystery,
dogma and science collided.
in a conflict revibration to this very day.
At the turning of 17 century , Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei
would take e theories of Copernicus and Kepler
that the sun was center of the Solar System
And prove them right beyond any shade of doubts.
He did it with a new technology,
that would change the course of history.
The telescope, in a some sense, is most blasphemous
most seditious, most revolutionary and most
splendorous instrument of science.
All science received a greatest gift
in this tool bring distant objects close.
Once the idea get out,
you can take 2 lenses, one open in such a way
put them in a tube and make a spyglass out of it.
That's bright like wild fire around world as it did.
So the issure now is not who got the telescope,
but you now knew what to do with it.
Would you looking people's windows?
Would you look up and out of the Universe.
Galileo improved the design in 1609
by grinding his own lenses, and creating one that
could magnify in unprecedent 30 times.
And with that telescope for some resaen, he decided to look at sky,
that suppose to in come the sharp of republic of Venice
and what he saw complate changed scope of astronomy.
Galileo was treated to the clearest and most detailed
view of heaven that any person had ever know.
Through its telescope, Galileo saw thousands more stars
a Moon populate with craters
satellites circleing Jupiter
Saturn with giant ears.
Greatest of all, Galileo plainly saw
that Venus went through phases like our moon.
Clear evidence that Venus orbited the sun.
Proved the sun centered system.
This show in first time that Copernicus was right
the Earth was not the center of the Solar System, the Sun was.
So Galileo with its telescope
push earth away from center of the Universe, said:"We are not the center of everything.
We are one planet among others.
and could be much larger universe than we known."
With Copernicus had assumed for aesthetic reasons
With Kepler had deduced measurement and mathematical
Galileo proved.
Galileo saw.
Galileo reviewed.
The ancient had seen everything could possible seen through naked eye.
It's really take a new instrument to get beyond that.
The telescope that was the break point was
between ancient and the modern's.
Centuries of church dogmas
claiming the Earth was the center of the Universe,
with now clearly worry.
With the Catholic Church still waving
for schism of protestant reformation
Galileo discovery seemed to undermine scripture.
Dangerous for a Church they felt under siege
Dangerous for the scientist who posting it.
Nevertheless, Galileo, a devotee catholic
published his observations in the book called The story Messenger in 1610.
Surprisingly
the Church welcomed Galileo's findings, at the first.
Had Galileo been a little more careful
with his approach, may got no way with it.
A famous quotation from cardinal Baroni, a predecessor, was
"The Bible tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heaven's go."
Ultimately, Galileo's downfall was not his inability
to sway the Church to his way of thinking
but rather his attempt at interpreting scripture
all by himself, independent of the Church.
Galileo credits St Augustin,
who said that:"If you find interpretation of scriptures
which same to be contradicted established knowledge
then you should reconsider that interpretation of scriptures".
But the Church concent with perceived
frash its own power,
could not concent the biblical interpretation to Galileo.
In 1633, after Galileo publish a new book
champion in the sun centered system.
The Pope saw him for standing trial for heresy.
He forced to giveup all his copernican ideas,
which apparently he did kneeling in front of the tribunal.
In spite of its confession, Galileo quietly hold fast for his beliefs
throw out his final years under house arrest
at Siena outside of Florence.
Galileo is the first modern scientist, in the sense that
he actively in gage observations with the telescope
he actively proposed theories consistent with telescope
and he dared, he dared to challenge the Orthodoxy at the moment.
Shortly before his death in 1642
Galileo inadvertently steped over a clues to Kepler puzzle
about the Sun strange influence on planetary motion.
It was a cluse would help pointed future generations
pull the theory of Big Bang.
Galileo's last published work
dialogue on the properties of the falling bodies.
Which he noticed always accelerated to same rate
no matter what their mass.
But would take other genius
to connect this two puzzle pieces together
in a theory of the gravity.
Isaac Newton, born in 1643
he explained the mechanism by which the planets moved.
And not just how the planets moved, but how everything moved. From planets
to apples.
Newton was a towering intellect. It is astonishing what he did.
His moment in the history of science is a sharp break
in which the power of the mathematics
it really brought to bear on aspects of the physicial universe.
He is what set us down this path of using mathematics
to describe Universe, showing the maths for some reason
is the language of the cosmos.
Kepler observed through these data, the tracked effects the Sun
it acted like a giant magnet.
Might the planets could also be like magnets?
