El documental "Antes del Amanecer: El Big Bang" nos invita a explorar uno de los eventos más fascinantes y trascendentales en la historia del cosmos: el Big Bang. A través de una narrativa envolvente y visuales impactantes, este documental ofrece una perspectiva educativa sobre cómo nació nuestro universo. Desde las primeras fracciones de segundo tras el Big Bang, donde todo estaba concentrado en un punto infinitesimal, hasta la expansión que dio origen a las galaxias, estrellas y planetas que conocemos hoy, cada detalle se presenta de manera accesible.
El Big Bang no solo es un concepto fundamental en la cosmología, sino que también desafía nuestra comprensión de la existencia. A lo largo del documental, se exploran las teorías científicas que rodean este fenómeno, incluyendo la radiación de fondo de microondas y la inflación cósmica. Con entrevistas a expertos y animaciones gráficas, "Antes del Amanecer" convierte complejas ideas científicas en un viaje comprensible y cautivador.
A medida que profundizamos en el origen del universo, también reflexionamos sobre nuestro lugar en él. Este documental es una herramienta valiosa para estudiantes, educadores y cualquier persona interesada en la ciencia. Al final, nos quedamos con la maravilla de que, antes del amanecer de la conciencia, ocurrió el Big Bang.
#BigBang, #Cosmología, #OrigenDelUniverso
**Keywords:** Big Bang, origen del universo, documental sobre el Big Bang, cosmología, expansión del universo, teoría del Big Bang, historia del cosmos, radiación de fondo, inflación cósmica, ciencia y educación.
El Big Bang no solo es un concepto fundamental en la cosmología, sino que también desafía nuestra comprensión de la existencia. A lo largo del documental, se exploran las teorías científicas que rodean este fenómeno, incluyendo la radiación de fondo de microondas y la inflación cósmica. Con entrevistas a expertos y animaciones gráficas, "Antes del Amanecer" convierte complejas ideas científicas en un viaje comprensible y cautivador.
A medida que profundizamos en el origen del universo, también reflexionamos sobre nuestro lugar en él. Este documental es una herramienta valiosa para estudiantes, educadores y cualquier persona interesada en la ciencia. Al final, nos quedamos con la maravilla de que, antes del amanecer de la conciencia, ocurrió el Big Bang.
#BigBang, #Cosmología, #OrigenDelUniverso
**Keywords:** Big Bang, origen del universo, documental sobre el Big Bang, cosmología, expansión del universo, teoría del Big Bang, historia del cosmos, radiación de fondo, inflación cósmica, ciencia y educación.
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00:00We live in a small corner of a vast universe, a place full of an incredible variety of cosmic
00:21There are blazars, quasars, magnetars, pulsars, swirling gas clouds, enormous black holes, collisions between colossal objects
00:35And yet, from the limits of our solitary little planet, we have explored our universe in search of answers to some of the most transcendental questions of humanity
00:54Why are we here? Or better yet, how are we here?
00:58We can even ask ourselves, how did it all start?
01:07We can see the light that was emitted when the whole universe was on fire
01:12But was there anything before the Big Bang?
01:16It wouldn't have to be anything that we could ever experience or imagine
01:21But if we can find it, then that means we can measure the actual conditions of the moment of creation
01:29That's nuts, right?
01:51THE UNIVERSE
02:11Before the dawn
02:13The Big Bang
02:16Each one of us had a beginning
02:21The moment we entered the universe
02:25And we took our place on this planet
02:35But our planet also had a beginning
02:40Just like our galaxy, the Milky Way
02:46And billions of other galaxies
02:50Billions of stars and planets that make up our vast cosmos
02:58Everything must have started somewhere
03:02Even the universe itself
03:05Every human civilization has a myth of creation
03:11Why are we here?
03:13Or better yet, how are we here?
03:17How did the universe begin?
