How the Universe Works - S01E01 - Big Bang
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00:00Billions and billions of galaxies.
00:07The universe is so vast, we can't even imagine what those numbers mean.
00:13But 14 billion years ago, none of it existed.
00:20Until the Big Bang.
00:25The Big Bang is the origin of space and the origin of time itself.
00:31We take a journey through space and time.
00:34From the beginning to the end of the universe itself.
00:54This is our world.
01:01Cities.
01:04Forests.
01:07Oceans.
01:09People.
01:11Everything in the universe is made from matter, created in the first seconds of the Big Bang.
01:27Every star.
01:29Every planet.
01:32Every atom.
01:34Every blade of grass.
01:36Every drop of water.
01:40Water is ancient.
01:42The hydrogen atoms in here were born moments after the Big Bang.
01:46Then came everything else.
01:50The Big Bang is the defining event of our universe.
01:55And everything in it.
02:03The secrets of our past.
02:06Our present.
02:07And our future.
02:08Are locked inside this one moment in time.
02:14To unlock the secrets of the Big Bang, we have to travel outside of our own solar system.
02:21And journey beyond even our own galaxy.
02:30As we travel into deep space, we're actually seeing into the past.
02:38And getting closer to being able to witness the dawn of time itself.
02:44Passing the first infant galaxies and the first stars.
02:51We arrive back at the moment the universe began.
02:55And face the biggest questions in all of science.
03:04This is the holy grail of physics.
03:07We want to know why it banged.
03:09We want to know what banged.
03:11We want to know what was there before the bang.
03:15To get the answers, we've built machines the size of cities.
03:19To simulate conditions when the universe was created.
03:25And space telescopes to peer deep into our past.
03:35We are getting close to answering the old age questions.
03:39Why are we here?
03:41Where did we come from?
03:44Does the universe, in fact, have a beginning or an end?
03:48And if so, what are they like?
03:53If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason.
03:59We would know the mind of God.
04:10The origin of the Big Bang is the greatest mystery of all time.
04:17And the more we learn, the deeper the mystery becomes.
04:21We like to think that our universe is unique.
04:24However, now we're not so sure.
04:26Perhaps there is a multiverse of universes.
04:31Another possibility is that our Big Bang is just one of many Big Bangs.
04:36But it may be one of just an infinite number of universes.
04:39And there may be other regions in that infinite number of universes where a Big Bang is just happening today.
04:48But there's only one universe we're sure of, and understanding this one is hard enough.
04:59Since the late 1920s, everything we know about how our universe works has been turned upside down.
05:07It's important to realize how much our picture of the universe has changed in the last century.
05:12At the beginning of the 20th century, the conventional wisdom in science was that the universe was static and eternal.
05:19In 1929, that all changed.
05:23At the Mount Wilson Observatory above Los Angeles, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered galaxies aren't stuck in one place.
05:32Not only are they moving, but they're flying away from Earth at incredible speeds.
05:39This was the first real evidence of the Big Bang.
05:47All galaxies on average are moving away from us, and stranger still, those that were twice as far away were moving twice as fast.
05:54And those that were three times as far away were moving three times as fast, and so on.
05:59Everything was moving away from us.
06:02It became known as Hubble's Law.
06:05His discovery is still the starting point for exploration of the Big Bang.
06:10What Hubble convincingly demonstrated by seeing the motion of those galaxies is that the universe is expanding.
06:21Theoretically, an expanding universe must have started from a single point.
06:26By measuring how fast the universe is expanding, astronomers calculated backwards and figured out when it burst into life.
06:35People ask the question, how do you know that the universe is 13.7 billion years old?
06:41I mean, smarty pants, you weren't there 13.7 billion years ago.
06:46Well, when you watch television on videotape, you hit the stop button when you see an explosion.
06:52Well, when you watch television on videotape, you hit the stop button when you see an explosion.
06:57And you can run it backwards and see when it actually took place.
07:01The same thing takes place with cosmology.
07:04We can run the videotape backwards and then calculate when it all came from a cosmic explosion.
07:15You don't have to be an astronomer to look back in time.
07:20If you gaze up at the night sky, you're seeing stars that are millions of light years away.
07:26Meaning, it took the light from those stars millions of years to get here.
07:32So, if you look far enough, you should be able to see the beginning of the universe.
07:40Named for the groundbreaking astronomer, the Hubble Space Telescope allows us to look deep into the universe,
07:48back in time and closer to the moment of the Big Bang.