Galileo's theorized about the rate acceleration of the falling bodies.
and he realize is regardless their mass.
falling objects always fall at same rate.
But years later, Newton had something to add to Kepler and Galileo.
The great inside Newton had was
bring Galileo and Kepler together and to realize that
the things that make project goes moving falling the Earth
it is same things makes the planets going around the Sun in the skies.
In a sense, the planets are falling towards the Sun,
just as Galileo's falling bodies fall towards the earth.
The crack at all is the gravity
that strange action at distance that hold everything together.
Newton didn't just observed the gravity, he draw it up as a provable equation
showing that gravity was the energy
the catcher that capture matter, objects like the Earth and the planets
from flying head long into interstellar space.
Gravity, the attractive force that affects all the matter in the Universe.
give the universe order.
And the gravity is described by the science of the Physics.
Newton created the physics.
He was the person who first saw the fundamental laws,
underneath all these observations.
The Newton's laws explained almost everything.
Newton postulated the laws of the motion, the universal rules of the gravity.
He begin a new area in science.
Using observations and the mathematics
to describe the laws of the nature.
He could show the way which apple fell to the Earth
which directly related the way the Moon follow
around the Earth.
Because he understood that same laws
let the motion of the planets around the Sun
let the motion of the Moon around the Earth.
Newton's great book, The Principia
it revealed the tides, the velocity of orbiting planets
even the shape of Earth
could be explained through pulling of the gravity
because everything with mass
it exerts pulling force on everything else with mass.
The Moon pulls the oceans,
the Earth pulls the Moon,
the Sun pulls the Earth, and closer
this objects all to each other, the stronger gravit pulls.
Newton's principia is such a engulfing work of genius
that almost makes up a disconcert fact.
Although Newton formulated the laws that they govern the gravity
He never explained or even understood why it works.
And gravity, when you think about it, is bizarre.
Understanding how the Earth knew where the Sun was?
to go around it, what's happen if the sun suddenly move?
What did the Earth do?
This actually distants something with, he give up on it,
say I'm just not going worry about that question
because the laws work.
Although the physicists still stuggle to define the gravity.
Newton had going far in reviewing it.
Two hundred years later
Albert Einstein would arrive Newton's genius.
Not only creat new laws at physics
but re-inventing the Universe.
Albert Einstein born in Germany in 1879.
Maybe is most famous scientist to ever lived.
because what he did here, in Bern, Switzerland, in 1905.
Fearing secure teaching position after his years as student.
Einstein took a job at this Patents office.
And then he begin to think.
In fact, he thought about revolution in space and time.
Without Einstein, we may still be strugglling to understand
how the Universe really works.
I think if you asked who was the greatest scientist of 20 century.
mostly would say:Einstein
I think that is a partly because of the fact just a natural fascination
with the space and time, in mysteries he solved.
But also I think it's partly because
He fitted in the arqueotipica public perception of scientist.
Einstein didn't mean to lead us to the origin of the Universe.
He didn't like even think about it
The idea of the beginning suggested a dynamic, finite universe.
And Einstein preferred static and infinite one.
Philosophically, he belive that the universe was eternal,
and the universe had have a beginning and a ending,
was aesthetic, was not pretty.
The idea that the Universe was infinitely and eternal was old one.
It embraced by scientists like Einstein.
Because it was easier to think the universe as always existing,
rather then its having been created.
Created? how? By what?
Unfortunately for Einstein,
his new understanding of forces like the gravity
would ultimately suggest the Universe was not eternal.
Einstein's ideas was so bizarre
It's almost easy to think them to apply some other crazy carnival world.
But strangers may seem
our world is Einstein's world.
Gather around, gather around! Don't push! Don't shove! Make sure you get good view.
The show is about start, you don't want to miss a thing.
Hurry, Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up to Einstein's world.
Where things are always what they appear to be
but not always what you expect.
First, the wonderous Einstein in himself.
Born missing the region of the brain that influences the speech
He did not speak until the age three.
However, his parietal lobe, responsible for mathematical thought
and space relationships, too large,
making his entire brain 15% wider.
Notice the enlarged brain...
Einstein was the master of what we call the thought experiment.
Thinking through an experiment that you can't literally carry out,
but based upon your insight thinking about it.
sometimes result a revolution at how we think about the Universe.
In 1905, Einstein published his theory of special relativity
which explored the link between space and time.
Einstein's theory isn't really separated thing space and time.
but just one thing, space-time we all lived in.