03:19It's a great question
03:23Questions that have remained unanswered for much of human history
03:29It's only 70 years ago that we ventured out into space in search of answers
03:37To find the origin of our planet, of our galaxy and, ultimately, of the universe
03:45THE UNIVERSE
03:51For all the world on Earth
03:54The Apollo 8 crew has a message that we would like to send to you
04:02In the beginning, God created the sky and the earth
04:07The earth had no shape, it was empty
04:11And the darkness reigned over the face of the abyss
04:16And God said
04:19Make light
04:22And the light was made
04:26The pace of technological advances has been faster and faster
04:31The 20th century has taken these things to the next level
04:36The Apollo missions were our first step beyond our planet
04:42And, in a way, a step back in cosmic time
04:51It was during the third moon landing
04:53When clues were discovered about the origin not only of the moon, but also of the earth
05:00Almost 45 kilos of rock samples were collected in the place of the moon landing
05:06Fra Mauro
05:09And they were brought back to Earth
05:14After decades of study
05:16Scientists were able to date these rocks
05:20And they were able to find the origin of the moon
05:24After centuries of study
05:26Scientists were able to date these rocks
05:30And they were able to date the origin of the moon
05:33And to go back in time to a violent event
05:37That not only forged our moon, but also the earth as we know it
05:49In a quiet corner of the Milky Way
05:52A new star shines over a plain of rubble.
05:59For millions of years, the rocks collide and clump together,
06:06forming a planetary system.
06:12Among them, the young Earth.
06:16A hellish world
06:19that does not resemble the planet we know today at all.
06:24But one more collision will give it shape.
06:29A collision on a colossal scale.
06:40There is another world born near the young Earth.
06:45Theia.
06:47And the lunar rocks of the Apollo
06:49have helped us to pinpoint the moment
06:51when these two young worlds met.
06:59Theia, of a size similar to that of Mars,
07:02collides with Earth,
07:06detaching itself from enough material
07:09to end up forming the Moon
07:11and thus marking the final stage of the creation of our planet.
07:21But understanding the origins of the Earth
07:24is only the first step in our scientific search for the origin of the universe.
07:34We can start to understand how everything evolved in our universe
07:38and maybe start off with the question of how did we get here.
07:44Since the time of the Apollo missions,
07:47our exploration of the solar system
07:51has not stopped expanding our knowledge.
07:57With each mission, we learn more about how planets and the Sun itself evolved
08:04over billions of years.
08:09But the solar system, the domain of our Sun,
08:13is nothing more than a small part of a much larger region of the universe.
08:20Our galaxy.
08:23The Milky Way.
08:26The Milky Way.
08:29The Milky Way.
08:32The Milky Way.
08:35The Milky Way.
08:47The Milky Way is unimaginably vast.
08:52So vast that it would take us tens of thousands of years
08:55to travel even to the closest stars.
09:05There's this great quote by Arthur C. Clarke that says,
09:08the only way to find the limits of what's possible
09:11is to go beyond, into the impossible.
09:15We're all explorers, we're all curious,
09:18and astronomy is the last frontier, really.
09:22A frontier that is being constantly displaced
09:25by the new technologies.
09:28We have an incredible set of observations
09:31that are available to us.
09:34And one of these observatories
09:36is casting light on the origin of planets
09:39that are beyond our solar system
09:42and bringing us one step closer to the beginning of the entire cosmos.
09:55Kepler is a catalyst.
09:58Kepler is a planet hunter.
10:03Although he couldn't travel to the stars,
10:07he observed thousands of them in a small portion of the firmament
10:11for more than nine years.
10:15Revealing something extraordinary.
10:20Almost all the stars have at least one planet in orbit.
10:24Which means that there are even more planets
10:27than stars in our galaxy.
10:31And the variety is overwhelming.
10:37Some of them seem surprisingly familiar,
10:40but there are others that are not at all
10:43like what we've found closer to home.
10:48These planets outside of our solar system
10:51there are zombie worlds,
10:55lava worlds,
10:59ice worlds,
11:03world where it rains crystals.
11:11And Kepler even found a planetary system
11:14that transports us back in time
11:17to the origins of our galaxy.
11:39Kepler 444 is a system that houses five rocky planets.
11:44At 117 light years from Earth.
11:51Analyzing the light of this star,
11:54the Kepler Space Telescope has helped to determine
11:58the age of the system.
12:01More than double that of the Sun.
12:05So there were already planets in our galaxy
12:08long before the Sun and Earth were formed.
12:12And the Milky Way must be more than 11 billion years old.
12:20The exact age of our galaxy remains a mystery.