07:53But for scientists, winding back the clock to the Big Bang was only the first step.
08:01When people first hear about the Big Bang theory, they say, well, where did it take place?
08:05It took place over there, it took place over there. Where did it take place?
08:08Actually, it took place everywhere.
08:11Because the universe itself was extremely small at that time.
08:20These are only some of the most abstract and difficult concepts.
08:25So here's a mind bender. What came before the Big Bang?
08:29The philosophers in ancient times used to say, how could something arise from nothing?
08:34And what's amazing to me is that the laws of physics allow that to happen.
08:39And it means that our whole universe, everything we see, everything that matters to us today,
08:44could have arisen out of precisely nothing.
08:48It's one of the biggest hurdles to understanding the Big Bang.
08:51First, you have to buy into the premise that something was created out of nothing.
08:57It's impossible to describe the moment of creation in human language.
09:01All we know is that from what may have been nothing,
09:05we go to a state of almost infinite density in space.
09:13We go to a state of almost infinite density and infinite temperature and infinite violence.
09:25Understanding how nothing turned into something may be the greatest mystery of our universe.
09:33But if you understand that, you start to understand the Big Bang,
09:38That's when time and space began, and the great big explosion created everything.
09:58At the dawn of time, the universe explodes into existence,
10:02from absolutely nothing into everything.
10:06But everything is actually a single point, infinitely small, unimaginably hot,
10:13a super dense speck of pure energy.
10:17The Big Bang was so immense that it brought into existence
10:24all of the mass and all of the energy contained in all of the 400 billion galaxies we see in our universe
10:31in a region smaller than the size of a single atom.
10:36The entire observable universe was a millionth of a billionth of a centimeter across at that time.
10:41Everything was compressed into an incredibly hot, dense region.
10:46It's not even matter yet, just a point of raging energy.
10:51It was the beginning of the universe and everything in it.
10:55Everything was simple. All the forces that we know about today were one and the same.
11:02The universe was amorphous. It had no structure.
11:10In that instant of creation, all the laws of physics,
11:14the very forces that engineer our universe, began to take shape.
11:22The first force to emerge was gravity.
11:27The fate of the universe, its size, structure, and everything in it, was decided in that moment.
11:39Carlos Frank studies how gravity shaped the universe by creating artificial universes in this supercomputer.
11:49He gives each one a different amount of gravity.
11:54The first one he tried had too little, resulting in, well, nothing.
12:01Gravity has shaped our universe.
12:04Or if gravity was weaker than it is, we would have a very boring universe
12:10in which everything would be flying apart so fast that there would be no galaxies forming.
12:17Next, he programmed a universe with too much gravity.
12:24If gravity was stronger than we think it is, again, we'll end up with a failed universe.
12:29Everything will end up in black holes.
12:32It has to be just so. It has to be just right.
12:37Lucky for us, the Big Bang got it just right.
12:40The perfect amount of gravity.
12:43In the turmoil of forces after gravity emerged, still a fraction of a second after the Big Bang,
12:49a shockwave of energy erupted and expanded the universe in all directions at incredible speed.
13:01All of space expanded by an unbelievably large factor in a fraction of a second.
13:07We think that in less than a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second,
13:14space expanded by a factor bigger than a million, million, million, million times.
13:30And for the record, that's faster than the speed of light.
13:34But wait, doesn't that break one of the laws of physics?
13:39Even school children know that, quote, you can't go faster than the speed of light.
13:43But actually, there's a loophole there.
13:45You see, nothing can go faster than light.
13:48Nothing being empty space.
13:51Don't worry, this idea gives even the best minds in science a headache.
13:56But it's critical to understanding the early universe.
14:00Scientists think it took less than a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second
14:06for the universe to expand from the size of an atom to a baseball.
14:12That may not sound like much, but it's like a golf ball expanding to the size of the Earth in the same amount of time.
14:19That means it was expanding faster than the speed of light.
14:23That's fast.
14:25So many things were happening so fast in the early universe because everything was so close together
14:32that we need a new unit of time to describe things.
14:35It's called Planck time.
14:37To understand just how short a Planck time is, consider this.
14:41There are more units of Planck time in one second than all the seconds since the Big Bang.
14:47The math is mind-blowing.
14:49There are more than 31 million seconds in a year,
14:52and it's been 14 billion years since the Big Bang.
14:57So multiply 31,556,926 by 14 billion, and what you get is a really big number.