He thought this new space-time as fabric,
waving together space and time.
In 1915, Einstein developed his theory about general relativity
which modified special relativity,
to include the gravity and it effects in this fabric space-time.
Welcomes to the bounce trampoline of the gravity!
We take our fabric space-time,
stretched it,
and placed heavy weight on it.
See how this worked on fabric space-time!
When we rolled the ball cross the fabric
it's magically seem to be drew
or tracked to the mass weight of the center.
The general theory of relativity was a new theory of the gravity
When they told us the gravity worked
because space and time are curved in the presence of the matter
and could respond dynamically,
space in itself, expand, contracted in the presence of the matter.
A crazy but ture idea.
Mass is a term used to describe the energy and the matter
the objects contain.
the larger the mass of object,
the greater restoration of the space time fabric,
the stronger effects of the gravity.
gravity is not really a force,
it is a fabric.
it is a shape of space and time.
And we just move on the curve of shapes.
And the act to do so, takes what otherwise be a straight line to you
bends it into which now you described like orbits,
as trajectories, as path ways through the cosmos.
Einstein said not even light
could escape of the effects of the gravity.
As crazy as it sounds,
prove conveniently arrived in 1919,
in the form of astronomical large experiment
based on a solar eclipse.
General relativity said if you look at a star
on the path of light goes right path the sun,
you would see a shift a little bit because the gravity of the sun.
So Arthur Eddington actually went out to test that theory
during the solar eclipse in 1919, actually photograph stars.
When the sun was blocked by the Moon
you could see the stars behind it.
The ability to see objects they were actually behind the sun
proved that objets could work space-time.
Einstein became a superstar overnight.
He received the Nobel prize of physics at 1921.
But general relativity open Pandora box for Einstein.
One of the consequences of the Einstein theory
was that the universe must either be expanding or must be contracting.
But setting still be eternal it's not a valid solution.
And that was a problem.
A problem, because if you introduce mass in the Einstein static universe,
all that mass will through gravity draw together.
What was preventing this for happened?
When you place matter in the fabric universe, you know matter attract echo other,
and the thing is unstable.
To keep the gravity for clapping the universe
Einstein postulated a force equal to and opposite gravity.
This constant force perfectly contra gravity
to achieve a static universe.
Einstein seached for this cosmological constant
convinced it's hiding in his equations
but he was worry.
If Einstein had the anger of his convictions, some sense
he was recognized that the static universe believed in
was not compatible with the theory come out with.
In fact, relativity pointed a idea that universe wasn't static.
But expanding.
Site right down, focus, and enjoy magical space-time projector.
Watch the universe link by 4 dimensions
move forward in space time.
Einstein himself didn't want make that prediction, that his own theory was sort of screaming make.
I suppose is one time on sense career, his career failed him.
he did make it, the both directions was actually
staring him in the face.
Einstein's theory inevitably leaved to the idea of
a moment of creation.
Now breath youself for the part that Einstein couldn't watch!
stay back everyone as we rolled projector backwards.
In spite of when Einstein believed
his theory pointed at dynamic universe
that was once much smaller.
The Universe shirks down to the size of an atom.
Einstein couldn't make that leap, but others would.
A dynamic and expanding universe fitted nicely
in the theory called Big Bang.
At dawn to 20 century
Albert Einstein may have inadvertently
let us to consider the scientific possibility
that our universe begun.
But the idea of a beginning for everything
has strong religious overtones.
A culture will ask itself:" where did I come from?"
It is a very important question for the humans.
Because if we don't know where we came from, we don't know who we are.
For thousands of years the origin of our world
it was matter for religion scholar, not scientists.
There is different between science and religion,
they are looking at world in different way, they ask different question.
Science is asking how things happen,what's process.
While religion is asking, as I think is different, interest question.
Why things happen? Is something going on. some meaning of purpose in the world.
Religion and science have been uneasy companions.
If only because they seem motivated by same quest for truth.
So it was ironic.
that early champion of objective scientific theory
for the origin of the Universe, was the ordinary catholic priest.
And what a strange twist,
the science based solutions was appear so religious.
That the Universe didn't always existed.
But there was once end in the beginning.
Father George Lemaitre argued that the Universe was born.
Lemaitre is one of my ideals.
For few years late 20's and early 30's
he was the one who better understood
the concept of expanding Universe
and introduced many of ideas that still are exploring.