12:25But luckily, Kepler has found the answer.
12:28The exact age of our galaxy remains a mystery.
12:33But luckily, we have a tool that helps us
12:36understand the origin of all galaxies.
12:41Light.
12:46Light is a very powerful tool,
12:49precisely because it doesn't travel at an infinite speed.
12:54That means that if it has to get to us
12:57from a very far away place, it takes time.
13:01Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second.
13:05It's slow on a cosmic scale.
13:09It takes just over eight minutes to get to us from the Sun.
13:14And more than four years from our closest star.
13:18When we look at objects that are a billion light years away,
13:22we're looking at them as they were a billion years ago.
13:28Light, to an astronomer, is like fossils to an archaeologist.
13:34By studying light, we can look back,
13:37to the origin of our galaxy,
13:40and, ultimately, to the beginning of the universe itself.
13:44And there's a telescope that can help us,
13:47more than any other, to go back in cosmic history.
13:52The Hubble Space Telescope is the first great observatory,
13:56and I say this with absolute frankness,
13:59it's one of the greatest scientific missions
14:02in the history of all of human history.
14:06It was designed in the early 1990s
14:09to be the world's largest telescope.
14:12It was designed in the early 1990s
14:15to be the world's largest telescope,
14:18capable of seeing further than ever in our universe,
14:22and, therefore, further back in time.
14:26I actually got to see the telescope before its launch.
14:29I was very lucky.
14:31And to think that that same object,
14:33that I was almost able to hold,
14:35was going to be launched into space,
14:37and was going to be orbiting our little,
14:39little planet, is extraordinary.
14:44Go ahead, Charlie.
14:46All in order for separation in one minute.
14:49Roger, Charlie.
14:59Here, Discovery.
15:01Visual and measurements are correct.
15:03We go ahead.
15:06Roger, Charlie.
15:09The Hubble Space Telescope collects solar energy
15:12through two 7.5-metre solar panels
15:15to feed the sensors that analyse the starlight.
15:20All of this equipment is a huge toolbox
15:23that has allowed us to find answers
15:26that I don't think people really expected to find.
15:29The Hubble Space Telescope
15:35Orbiting at 550 kilometres above the Earth's surface,
15:40the Hubble has a clear advantage over terrestrial telescopes.
15:46The Earth's atmosphere diffuses our images,
15:49and so by putting the telescope in space,
15:52we get precise, clear images of our universe.
15:59The Hubble has shown us our cosmic neighbourhood
16:02in a way we had never seen before.
16:06When I saw those images,
16:08I immediately realised that this is exactly what we needed.
16:14The Hubble has taken images of great nebulae,
16:17of huge gas and dust clouds,
16:20and of stars at the time of their birth.
16:25You can think of them as star keepers.
16:27Star keepers are places where there are a lot of newly born stars all together.
16:34When you see the ring's nebula, you're blown wide open.
16:38It's as if someone had drawn a cartoon on the lens.
16:41It's so amazing.
16:45They're some amazing images,
16:47and really give us an idea of how stars are formed.
16:52But the Hubble was built to give us a much deeper view of the universe,
16:58and to take us back in time.
17:03Our understanding of the universe is limited by how far it is that we can see,
17:09and that is the size of the universe for us.
17:14It's millions and millions of light years.
17:17It's huge.
17:20We're not a drop in a bucket.
17:22We're not a drop in the ocean.
17:24We are a single atom of a drop in billions and billions of oceans.
17:34Oceans full of countless far-fetched wonders,
17:38that the Hubble shows us as if they were the foregrounds
17:42that take us even further into the cosmos,
17:46and even further back in time.
17:53Andromeda, our closest galaxy.
17:59We see it as it was 2.5 million years ago.
18:07And the Hubble has seen even further,
18:10obtaining images of what looks like a cosmic rose.
18:15Two galaxies in collision.
18:19The largest of the two, UGC 1810,
18:23is five times larger than its companion.
18:29We see them as they were 300 million years ago.
18:34But to make the clock go back to the origin of all galaxies,
18:39the Hubble needs to look even further into space
18:43than it has ever done so far.
18:47One of the temptations when you're an astronomer
18:50is to look at only the obvious things.
18:54But that's just a fraction of everything else
18:57that you can see in space.