15:05It's a time scale that's so small that all human intuition goes out the window.
15:10If we look at our watches and measure one second, we can ask how many Planck times is that?
15:16Well, it is a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion,
15:25billion, billion Planck times.
15:32So now the Big Bang is only a few Planck times old,
15:37an exploding mass of pure energy expanding faster than the speed of light.
15:45In the next few Planck times, the universe as we know it will be born.
15:56A fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe is so small it can fit in the palm of your hand.
16:04But in another tiny fraction of a second, it expands to the size of the Earth.
16:10Then, moving faster than the speed of light, it grows larger than our solar system,
16:17and it's still just a raging storm of superheated energy.
16:22It'd be hotter and denser and more violent than anything that we can experience in the universe today.
16:29Even the interior of a star is calm and serene by comparison to the violence of the earliest moments of the Big Bang.
16:38Temperatures were so hot that even the atoms of your body would disintegrate.
16:42So hot, in fact, that the atoms would be ripped apart.
16:45How hot? Trillions of degrees hot.
16:49But as the universe continues to expand, it also begins to cool.
16:54Dropping temperatures trigger the next stage in the universe's evolution.
17:01The raw energy of the explosion transforms into tiny subatomic particles.
17:10It's the first matter in the universe.
17:14This conversion of energy into matter was predicted by Albert Einstein
17:18years before anyone started talking about the Big Bang.
17:25It's the one scientific equation every school kid knows.
17:30There is one very familiar formula, and that is E equals mc squared.
17:35It says something about the creation of the universe.
17:38It says even if the universe is created just out of pure energy,
17:41that because energy can be converted to matter and matter to energy,
17:45that you can get all of the stuff that we see in the universe from this pure energetic event.
17:51Einstein's little equation had a big impact.
17:56It led to the first nuclear bombs.
18:02In a nuclear explosion, a small amount of matter is converted into an enormous amount of energy.
18:10This is called a nuclear explosion.
18:14It's the first nuclear explosion in the history of mankind.
18:18In a nuclear explosion, a small amount of matter is converted into an enormous amount of energy.
18:26As the universe was forming, the exact opposite happened.
18:33Pure energy transformed into particles of matter.
18:38You don't need to create matter in the beginning, you just need energy.
18:41And energy alone can lead to the creation of an entire universe.
18:48In just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang,
18:51the building blocks of our universe begin to take shape.
18:57But this first matter is like nothing we see today.
19:02The stuff of matter has been very different over the age of the universe.
19:06What we now think is normal matter was not at all normal in the earliest moments of the Big Bang.
19:13That's because conditions were so extreme.
19:16There were no atoms yet.
19:19But there were tiny subatomic particles.
19:25In the earliest moments of the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense,
19:30there were great amounts of energy.
19:32And so particles were being created all the time,
19:35and energy and matter were transferring back and forth in this hot, dense soup.
19:40That earliest matter was too unstable to start forming the universe as we know it.
19:50Think of it like this.
19:52Imagine rush hour at Grand Central in New York City as that superheated early universe.
19:59The commuters racing through the main concourse are subatomic particles.
20:05If you look at a crowd of people, a large crowd of people, they may appear random.
20:11That random, quirky motion is very similar than what was happening to the particles in the universe
20:17in the earliest moments of the Big Bang.
20:21The extreme temperature of the early universe energizes the subatomic particles.
20:26They appear. They disappear.
20:34They race around at incredible speeds.
20:37It's pure chaos.
20:45It's like people.
20:46If they're excited and running around fast to catch trains at a train station,
20:50they'll be moving around quickly.
20:53But eventually they calm down and get slower.
20:57That's what's been happening to our universe in a sense.
20:59The particles are moving around very fast,
21:01and as the universe cools down, the particles move more slowly and in some sense less randomly.
21:09As the universe cools, the particles stop changing back into energy.
21:23Now, there are more and more subatomic particles, but it's still a hot, violent place.
21:31All this is happening in fractions of a second, too small to detect.
21:35But the Big Bang is moving into a critical stage now.
21:39A titanic battle between matter and the one thing that can destroy the universe before it even gets started.
21:47Antimatter.
22:02Everything in the universe is made from matter.
22:08From the smallest rock to the largest star.
22:12And all the matter there will ever be was created from the pure energy of the Big Bang.
22:19Einstein's equation, E equals mc squared, says that energy transforms into matter.
22:26But it was just a theory.
22:28Today, science is able to test that theory.