Lemaitre studied the Einsein's theories during 1920's
and proposed a radical idea
One even the great Einstein would reject,
he said the Universe wasn't static
but was actually expanding.
Lemaitre studied the Einstein's equations kind of without prejudices
when he find this equations suggested the Universe that would be expanding today
and for ever smaller in the past
he decided take that solution seriously.
If the Universe was expanding, Lemaitre reasoned
it was smaller yesterday than it is today.
Therefor it must been ultimaclly, unimaginably small.
Lemaitre belived the universe begun look what he dubed
the primitive atom.
A infinitely dense, hot cosmic egg
that some time in the past exploded,
Setting the Universe into motion,
and leading the formation of everything we know.
When Lemaitre told Einstein about this solution
Einstein reportedly said
" Your mathematical is correct, but your physics is abominable ".
But this abomination
soon receive compacting corroboration in 1925.
In mountains above the Los Angels, astronomer Edwin Hubble saw something
in his telescope that destroyed the Einstein's cosmological constant
and it altered our image of the Universe.
In the 1920's we had very comfortable picture of the Universe.
The Universe is the Milky Way galaxy.
We saw this huge slope of milk that it cuts across the night sky
called Milky Way, consisted of about 100 billion stars.
It's about 100 thousands light years cross.
That was the Universe in the 1920's, very comfortable.
Hubble pure deeper into the Universe
that Galileo couldn't imagined
using the more fastigiate telescope in his day.
He revealed our Sun as one star amount billion within the Milky Way galaxy.
But, was the Milky Way all there is?
If so, exactly how big was it?
Since sprouted powerful telescopes
the astronomers looking in the sky
but they had no could measures of how far a way things were
exception for very close stars.
Edwin Hubble solved that problem by come up what's that called standard candle.
a star of known brightness.
And if you know how bright it is, you can measure how far away it is.
because the dimer something appear, the farer way it is.
Just like a train in the distance the light seems dimer,
comes brighter, brighter it's approach to you.
Hubble found one of this standard candle,
within a spiral swirl of stars called Andromeda Nebula.
People saw Andromeda with just visable dust
inside the Milky Way.
Then Hubble calculated distance.
then he realized that galaxy is a million light years away.
That was the Eureka moment, and he had this epiphany.
He realized that Andrmoeda galaxy was island Universe
just like the Milky Way galaxy.
So, in one instant, the Universe
from be a comfortable Milky Way galaxy, 100 thousand light years cross
to become this fantastic universe
perhaps billions light years cross,
and all happened, in just one night.
This alone would have assured Hubble's immortality.
He singlehandedly grew the universe
from a quaint, one galaxy town,
to potentially billions galaxies metropolis.
But Hubble was went further.
He also measured the behavior of those galaxies in 1929
He come a concluded the most of galaxies moving away from us.
Not just a lot of them but actually they moving away of the Milky Way
and in fact they moving away from each other.
In other words, the Universe is expanding.
getting bigger every second.
If you went back in the time, the Universe must been smaller.
Based on the speed of expansion that Hubble measured
He could calculate the age of the Universe.
Hubble actually come out a measurement for that using his data
he said the Universe about 2 billions years old.
That was bad because we already knew the Earth was old then that.
Hubble was on correct track.
His formula for determine the age of the Universal was correct,
but his measurement wasn't accurate.
And this discrepancy gave some scientists room
to quibble with Lemaitre theory.
But other less scientific reasons
also may has contributed to Lemaitre's super atom
be a strange of the physics community
through while at first half of 20 century.
I think there was some distants to having somebody
in the scientific compaign and in religious compaign, but
did that made difficult for some scientists perhaps embrace them as much as
they would, someone not in that position?
Probably.
Lemaitre's proposal may have left him astranged from that follow scientists
but the Pope Pius the 12th
interpreted the theory as defective prove
of the biblical story of the Genesis.
Lemaitre wrote to the Pope and said stop saying that
this is scientific theory,
that makes prediction you can measure, makes many predictions you can test.
but your beliefs was independent those predictions.
Lemaitre's theory could be measured, but proved?
It seems unlikely billion's years after the fact
the Big Bang's smoking gun will turn up.
And unless this smoking gun was find,
other theories of the Universe could be proposed
and the Lemaitre's cosmic egg would remain unhatched.
By middle of 20 century, it seemed that the primitive atom theory
with Universe expanding violently outward
form the infinitely small
would never give wide acceptance.