19:00But that's just a fraction of everything else
19:03that you can see in space.
19:05But the most surprising discovery of the Hubble
19:08came when it stopped looking at the light.
19:11Well, we did a spin of the Hubble
19:13toward a white part of the firmament
19:15to observe it.
19:19Scouring the darkness for four months,
19:23the Hubble reveals that the blackest area in space
19:27is not so empty.
19:37What we ended up finding was galaxies and more galaxies
19:41going back billions and billions of years,
19:44much further back in time than we would have guessed.
19:48Primitive and strange galaxies,
19:51different from everything we know in our current universe.
19:57The Hubble Space Telescope
20:03Celestial fossils that illuminate the way to the past,
20:10to find, right at the limit of what it can give,
20:19what could be one of the first galaxies
20:22that formed in the universe.
20:25So far away,
20:29that when we look at it,
20:31we see something that happened 13.4 billion years ago.
20:37This impressive galaxy is called GNZ11.
20:41It's the oldest and furthest galaxy that Hubble can see.
20:45It's so old and so far away
20:47that when the Earth began to form 4.6 billion years ago,
20:51it was so far away
20:53that the Hubble Space Telescope
20:55could not see it.
20:57It was so far away
20:59that when the Earth began to form 4.6 billion years ago,
21:03it was so far away
21:05that when the Earth began to form 4.6 billion years ago,
21:09its light had already traveled for almost 9 billion years.
21:13So that light was emitted
21:15shortly after the beginning of our universe.
21:26GNZ11 is one of the first galaxies that were born
21:31at a time when the universe itself
21:34was still taking shape.
21:38Just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
21:46It's a strange galaxy,
21:48according to current standards.
21:57Tiny compared to the Milky Way.
22:05But full of huge and violent stars.
22:16GNZ11 is a super bright galaxy
22:18that we didn't think could have existed
22:21in the early universe.
22:25It's a huge and messy monster
22:27and its stars are very young stars.
22:30They've just formed.
22:34These stars probably weren't the first
22:36to form in the universe,
22:38but they're close.
22:42The most amazing thing is that
22:44not only can we see this galaxy,
22:48but we're starting to build an image
22:51of what it's like inside.
22:56What is kind of exciting for us
22:58is that we could already see
23:00protoplanets forming around
23:02those first sets of stars.
23:07Fragile objects trying to survive
23:10in the storm created by these stormy stars.
23:18These could be some of the first planets
23:21in the universe.
23:25Somewhere, there was a planet
23:27that was the first planet to form
23:29in the entire universe.
23:31We'll never know when or where it was formed
23:34or what its destiny was,
23:36but it was formed somewhere.
23:40These are strange worlds.
23:46But their birth is a key part
23:48of the development of the universe.
23:56The beginning of a relationship
23:58between stars and planets.
24:02A relationship that thousands of millions of years later,
24:06in a distant world,
24:12will give rise to life.
24:15To all of us.
24:20But long before,
24:22even before the first stars and galaxies existed,
24:26the universe,
24:28was a very different and hostile place.
24:38So the story of the first days of the universe
24:42is a story of darkness.
24:44This is a time that astronomers call
24:47the cosmic dark age.
24:51We can't see galaxies or stars
24:53because they haven't been born yet.
24:58It's a period in which the stars and galaxies
25:01are the only ones that exist.
25:05The first stars and galaxies
25:07are the only ones that exist.
25:09They haven't been born yet.
25:13It's a period in which optical telescopes
25:15like the Hubble
25:17simply will never be able to explore.
25:22When we look to the cosmic dark age,
25:25we don't see the light of any star.
25:30Long before our planet existed,
25:33even before the first stars,
25:36there was only infinite darkness.
25:41Without starlight to follow,
25:44it may seem that our search
25:46for the beginning of the universe
25:49has come to an end.
26:02But maybe intuitively,
26:04the youngest stellar light we can see
26:07offers clues that help us understand
26:10the origins of the universe.
26:14Although not any stellar light,
26:17the light of a specific type of star
26:20can tell us how our universe grew
26:23until it became what it is today.
26:35These stars are called white dwarfs.
26:41They are the last remnants of stars
26:43that exhausted their nuclear fuel a long time ago.
