Stephen Hawking's Universe (1997)
Documentary
His A Brief History of Time was an instant best-seller. Now the famed scientist’s genius is fully revealed in this spellbinding DVD of the miniseries that unlocks the latest and most profound advances in celestial thought and spins an enthralling
intergalactic detective story of unexpected twists and revelations.
Volume I: The Big Bang (Disc 1) Program One: Seeing Is Believing Today we take for granted many things about the universe-that the Earth is round, that we orbit the sun. But these things are not obvious – our knowledge today is built on the
foundations laid down by thousands of years of scientific inquiry and ingenuity. This program explores mathematics and how it revolutionized our view of the universe. “Recollect Ptolemy’s theory of the motion of the planets, moon and sun; Newton’s picture
of the universe with everything governed by gravity; Einstein’s revolutionized theory Newton’s picture of the universe with everything governed by gravity; Einstein’s revolutionized theory of physics; and Edwin Hubble’s invention of the telescope that saw
the expansion of the universe.
Program Two: The Big Bang Our sun at the center of our solar system is just one star among billions in the Milky Way galaxy. Around us are billions and billions of other galaxies. Where could this entire universe come from? Was it always this way
or did the universe have a beginning? The church has always believed that the universe came from a moment of creation – a time when the universe began. Meanwhile, scientists developed two theories: the Big Bang and the Steady State theories. In this
century, science has come to understand how the universe began from a tiny point, fifteen billion years ago. No matter how incredible it sounds, it seems that the church’s ideas of a moment of creation were right from the beginning.
Volume 2: On The Dark Side (Disc 2) Program Three: Cosmic Alchemy In the beginning, the universe started as a single point. Yet from this tiny beginning came all the matter that we can see around us today. How could pure energy become
matter? Over the past century a series of discoveries have shed light on our understanding of matter. This episode features the basics; “fire,” “water,” “air,” and “gas,” in addition to more complex findings of elements and matter, from the creation of
the periodic table to Einstein’s famous theory of relativity.
Program Four: On The Dark Side when we gaze up at the night-time sky, we see the shining stars in the blackness of space. But is the space empty? In the 1950s a young American scientist discovered that the stars in rotating spiral galaxies seem to
be held together by an unseen force. Vera Rubin proposed the idea that the space between the stars was filled by invisible stuff she called dark matter. Scientists now believe that dark matter could make up an unbelievable 99% of the universe. The race is
on to find this mysterious stuff. As soon as we do, we’ll know whether our universe will expand forever and end as a frozen desert or contract under the force of gravity in a terrifying “Big Crunch.”
Volume 3: Black Holes And Beyond (Disc 3) Program Five: Black Holes And Beyond the invention of radio astronomers. It led to SETI-the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence – looking for stray alien communications. And it also led to
astronomical discoveries. Among these were black holes and quasars, bizarre objects billions of light yers away, the same size as our solar system, with a power output greater than all of the stars in our galaxy put together. Quasars shine incredibly
brightly as matter is sucked into a black hole and heats up due to friction. The science of black holes has thrown up some bizarre possibilities, since physics as we know it breaks down inside black holes. The mathematics of this seems to allow instant
travel millions of miles across space, or even time travel. Whatever is really true, black holes are a lesson to scientists.
Program Six: An Answer To Everything Over the last hundred years out understanding of the universe has advanced father than in previous centuries. We now know the universe had a beginning and how all the matter formed, but there is still one
outstanding questions – how did the Big Bang begin? Stephen Hawking is joined by other leading scientists as they try to answer this most important question.
Please Note: Three-Disc Set.
User Comment: Cynan Rees {cynan@indigo.ie} • 6-part documentary series from arguably the greatest scientific mind in the world, the wheelchair-bound Stephen Hawking, which describes all current thinking on the Big Bang, origins
of the universe, dark matter, black holes, etc. Includes interviews with leading astronomers and scientists, some commentary from the great man himself, and computer models of the theories.
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