Hubble incorrect estimation for the age of the Universe
it allowed a competing theory
to emerge for house of the Trinity College, Cambridge.
There was a tannable alternative to Big Bang theory
the Steady state theory,
which allowed the Universe to exist never lasting to never lasting.
The steady state theory champion
the static universe,
that the primitive atom concept rejected
Proposal by astronomer Fred Hoyle
It was build part of a theory of the origin of the elements
Nitrogen, Carbon and more then 100 others in the periodic table.
under extreme temperatures, Hydrogen fuses to form Helium
and the Helium fuses in entire different heavier elements.
Fred Hoyle belive this nucleosynthesis creation of new elements
took place in the cores of very hot stars.
That was an absolutely staggering achievement at that time.
Hoyle's achievement was to teach us,
everything after Helium in the periodic table
it's actually star dust.
It is in the stars when this things were made.
But the theory couldn't count for the formation of Hydrogen
and most of Helium of the Universe,
because the first stars must be made by Hydrogen already in existing.
This existing Hydrogen makes up more of the 74% of the detectable Universe.
Hoyle side-stepped this problem
by adopting a widly holy belief
that Hydrogen and Helium had always existed.
In fact, according to Hoyle, the entire Universe had always existed.
No beginning, no end, just a steady state.
In a nutshell, stationary state universe is universe always been there
always looks like it does now, always has same average density,
has same temperature.
There was just a little problem unknow
which was people knew Universe was already expanding,
when the distribution of matter expands, because more dilute.
Now, if the Universal very old, it would be infinitely diluted.
Hoyle fixed this fault by assuming that somewhere
matter was always being created in the universe.
But the wholesale creation of the matter
was a hard pill to physicists to swallow.
And Hoyle had a nemesis of sorts in the Russian physicist George Gamow
an admirer of Lemetrie's primitive atom.
Gamow usually present in these discussions.
And he always product disloyal questions for Hoyle's considered.
Questions that the steady state is difficulty dealing with.
Gamow turn to atoms as Hoyle did,
to supporting his contending theory.
Gamow suggested the Hydrogen, the Helium and other elements
were created in first fiery minutes of the Universe
in the Big Bang,
when the temperatures were thousands degrees hotter
than they are in the core of any star.
But Gamow was better idea man than he was a mathematics.
And he had to turn to this
phenomenally talented graduated student, Ralph Alpher
and it was really Alpher who's really able to push this idea through
and come to a conclusion.
That if indeed the Universe had synthesized the early elements,
it's should be roughly 10 times much Hydrogen as Helium.
And that match the observations. Fantastic moment.
Alpher with colleague Robert Herman
refined Lemaitre's prediction of
detectable random heat from creation.
A strong cluse supporting the Big Bang.
George Gamow and his student asked a simple question:
If Big Bang was so hot then,
then the after the shock, after glare the echo
of Big Bang can't be so cold now.
So the residual should be mesurable today.
Unfortunately, noone had the right telescopes in 1949
to measure the radiation or heat left over from the moment of the creation.
And that time there were other problem with the Big Bang theory.
It offer no explanation
to the origin of elements beyond Hydrogen and Helium.
At the same time, the steady state
goes on wide bright media coverage.
The steady state theory was popular with general public,
because Fred Hoyle was master of the popularization
just going on, marketing his wacky idea.
Ironically, the term Big Bang was coined by Hoyle in 1949
during one of this popular radio broadcasts.
He later used it as the term dirision.
I think he was dislike in their relationship.
They did not see eye to eye on most things will thinking about it.
So I think Hoyle come out worse battles
And I think he did more fighting for
his views than was merrited, that is a personal opinion.
Fred was very brilliant and innovating person. I just did point out him.
" Someone were good, someone were bad, you just didn't know which was which. "
By the 1960's
Hubble's inaccurate estimate for the age of the Universe
had been corrected to reflect more accurate data.
Resolving one challenges to the Big Bang theory.
Still it seemed the battle between the Steady state and Big Bang
would ended draw.
But then, all of suddenly, scientists found the somking gun,
a nearly old as universe as itself.
This discovery condemn one of the theories to the dust bin of the history.
For 500 years, science has been on quest discover where we belong.
Now astronomers stuggle to solve the riddle of how it all began.
Little did they know the cosmos was whispering the answer back.
We just couldn't hear it.
That whisper took forms of the left over heat
generated when the Universe exploded in to being
The radiation George Lemaitre predicted was out there
but they had no tools to hear.