26:50So once a star like the sun
26:52runs out of material to burn,
26:55it will collapse on itself
26:57and expel material.
27:00And what's left is a white dwarf.
27:05They are dense bodies the size of a planet,
27:10usually made up of oxygen and carbon,
27:18which makes them, in fact,
27:20stellar diamonds.
27:29So these white dwarfs, these stellar bodies,
27:32are incredibly exotic objects.
27:36One teaspoon of this material
27:38would weigh more than five tons.
27:43It's one of the densest objects in the universe.
27:46It's this very small, very hot object,
27:49about the size of the Earth
27:51with the mass of the sun.
27:56How is it possible that these strange stars
27:59reveal something to us about a time before
28:02the existence of the stars themselves,
28:05and that they can even give us clues
28:07about the moment when the universe began?
28:13White dwarfs remain in a critical balance,
28:17resisting the relentless attraction of gravity,
28:20but only with severe pain.
28:25They are on the brink of destruction.
28:28If their mass increases above a critical limit,
28:32gravity will end up prevailing.
28:47In 2018, Hubble is a witness
28:49to what happens next.
28:52The telescope focuses on a galaxy
28:54that is very, very far away.
29:02NGC 2525.
29:12It searches for a distant white dwarf
29:14that is reaching the end of its expedition.
29:21It's an extraordinary life.
29:32For millions of years,
29:34the white dwarf remains hidden,
29:39trapped in an orbit
29:41around a much larger star,
29:45a red giant.
29:52While they rotate around each other,
29:56the gravity of the white dwarf
29:58attracts gas and plasma from the red giant.
30:10The mass of the white dwarf increases.
30:22Finally, it approaches a critical point,
30:25known as the Chandrasekhar Limit,
30:33and it surpasses it,
30:47unleashing a colossal force
30:49of thermonuclear reaction.
31:03The white dwarf explodes,
31:06in what scientists call
31:08a type Ia supernova.
31:20This was an immensely energetic event,
31:23with the brightness of 5000 million of our sun,
31:26so bright that Hubble was able
31:28to take a sequence of images
31:30following its evolution.
31:36The brightness of this event
31:38allowed Hubble to see it.
31:42And capturing a type Ia supernova
31:44in the act was something
31:46very important for science.
31:49Because this dazzling light
31:51has a great story to tell.
31:54Everything that has happened to it
31:56on the way from its source to us,
31:58everything that has been found,
32:00including time,
32:01has affected what we actually see.
32:06The light of type Ia supernovas
32:08gives us a tempting clue
32:13about how our universe evolved.
32:20And it is by tracing the evolution
32:22of the universe
32:26that we can build a roadmap
32:28to go back to its origin.
32:35Type Ia supernovas are like a gift
32:37to the universe,
32:39because they all explode
32:41in the same way,
32:43and they have pretty much
32:45the same brightness.
32:47Therefore, if you see one
32:49more dim than the other,
32:51it means it is further away.
32:54And that allows us to measure
32:56the distance to the galaxy
32:58where the explosion of this supernova is.
33:02We have seen type Ia supernovas
33:04all over the universe.
33:08We can measure the distance
33:10to their origin galaxies.
33:14And that can tell us
33:16how the universe has changed
33:18over time.
33:28When we look at type Ia supernovas
33:30from a distance,
33:32we see something really interesting.
33:34Their light is not only dimmer,
33:36it is redder.
33:38And the further away they are,
33:40the redder the light is.
33:42But as the light travels
33:44from that distant galaxy to us,
33:46the space itself stretches.
33:48And so the light stretches
33:50along the way,
33:52it gets redder.
33:54This is called redshift.
33:56We see the effect
33:58of redshift in the light
34:00of each distant galaxy.
34:02And that means that the space
34:04is stretching everywhere.
34:08And that means something
34:10really amazing,
34:12the universe is expanding.
34:20Studying the redshift
34:22of galaxies,
34:24we know for almost a century
34:26that the universe is expanding.
34:30But using type Ia supernovas
34:32to study it in detail,
34:34we can know
34:36precisely
34:38at what speed
34:40the universe is expanding.
34:42And what scientists have found
34:44is something completely unexpected.