22:36This is CERN in Switzerland, home to the world's largest machine.
22:42It's the size of a city, and engineered to recreate the conditions millionths of a second after the Big Bang.
22:50If we want to probe ever smaller scales, paradoxically, we need an ever bigger machine.
22:55There's just no other way of doing it.
22:57So, big machines means small physics.
23:01And if we want to probe ever smaller scales, paradoxically, we need an ever bigger machine.
23:07So, big machines means small physics means early times,
23:12and therefore getting closer and closer to the origin of the universe itself.
23:17This monster machine is called a collider.
23:20It's designed to take us back to those first fractions of a second after the Big Bang.
23:26It's a 12-foot-wide, concrete-lined, circular tunnel, 17 miles around.
23:33The collider makes tiny particles of matter smash into each other, at almost the speed of light.
23:45For a split second, those collisions generate turbocharged energy,
23:50similar to the explosive force of the Big Bang.
23:54And then, that pure energy briefly transforms into matter.
23:59That pure energy briefly transforms into matter,
24:03just like it did nearly 14 billion years ago.
24:10But a monster machine needs a monster detector to see these collisions.
24:16This detector is five stories tall and weighs over 7,000 tons.
24:21And 7,000 tons, to give you a sense of perspective, is the weight of the Eiffel Tower.
24:26But as big as it is, it can't see the actual particles of new matter.
24:31They hang around for just a split second and move so fast, it can only record their trails.
24:39There's a lot of energy in these particles.
24:41They move very, very quickly, and so you need a very large amount of detector
24:45in order to be able to map the path of these particles very precisely.
24:50So, the detector is so big because you need better resolution.
24:54It works exactly the same as a camera.
24:56The more pixels you have, the better the picture.
24:59It's exactly the same here. We just have a five-story camera.
25:04Scientists hope that it'll reveal just how energy transforms into matter.
25:11But not just any matter.
25:13The kind of matter that emerged 14 billion years ago, at the dawn of time itself.
25:20But the dawn of time was a critical moment in the birth of the universe.
25:24Because pure energy also produced one of the most dangerous things in the universe.
25:29Antimatter.
25:31That's right. Antimatter.
25:33It's real.
25:38Antimatter is the mirror image of ordinary matter.
25:42However, matter has one charge, and antimatter has the opposite charge.
25:47If there was an anti-me made out of antimatter,
25:50that person, in principle, could look exactly like me.
25:53Same personality quirks, same everything.
25:56Except, of course, when I decide to shake his hand.
25:59At that point, we both would blow ourselves to smithereens in a gigantic nuclear explosion.
26:07Matter, with a positive charge, locks horns with its arch-enemy, antimatter,
26:13with a negative charge.
26:15Antimatter, with a negative charge.
26:18The fate of the universe hangs in the balance of this epic battle.
26:23Equal amounts of matter and antimatter will cancel each other out.
26:28Not good.
26:30A universe with equal amounts of matter and antimatter
26:32is equivalent to a universe with no matter at all.
26:35Because the matter and antimatter will annihilate back into pure radiation.
26:39And there'll be nothing interesting, no stars and galaxies and people in between.
26:46Like a cosmic game of risk, the side with the most soldiers wins.
26:54The score was very close, but there was a winner.
27:00For every billion particles of antimatter, there were a billion and one particles of matter.
27:06That was the moment of creation.
27:09The one extra particle of matter in each little volume survives.
27:13Survives enough to form all the matter we see in the stars and galaxies today.
27:24One in a billion might not sound like much, but it's enough to build a universe.
27:30We're the leftovers.
27:32So believe it or not, everything you see around you,
27:36the atoms of your body, the atoms of the stars, are nothing but leftovers.
27:40Leftovers from this ancient collision between matter and antimatter.
27:50Lucky for us, there was enough leftover to make all the stars and planets.
27:58And the universe is still less than one second old.
28:03But now it's swarming with tiny, primitive particles.
28:10The next stage is assembling those tiny particles into the first atoms.
28:25Give or take a couple of plank times, the universe is nearly a second old and still a very strange place.
28:34But matter has won the battle with antimatter.
28:38And now it's time to build the universe.
28:43It's still extremely hot and expanding incredibly fast.
28:49When the universe was a second old, the particles in it were very different than the particles we see today.
28:54There were no atoms, nothing that we recognize in the room around us today yet existed.
28:59Now, all that begins to change.
29:04Temperatures continue to cool.