By 1965, scientists had those tools.
The residual , the echo, the after shocks after Big Bang
should be mesurable today.
But it took about 2 decades
before instruments be come powerful enough
to clench George Gamow and his students theory
of this background radiation.
The story on this radiation, it is like the keystone cards.
First we had George Gamow and its students.
They had the theory, they had the numbers
but they didn't had experimental apparatus.
Than we had group of Princeton.
Well, they knew the work George Gamow, but they had very primitive instruments
not sensitive enough.
The group of Princeton included to the physicist Robert Dicke
and some colleagues who supported the theory of Lemaitre
and wanted to look for some solid prove.
My teacher, Bob Dicke, had the idea to look for this radiation
be left over from hot Big Band.
He had two brilliant young people working with him
Dave Wilkinson and Peter Roll.
He persuaded them to build a deca-radiometer to look this radiation.
It was a shoot at the dark.
So this two young colleagues built one,
point it in to air
and started to looking.
When the news of experiment reached at Bob Wilson and Arno Penzias.
Penzias and Wilson were two scientists
working not on the Big Bang theory
but on satellite communications for the Bell labs
in Holmdel, New Jersey.
They were using Bell's huge radio telescope
only they couldn't get clear reading.
Instead they got static nosie.
The nature stuff it is a random noise.
And that nosie was very much like what's you hear
if you tuned the TV set or the FM reciver to unuse channel.
We don't see we expected.
The antenna actually get more radiation than it should have.
Our clear respanse to that was there must be something worry here.
we get all extraordinary noise.
What was this strange noise?
And where it came from?
Aera interference from nearby New York city?
Airplane signals?
Pigeon dropping inside the horn of the telescope?
We didn't doubts physics.
whatever was, had to come from somewhere.
But we are real running out ideas, where it may be.
In fact, this mysterious radiations was coming from everywhere.
Every directions and every corner of the space.
To Penzias and Wilson that's just crazy.
But Penzias and Wilson had unknowing they find
what Dicke and his colleagues were seeking.
What Gamow, Alpher and Lemaitre had predicted.
They had found the somking gun,
that proved Universe wasn't eternal.
The source was the creation of the Universe, the Big Bang.
Penzias and Wilson and the Princeton team
published their findings in separated paper
in the Astrophysics Journey in 1965.
Their reseach crashed Hoyle's steady state theory over night.
Finally, thr Big Bang fitted in the puzzle of the Universe.
Our modern theory of the Big Bang is a remarkable achievement,
and it allows us to make a model of
what the Universe look like.
Rough back to ran everything was only a tiny fraction second old.
And was squeeze to immense densies and temperatures.
And from that very early dense state,
we can understand and broad outline
how the Universe expanded, cooled
how some stage, the first atoms formed
how some late stage the first structures formed
made early stars, galaxies, advencely planets and people.
In a hospital in Belgium in 1966
The dying George Lemaitre rejoiced with the news.
It was not alone.
Gamow and his team also felt justified.
We had been arguing for different view of the Universe
and allow behold that different view seemed to be the correct one.
So that's always a vindication.
For the part of the discovery,
Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel prize in 1978.
The Hoyle steady state theory,
had fallen out of favour.
HIs theory of the nucleosynthesis was not rejected.
While most scientists agree that Hydrogen
and most of the Helium were created at first the moment of Big Bang
as Gamow believed.
All other heavy elements like Nitrogen and Carbon, were ceart later,
in the hot center of stars, in supernovas explosions,
as Hoyle suggested.
So essence, both Gamow and Hoyle were correct.
Despite this partial vindication of nucleosynthesis,
Hoyle, who dead in 2001,
never accepted the Big Bang.
He could not understand why people were so enthusiastic
about Universe which had a finite beginning in what I supposed he thought was a
recent pasted a few billion years.
He just never accepted it.
But the rest of the physical community, with almost total unanimous
did accepted it.
The fact we discoveied it has beginning
allow you to know ask whole series questions about how it began.
That's kind interesting, that's kind cool.
Because you can say when did it began?
How was different there and today?
What changes the influenced between there and now
to creat the Universe we now know?
But accepting the Big Bang theory and thinking it fluence,
are two different things.
There were problems with the details of the theory,
expanding problems.
During the last days of 20 century
scientists examined problems with the Big Bang
even the theory generally accepted.
One of the biggest problems was
the temperature in outer space are strangely uniform.