34:48Astronomers working
34:50with the Hubble Space Telescope
34:52began to realize
34:54that the universe is not only expanding,
34:56but it's actually expanding
34:58at an ever-increasing rate.
35:00But the acceleration of that expansion
35:02was what really surprised us.
35:06We know that the universe
35:08is expanding at an ever-increasing rate.
35:10And thanks to Hubble,
35:12we have proof that this expansion
35:14is accelerating with time.
35:18So if you know that the universe is expanding,
35:20you can do a mental experiment,
35:22turn back in time
35:24and know that the universe
35:26was smaller in the past.
35:28We can reverse the clock.
35:32Billions and billions of years.
35:38And go back to an era
35:40before Earth and the Sun.
35:54To a time before
35:56the first galaxies.
36:02And finally,
36:04cross the cosmic dark age
36:06to find the moment
36:08when the universe began.
36:14A moment that we know
36:16happened 13.8 billion years ago.
36:22The Big Bang.
36:36The Big Bang.
36:42The moment our universe
36:44began to exist.
36:48However,
36:50it was nothing like an explosion.
36:56The initial state of the universe
36:58was very hot
37:00and very, very dense.
37:06Everything, the whole universe
37:08was held together
37:10in a very tiny region of space.
37:16So everywhere in the universe
37:18is almost like being inside a star.
37:26All of the matter that has ever been produced
37:28came from that moment in time.
37:30These conditions
37:32are incredibly extreme
37:34and no longer occur
37:36in the current universe.
37:42It almost seems miraculous,
37:44if not incredible,
37:46that we can study the origin
37:48of the universe.
37:50People ask me,
37:52how could you know?
37:54There was no one there.
37:56For decades,
37:58the Big Bang has been
38:00the best explanation
38:02science has given
38:04about the creation of the universe.
38:12In 2009,
38:14a mission was launched
38:16to try to better understand
38:18this era of our universe.
38:24The Planck Telescope
38:26of the European Space Agency
38:28has been designed
38:30to search for the remains of the Big Bang.
38:34This time, it is not the light
38:36of the stars,
38:38but another type of light,
38:40the glow of the Big Bang,
38:44the oldest light in the universe.
38:50If we find it,
38:52that means we can measure
38:54the areas of the moment of creation.
38:58That's crazy.
39:02Planck will measure this primordial light
39:04more precisely than ever.
39:147, 6, 5,
39:164, 3,
39:182, 1,
39:200
39:24The moment of the launch
39:26is when everything is at stake,
39:28but then there are
39:30a lot of stages.
39:34You could feel the excitement
39:36because we knew
39:38it was an incredible opportunity
39:40to better understand our universe.
39:542 MONTHS LATER
40:04Two months of travel
40:06await Planck
40:08until he reaches his destination.
40:12Far beyond the orbit of our Moon.
40:24Once in position,
40:26Planck meticulously scans
40:28the entire cosmos,
40:30over and over again.
40:34Everything that is hot
40:36emits light.
40:38So if the primitive universe
40:40was really dense and hot,
40:42there should have been
40:44a lot of light left over from that time.
40:50With its 1.5 meter diameter mirror
40:52and two sets of detectors
40:54to capture the light
40:56in the form of microwaves,
40:58Planck draws a map
41:00of the confines of the universe,
41:04looking back
41:06to a time long before
41:08galaxies and stars.
41:14After 4 years
41:16of endless search,
41:18scientists are finally
41:20able to contemplate
41:22an instant of the Big Bang
41:24with a spectacular detail.
41:26So this image
41:28that I have here
41:30is one of the most
41:32exciting images
41:34in astronomy and cosmology.
41:36It is a picture
41:38of the Big Bang
41:40and the Big Bang
41:42and the Big Bang
41:44and the Big Bang
41:46and the Big Bang
41:48and the Big Bang
41:50and the Big Bang
41:52and the Big Bang
41:54It is a picture of the Cosmic
41:56Radiation Background
41:58of microwaves.
42:00So basically the Big Bang
42:02this is the first light
42:04that we can see
42:06that came from that invasion
42:08of our universe.
42:12Thanks to Planck
42:14the scientists now have
42:16detailedblem for the whole
42:18universe in its infancy.
42:20The best analogy of looking at these first images I think is like seeing your child born.