29:08And as the primitive particles keep slowing down,
29:11they start bonding together to form the atoms of the first elements.
29:18The first one to form is hydrogen.
29:23Then, over the next thousand years,
29:27then, over the next three minutes,
29:30the universe begins to create two more elements, helium and lithium.
29:41We went from a universe that was infinitely small to a universe that was light years in size.
29:48In the first three minutes, essentially everything interesting that was going to happen in the universe happened.
29:55Well, not quite. If you were there, you couldn't see it.
30:00When we look at the night sky, we can see literally billions of years into the past.
30:04And we think it's always been that way.
30:07Nope, not true.
30:09380,000 years after the Big Bang, that's when the universe began to become transparent.
30:15But before then, it was milky.
30:19There is a milky soup of loose electrons.
30:29The young universe has to cool down enough for the electrons to slow down and stick to new atoms.
30:37It took a long time for all of the hydrogen, helium and lithium atoms in the universe to form.
30:43Scientists calculate it took 380,000 years for the electrons to slow down enough
30:49so that the universe could start mass-producing atoms.
30:53When that happens, the milky fog clears.
30:56The first light escapes and races across the universe.
31:01Nearly 14 billion years later, two young scientists in New Jersey pick it up by accident.
31:07In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were mapping radio signals across our galaxy.
31:14Everywhere they looked, they picked up a strange background hum.
31:21They first suspected their equipment.
31:23Maybe pigeon droppings on the antenna were causing the strange signal.
31:29But as the radio signal got closer and closer,
31:33But after cleaning the antenna, the mysterious hum remained.
31:37So much for pigeon droppings.
31:45Penzias delivered a talk at Princeton University.
31:48And according to lore, one person in the back said,
31:51either you have discovered the effects of bird droppings or the creation of the universe.
31:57It was, in fact, the moment of creation.
32:00Nearly 14 billion years ago, when those first atoms got their electrons.
32:09That's the moment when the milky cloud clears
32:13and the new universe comes into view for the first time.
32:19To capture better images of this critical moment,
32:22NASA launched the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite, or COBE.
32:27They pointed it out into space where it took the temperature of the universe.
32:32By measuring differences in temperature across space,
32:36they created the first map of our early universe.
32:40The images were called the Face of God.
32:43We got gorgeous pictures of the face of God.
32:47We got gorgeous pictures, baby pictures of the infant universe
32:51when it was 380,000 years of age.
32:54But there were problems with it.
32:56The picture was very fuzzy.
32:58The COBE results were simply not good enough.
33:05So NASA launched an even more advanced satellite, WMAP,
33:10the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
33:14In 2001, David Spergel was part of the team
33:17looking for a clearer image of the early universe.
33:21It was exciting to go to the Cape.
33:24It was one of these moments where we're sitting there watching this.
33:27I was there with my family watching the rocket go off.
33:31It was very exciting when within about a day
33:34we were able to get our first signal from the satellite
33:37and know it was working and working properly.
33:40This is the most detailed picture of the early universe ever taken,
33:44just 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
33:51The red and yellow areas are warmer.
33:53The blue and green regions, cooler.
33:55And those temperature differences
33:58are clues to the future structure of the universe.
34:05We see tiny variations in temperature.
34:08We see tiny variations in temperature.
34:11Those tiny variations in temperature reflect small variations in density.
34:15This region has more matter, this region has less matter.
34:19Like a blueprint for the construction of our universe,
34:22this image shows us where there's more matter and where there's less.
34:28Regions with no matter will become empty space.
34:33Areas with denser matter will become the construction sites
34:37of galaxies, stars and planets.
34:44These are the fluctuations that will grow to form galaxies.
34:47So if it wasn't for those little density fluctuations,
34:50you and I would not be here today.
34:56Our universe is now 380,000 years old
35:00and trillions and trillions of miles across.
35:06Clouds of hydrogen and helium gas float through space.
35:11It will take another 200 million years
35:14before those gases create the first stars.
35:17Those first stars ignited the universe
35:21into what must have been the most amazing firework.
35:31The universe went from the Dark Ages to an age of splendor
35:36when the first stars illuminated the gas
35:39and the universe began to glow in majestic fashion.
35:46It was like Christmas tree lights turning on.
35:49The universe began to light up in all directions
35:52until you formed the beautiful mosaic we now see today.
36:01More and more stars turn on.
36:06One billion years after the Big Bang,
36:09the first galaxy forms.