Physicists didn't expanect the Universe would had same temperature
roughly everywhere they looked.
The universe is simply too large for
one end has same temperature as the other.
Yet it is.
It is same thing happen if you had a bath full of cold water
and you pour in some hot water in one extreme.
It's going be a while before the whole bath has steady water
because it's take time to hot molecules to properly get cross
and to normalized whole distribution.
The universe doesn't appear to old enough
for its temperature to has equalize yet.
The Big Bang could not explain why which far away points
have the same temperature.
In the early 80's, Alan Guth come up this idea,
that perhaps universe came for very tiny volume.
So tiny that within this volume
early on there was time enough for these different points
communicate normalized the temperature.
Right after this moment Guth theorized that
the universe expanded even faster
than light.
Faster than the cosmic speed limit.
The ultima speed according to Einstein.
What Inflation refer to it is a theory?
what propelled the expansion of Big Bang.
Guth called to his theory inflation.
At the earlyest moment of the creation, for instance
scientists believe that the 4 forces of the nature
including the gravity and electromagnetism
they were acctually combined into a single super force.
During Big Bang
this superforce split into 4 known forces.
But before the split
when the Universal was incredibly small
Einstein's laws of the phyics
including the one that is nothing moves faster than the light
didn't apply yet.
maybe at that moment something happen,
that cause the Universe to expanding even faster than the light.
So fast that locked in the uniformity they had
when the Universe still small.
We do not know exactly when the Inflation happened.
Most likely it happened
when the gravity had splited from other 3 forces
but at that time other 3 forces
would still likely unified.
This hiper-expansion, if it happened
would locked in a certain uniformity of temperature.
On June 3, 2001 NASA lunched a satellite
that could potentially determine one way or the other
the truth about the Guth inflation theory.
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe or WMAP mission
plan to photograph the fossil random heat of Big Bang
that Penzias and Wilson were found.
In other words
NASA wanted to take a baby picture of the Universe.
They could then compare it with how the Universe looks today.
In February 2003, the scientists got their first glimpse
of WMAP picture of the baby universe.
when it near 380 thousand years old.
The clarity of the data astonished the scientists.
The reaction people had when saw this was:
Well!
It really was the way people had speculating early on.
The Inflation probably happened.
To the untrained eye the WMAP image
looks like speckled robin's egg.
But scientists, it is a stellar rosetta stone.
These pattern represent the seeds that later grow
into vast expensions of stars and galaxies of today.
Aside strongly supporting Guth's inflation theory
the data also gave us concrete cluses
to the age, composition, shapes and evolution of the Universe.
Up to few years ago, cosmology was quite think from the other sciences
simply because
there were more theories on them around than data.
And it not until these satellites measured what was going on,
shortly after Big Bang with such high precision
that you can describing one cosmological model from another
and you can produced numerical results
about the size of the Universe, the age of the Universe
the expansion rate of the Universe, the content of the Universe.
you couldn't do that before these data be come available.
Before there was a mixture mythology and clever thinking.
Thanks to modern tools such as WMAP satellite,
physicists now have a model of events
just after Big Bang.
Less than billionth of second after Big Bang
a bubbled much small than a fraction of atom formes.
This is the Universe.
It is unimaginably small
and unimaginably hot.
Within this bubble, the 4 known forces the nature
gravity, electromagnetism
plus strong and weak nuclear force.
were combined a super force.
Gravity suddenly separated of the super force,
as the Universe expands.
As the Universe expands, it cools
which somehow, sends out a burst of energy,
feelling the hyperinflation of Universe, suggested by Alan Guth.
This inflation locks in uniformity of the Universe,
picture by WMAP satellite.
The Universe still less than a second old
when the super force decaies separated forces of the nature.
Roughly 3 minutes after the Big Bang the temperature of the Universe
had droped to near 1 million degrees F.
Colder enough for atomic nucleus to form.
The element Hydrogen forms.
Some Hydrogen atoms fuse to cerat the Helium,
that's proposed by Gamow and Alpher.
380 thousand years later
and light travel through the darkness.
The burst of radiation that Penzias and Wilson find
happens now.
A billions years after Big Bang,
stars took shape.
Producing the heavier elements like Nitrogen, Oxygen and Carbon
as Hoyle predicted.
Roughly 9 billion years out,
matter and gravity combined,
to form a perfectly typical star.
Pressure created heat at its core.
This heat trigge thermonuclear fusion.
A star was born.
The stellar outflow clears away residual gases.
a circunestelar disc of dust remains
that eventually excrete into an entourage of planets and moons.
one of these lumps of star dust
after being pummeled for eons by residual solar debris
has tempture warm enough to allow
hydrogen dioxide, water to build up the atmosphere.
Liquid water gathers on planet surface.
Under water mysterious chemical reactions ultimaclly form life.
13.7 billion years after Big Bang,
our Universe is now 156 billions light years cross.
The sky full of stars.
Our Solar System has eight planets, more or less.
The third planet is nearly covered in carbon based life form.
Some are just realizing what infinitely small spects they are
in the great scheme of the things.
If you don't understand this process, that's ok.
It is the culmination of million of human brains struggling for thousands of years
to figure it out how the Universe began
and where man fits with in it.
It is enough to overran to any one human brain.
If I take seriously the idea that my brain was evolved, be able
to throw rocks and take bananas and things thus, it's pretty remarkable
that we humans would be able to figure out much about physics
figure out much about things that didn't have survival value to our ancestors.
Ya, I think it's quite stunning how well
we humans have been able to make progress in this regard.
And not go completely bananas in the process.
This is our story of everything.
Our world, our solar system, our Universe.
And how what all began.
It is what we thought we know.
It is a work in progress, the script still is being written.
Let's see how it ends.
New York city.
A beautiful but unremarkable autumn day,
like thousands before it and thousands to come
until there aren't anymore autumn days.
Imagine for a moment imagine travel in the future for billions of years.
Pass the end of the human civilization
and the lives all living creatures on earth.
Imagine we are 5 billion years in the future.
The Sun is running out the nuclear fuel that give its fire.
As it cools and it expands and it reddens
coming closer and closer to Earth.
it swallows Mercury and Venus.
Water on Earth evaporates and the Earth be come melt again.
When the fuel was gone, the sun's core ultimately contracted
as transform from a white giant to a white dwarf.
The expanding outal layers of the Sun called planetary nebulae.
drifting in the space as ghostly shrouds of glowing gas.
The planets that's survive the process
the outer one like Saturn and Neptune
are utterly changed by it.
The planetary nebulae blows away their gaseous atmospheres
leaving small, rocky and metallic core behind.
The distant planets
no longer hold by less massive sun's gravity
drift in to the vastness of the space.
Travel billions of years after that
and all remaining heat from sun has radiated out.
And its small, dark surface
is same frigid temperature as the rest of the space.
The Sun is now a black dwarf.
Now billions of years later
prepared by a mysterious, only recently discoved dark energy
the Universe expands, ever faster
flying apart everywhere.
On a grand scale and at a molecular one, the expansion overwhelms of the gravity.
And everything rips a part
not just galaxies, Solar System and stars
but even atoms.
Finally, matter itself is torn sunder.
This it is the big rip, the big restting piece of our Universe
the legacy of the dark energy, that stuff we still haven't figure it out.
Rightnow, dark energy is mostly a code word of our ignorance.
What this substance it is, some people think is sort of stuff, somepeople think
it is a constant should be in Einstein's equations
some people think is just a reflection of fact
we may got that gravity worry again.
Right now the Big Rip theory of the end of the Universe leads the pack.
Who can say if it is remain our theory
or some new discovery will challenge.
The stuff we haven't figure out yet, goes on for ever.
one more blow to our centrality in the great scheme of the things.
But that does not mean that we do not know anything.
Copernicus, Newton, Einstein
even Alpher, Wilson and Guth
they have given pieces us of endless puzzle.
They help tell us how we fit in the picture.
Recognize the very molecules that make up your body
the atoms that construct molecules, a traceable
to the crucibles that were once to center of high mass star
and exploded there chemically enrich goods in the galaxy
enriching the pristine gas clouds
which chemistry of the life.
So we are connected, to each other by biologically,
to the Earth, chemically,
and to the rest of the Universe, atomically.
That's kind cool.
That makes me smile.
And I actually feel quite large in the end of that.
It is not that we are better than the Universe,
We are part of the universe.
We are in the Universe and the Universe is in us.
We are not the center of the Universe,
we are in it and of it,
try to figure it all out.
So much we know,
and yet so much we still don't know.
We hold on tightly our little planet
goes hurries through space.
Around the sun, around the galaxy, around the Universe.
Don't forget to look up,
so much to see,
so much to know.
By where we began?