42:33We can see the light from the time when the whole universe was on fire.
42:38When the universe was not an empty space but a really churning plasma.
42:48Planck gives us details of the first moments of the universe.
42:54And at first glance, everything we see is an almost uniform glow.
43:01There are no galaxies, no stars, just this shiny plasma ball.
43:06The radiation reflects that in reality because, as we can see, this radiation is incredibly uniform.
43:13But Planck's super-sensitive detectors can even capture the slightest variations.
43:20Variations that we see as different shades of blue, red and yellow in this dazzling image in false color.
43:29Before, all we could see was a uniform glow.
43:34Now we can actually see small differences on the sky, differences in temperature, which are incredibly tiny.
43:42The variations are less than a hundred thousandth of a degree.
43:47But they suggest that the primordial fireball was not perfectly uniform.
43:54And these variations must have come from somewhere.
43:58Which points to a deep truth.
44:02The Big Bang was not really the beginning.
44:15The first moments of our universe are very strange.
44:20There is no matter.
44:25All that exists is space, time and energy.
44:31An ocean of energy, almost uniform, but not completely.
44:41It wouldn't have been like anything that we can experience or imagine.
44:47It was a field of energy that had tiny, tiny quantum fluctuations in and out of existence.
44:57These fluctuations, waves in the ocean of energy, are the key to our current universe.
45:05They are the origin of everything.
45:08If these fluctuations did not exist, there would be no star.
45:13There would be not a single grain of cosmic dust and of course we would not be here.
45:21Let's imagine a motorboat in that ocean of energy.
45:25This particle is about to become so big that it will be able to house all the stars and galaxies of our universe.
45:34It just has to grow very fast.
45:37That energy would cause a stretching of space.
45:41An exponentially fast stretching.
45:44Space would become bigger and bigger and faster at an unimaginable rate.
45:49In the shortest of moments, for a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second,
45:56that particle expanded much faster than the speed of light.
46:02A moment in time that we call inflation.
46:07So, in an infinitesimally small period of time, our universe went from being smaller than an atom
46:13to having the size of a basketball.
46:17That's an amazing amount of stretching in a very short period of time.
46:22We don't know why it started or why it ended.
46:26When that rapid extension slowed down,
46:30something happened that don't look like a huge amount of energy created this fireball state.
46:42Inflation creates the Big Bang.
46:45But it wasn't, as most of us imagine, a kind of explosion.
46:52It was a transformation.
46:57A transformation of energy in matter.
47:04And that fulminant inflation left its mark.
47:09Those imperceptible fluctuations in the wavering ocean of energy
47:14were imprinted in our universe.
47:20Those minimal quantum fluctuations should have been stretched
47:24as the universe itself was stretching rapidly.
47:28So, a small wave of irregularity during inflation
47:32would stretch in astrophysical scales.
47:38The fluctuations that occurred before the Big Bang
47:42would end up creating everything we see today in the firmament.
48:00Gravity takes over the tiny variations
48:04that now intersect all over the young universe,
48:10creating large clusters of matter,
48:16but also large voids,
48:24weaving patterns similar to webs that extend throughout the universe.
48:35The densest regions collapse
48:41to form the first stars
48:56and the first galaxies.
49:00After 9 billion years of cosmic evolution,
49:08a new star is formed on the Milky Way.
49:13Our Sun.
49:23Eight planets emerge.
49:29Including ours.
49:31Earth.
49:38Different elements are combined in this place.
49:42Hydrogen, formed during the Big Bang.
49:47Carbon, oxygen and others.
49:52Forged in the heart of the stars
49:56to create life.
50:01Us.
50:04The Big Bang
50:24We are a speck of dust.
50:28We are totally insignificant to the universe in any possible way imaginable.
50:33And yet, we can see the beginning of the universe.
50:38I think it's very appalling that, as human beings,
50:43we have come to know so much.
50:47The universe has opened up for us to study,
50:51and maybe that's our only purpose.
50:54Maybe the universe created us so that we could understand it.
50:59We are just a phrase in the book of the universe.
51:04And so I think it's incumbent upon us to write the best possible sentence that we can.
51:10I'm looking forward to seeing what's to come.
51:24The Big Bang