36:12Over the next 8 billion years,
36:15countless more take shape.
36:19Then, about 5 billion years ago,
36:22in a quiet corner of one of those galaxies,
36:25gravity begins to draw in the first stars.
36:30They come in dust and gas.
36:36Gradually, they clump together
36:39and give birth to a star, our sun.
36:489 billion years after the Big Bang,
36:51our tiny solar system springs to life,
36:54and with it, planet Earth.
36:58Everything there is exists because of the Big Bang,
37:03and it's still going on.
37:05Our universe is still expanding.
37:08But it won't just keep going forever.
37:11Our universe had a beginning,
37:14and it will also have an end.
37:23In the 14 billion years since the Big Bang,
37:26galaxies have been created,
37:31filled with stars, planets, and moons,
37:35and the universe has been expanding the whole time.
37:42We've learned space is quite big,
37:45at least 150 billion light-years across.
37:48The universe may be infinite.
37:51It might literally go on forever.
37:54The answer is, there doesn't have to be anything.
37:57In principle, the universe could be infinite,
38:00and there's no outside.
38:02Or it could be closed on itself.
38:04It could be such that if I looked far enough in that direction,
38:08I'd see the back of my head.
38:10We may never know if the Big Bang
38:13produced a universe that goes on forever.
38:16But we do know that the Big Bang hasn't stopped yet.
38:20The Big Bang is really continuing now.
38:23It's continuing to bang, if you want,
38:25in the sense that the expansion of the universe is continuing.
38:29One of the most astounding discoveries in the last few years
38:33has been the realization that our universe is not slowing down,
38:37like we once thought, but it's actually speeding up.
38:40It's accelerating. It's in a runaway mode.
38:43We now believe there's something called dark energy,
38:47the energy of nothing that is pushing the galaxies apart
38:51and is killing the universe.
38:54We can't see this destructive force,
38:57and we have no idea why it exists.
39:01But it could mean the end of everything created in the Big Bang.
39:07If dark energy continues pushing the universe apart,
39:11our Milky Way galaxy could become a lonely outpost.
39:16A hundred billion years from now,
39:18most of our galactic neighbors will be out of sight.
39:22Stars will burn out. Galaxies will grow dark.
39:27Even atoms will tear apart.
39:30The birth of the universe, the Big Bang, was over in a flash.
39:35But the death of our universe will take almost forever.
39:40That great philosopher of the Western world, Woody Allen, once said,
39:45Eternity is an awful long time, especially toward the end.
39:54Figuring out how our universe will end
39:57is as dark a mystery as the Big Bang.
40:02It could collapse back in on itself,
40:05like a balloon when the air is let out.
40:10So would the universe end with a big crunch,
40:13a reverse of the Big Bang,
40:15or would it end by expanding out and becoming cold and dark?
40:19If you wish, would it end in fire or ice,
40:22or with a bang or a whimper?
40:26If the universe collapses, it might trigger another Big Bang.
40:40Maybe that's already happened,
40:44and we're just one in a long line of universes.
40:49Personally, I believe in continual genesis.
40:53That is, there's a never-ending process
40:56whereby universes collide, split apart,
40:59give birth to new universes,
41:02perhaps with the different laws of physics within each universe.
41:09Maybe this isn't the first time it's happened.
41:11Maybe it's cyclic and it goes round and round again.
41:14Eventually we'll collapse and the whole thing will start over again.
41:18One universe or many, they all start with a Big Bang.
41:27Everything that makes us human,
41:29the atoms in our bodies, the jewelry we wear,
41:32all the things that lead to the tragedy of life
41:35and the beauty and the excitement,
41:38the love, everything else,
41:40arose because of processes that happened 14 billion years ago.
41:46And if we really want to understand ourselves
41:49at some fundamental level,
41:51we really have to understand the Big Bang.
41:5614 billion years ago, the Big Bang created time and space,
42:01our whole vast universe and everything in it, including us.
42:09Some people ask the question, what's in it for me?
42:13The Big Bang gave us everything we see around us,
42:17the distribution of galaxies and stars.
42:20It set into motion the creation of elements
42:22that we see in the universe,
42:24and even the laws of physics themselves, we think,
42:28were born at the instant of creation.
42:33Everything started with the Big Bang.
42:36One brief moment in time, 14 billion years ago,
42:41that contains the answers to our greatest questions
42:46about our past, our present, and our future.
42:50Each discovery brings us one step closer
42:54to understanding how the universe works.
43:02NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology