Journey of the Universe

1

Many of the world's greatest stories begin

with a journey.

A quest to answer life's

most intimate questions.

Where do we come from?

Why are we here?

From the dawn of time, all

cultures have created stories

to help explain the

ultimate nature of things.

And perhaps a new story

is emerging in our time.

One grounded in contemporary science,

and yet nourished by the

ancient religious wisdom

of our planet.

What if the universe,

even the Earth itself,

has its own unique story to tell.

One in which we play a profound role.

We're on the Greek island of Samos,

just a mile off the coast of Turkey.

We could tell the story

of the universe anywhere.

Each place would offer its

own unique possibilities

for the telling.

But we chose Samos because it's one

of the great crossroads of human history.

Europeans, Asian and Africans

have all made their way here.

And by telling the story on an island,

surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea,

we will be reminded that we

live on this shining planet,

sailing through the great

ocean of the universe.

And there's another reason

we have come to Samos.

And that is because 2,600 years ago,

Pythagoras was born here.

Pythagoras, a mathematician

and philosopher,

was one of the first humans to realize

that the harmonies and

relationships in the universe

could be given expression using numbers.

The kind of foundations he

generated led eventually

to all of modern mathematical science.

He was also a great teacher.

In fact, legend has it that he invented

the word philosophy, a love of wisdom.

We'll spend a day here on Samos.

Before the clock strikes midnight,

we will have recounted the great events

of our 14 billion year cosmic evolution.

Our immense journey told in a single day

on one of Earth's magical islands.

How did it all start?

An awesome question, certainly.

But it appears there

really was a beginning.

Some scientists refer to

this as the Big Bang.

I like to call it the great flaring forth.

Imagine the universe beginning like this.

14 billion years ago,

everything in the universe,

all the bright matter of

the stars and galaxies,

as well as all the dark

matter no one has ever seen.

All of it existed in a single point

so energetic it was

trillions of degrees hot.

Instantly this micro-universal rushed apart

even faster than the speed of light.

The discovery that the

universe has expanded

and is still expanding

is one of the greatest

of human history.

The common understanding had been

that the universe is simply a vast space.

A vast space in which things existed.

Large things like galaxies

and small things like atoms.

Scientists knew that matter

changed form in the universe,

but everyone assumed that the universe

as a whole was not changing.

But no, the universe is changing,

and has changed dramatically.

The universe has a story.

A beginning, a middle where we are now,

and perhaps in some far

distant future, an end.

In the 1920s, the cosmologist Edwin Hubble

trained his 100-inch at the night sky.

He was trying to determine if our Milky Way

was the only galaxy in the universe.

Not only did he discover the universe

was filled with galaxies,

he also determined that

all of them are rushing

away from each other.

With Hubble's work, humanity learned

that the universe began

with a massive explosion

that has been carrying the galaxies apart

for billions of years.

Another special quality about the universe

is the rate of expansion.

If the rate of expansion had been slower,

even slightly slower,

even a millionth of a percent slower,

the universe would have

re-collapsed immediately.

That would've been it.

After a million years,

the universe would have

imploded upon itself and

formed a massive black hole.

On the other hand, if the universe

had expanded a little more quickly,

even slightly more quickly,

even calculations show one millionth

of one percent more quickly,

the universe would have

expanded too quickly

for structures to form.

It would have simply exploded.

There would have been no galaxies,

no structure, no life,

nothing but dust for all time.

So what we've discovered is

that we're living in a universe

that is expanding at

exactly the rate necessary

for life and structure to come forth.

It could be then, that even though we can't

call the early universe alive,

we can understand it as life generating.

One of the physicists who

was reflecting on this

is the celebrated Freeman Dyson.

And he, he mused that the more he reflected

on the structures of the early universe,

the more he became convinced

that in some sense

the universe must've known

from the very beginning

that life was coming.

The light from the beginning of time

has been traveling for 14 billion years.

Meanwhile, life has been evolving.

With the recent emergence

of advanced technology,

we're at last able to see the

story these photons tell

about the birth of the universe

and where we ultimately come from.

Morning on a Greek island is

like the first day of creation.

And wandering around here, you

feel like the first person.

Inevitably, humans would ask,

what gave birth to all of this beauty?

What was the form of creativity

that brought this forth?

Consider galaxies.

What brought the galaxies forth?

You know, even a century ago,

this was hard to imagine.

We didn't know if there were two galaxies

in the entire universe.

That was the main focus of

tension among scientists.

Now were know there are 100 billion,

maybe even a trillion galaxies.

What is the creativity that brought forth

a trillion galaxies?

Let's consider our own Milky Way galaxy.

It's a galaxy with huge spiral arms.

When we first began to discover galaxies,

we thought maybe these spiral arms

were composed of physical matter.

But actually, it's much more interesting.

The arms are actually waves that are

passing through the galaxy.

They're called density waves.

And as they pass through

clouds of hydrogen and helium,

they ignite star birth.

That's the way to picture

the Milky Way galaxy.

Not so much as a thing,

but rather as an activity.

It's an ongoing activity

of bringing forth stars.

We live in the midst of

this intense creativity.

Come into this little church.

I want to show you something.

The ceiling, as you can see,

is filled with stars.

The same is true of most of the churches

on the island of Samos.

The ancient Greeks, like Pythagoras,

thought the stars were alive, even divine.

Throughout history every

culture has been stunned

by the presence of stars in the

vastness of the night sky.

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

So deeply moved by the majesty emanating

from the brilliance of the stars,

we have built our lives around them.

We've even organized entire civilizations

upon their beauty and order.

Hallelujah

Here's the essence of the universe story.

The stars are our ancestors.

Out of them everything comes forth.

Stars are dynamic entities.

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