All language subtitles for Wonders of the Universe BBC 2011 EP04 Messengers BluRay 1080p x264 AC3 EN_Subtitles01.ENG

PROFESSOR BRIAN COX: Why are we here?

Where do we come from?

These are the most enduring
of güestions.

And it's an essential part
of human nature

to want to find the answers.

Now, we can trace our ancestry
back hundreds of thousands of years

to the dawn of humarıkiınd.

But in reality, our story extends
far further back in time.

Our story starts
with the beginning of the universe.

It began 13.7 billion years ago.

And today it's filled
with over a hundred billion galaxies,

each containing
hundreds of billions of stars.

In this series,
I want to tell that story.

Because ultimately,
we are part of the universe.

So its story İis our story.

İt's a story that
we wouldn't be able to tell

were it not for the one thing that
cornnects us vividiy to our vast cosmos.

Light.

Light reveals the wonders
of the universe in all their glory,

stars that shine with the light
of a thousand suns

and vast swirling galaxies.

But light is also a messenger
from a long-forgotten era.

And contained in the light
from these faraway places

is the story of our universe's
origin and evolution.

Through light we can stare back

across the entire history
of the universe

and discover how it all began.

And ultimately, see how light
breathed life into us.

This is Karnak temple in Egypt.

Built by the ancient pharaohs,

this vast complex was erected
to honour Amun-Ra,

god of all gods,

god of the sun.

This worship reaches its peak

during öone fleeting moment
in the solar calendar,

an event so brief,
it lasts for little more than a minute.

This temple is built to align
with an astronomical event

that happens just once a year,

the sunrise at the winter solstice.

Solstice is Latin
for "sun stands still",

because as the Farth orbits
around the sun and the year passes,

the point at which the sun rises
above the eastern horizon moves.

So here in Egypt, in summer
the sun rises over in that direction,

and then as summer turns to autumn
turns to winter,

the sunrise point drifts along

until today, on December 21st,
at 6:30 a.m. in midwinter,

the sun rises exactly between
the pillars of this temple.

Just öonce a year for öover 3,000 years,

the sun has risen
between the two pillars

and cast its light into the temple.

There it is. The light from our star,

cascading down
this magnificent structure.

I mean, you can literally
feel the history of this place.

It's easy to forget that this is
three and a half thousand years old.

So, in 1500 BC,

the most powerful man on the planet,
the pharaoh of Egypt,

would have stood here
on December 21st every year,

just to greet and experience
the light from Amun-Ra.

This moment that the Fgyptians
worshipped instinctively

we now understand in exgulsite detall.

As the Farth journeys
through the solar system,

it's bathed in the light of the star
that sits at its centre.

(RUMBLING)

This light has travelled
some 150 million kilometres

from the surface of the sun.

And at the winter solstice,

that light pours
into the temple at Karnak.

Well, this building is, honestly,

the most magnificent structure
I've ever seen.

You know, it's not built
on the scale of men,

it's built on the scale of gods.

Of one god, Amun-Ra,
the god of the sun.

As the sun sinks below the horizon
and night falls,

a whole universe of suns
fades into view.

We no longer build temples to our sun.

We build machines that allow us to
peer deeper into space than ever before,

to far distant suns
out there in the galaxy and beyond.

On a night like this,

there are about
two and a half thousand stars

visible to the naked eye.

But when we started building telescopes
instead of temples,

we discovered that
there are billions more.

Every star we see in the night sky

is a sun that sits
within our own galaxy,

the Milky Way.

As we step away,

our sun gradually fades to become
Just one dot in a sea of stars.

We now know that we are about
halfway out from the centre

of this beautiful cosmic structure.

But even though these worlds
are many millions of kilometres away,

we know them intimately by their light.

These waves of light are messengers
from across the cosmos

and through them we have discovered
the wonders of our galaxy.

This is the Lagoon Nebula.

From a distance,

this cloud of dust and gas
appears beautiful and serene.

(RUMBLING)

But this a furnace
where new stars are forged.

The Lagoon Nebula sits about
5,000 light years from Farth.

But it can still be seen
with the naked eye,

because it's 100 light-years across

and brightly lit
by the hot, young new star

that sits at its centre,

a giant called Herschel 36.

This newly born star is over
20 times more massive than our sun

and burns much hotter,

which makes the light
that pours from its surface blue.

And there are
even bigger stars in our galaxy.

Seven and a half thousand light years
from Farth

is a star that dwarfs even Herschel 36.

İIts name is Eta Carinae.

This monster star

is over 100 times
more massive than our sun

and burns about
four million times brighter,

making it öne of the most luminous stars
in the Milky Way.

All we know
about these incredible worlds

has been brought to us
on wave after wave of light.

Our galaxy is a symphony in light.

The Milky Way
is home to 200 billion stars.

But our galaxy is just the beginning.

For each of these stars,

there are a billion more
in the universe beyond.

Across the unimaginable
reaches of space,

light has allowed us to journey
to the most distant galaxies

to see the births and deaths of stars.

No matter how far we follow the light,

no matter how many
billions of miles we cross,

the nature of light itself
allows us to go on a much richer journey

because to look up and to look out

is to look back in time.

See, those ancient beams of light
are messengers from the distant past

and they carry with them a story,

the story of the origin of the universe.

In örder to read this story,

to see how light
can transport us to the past,

we must first understand
öne of its fundamental properties,

its speed.

Everything in our universe
has a speed limit,

even intangible phenomena,
like waves of sound and light.

These speed limits are very real
physical barrters

and they have profound conseguences
for our understanding of the universe.

Today, I'm gorng to try and break
öne of those barriers.

This is a Hawker Hunter.

It was built in the 1950s
when breaking the sound barrier

Was at the very limit
of our technical abilities.

"Sound barrier"
is an incredibly evocative term,

it has an almost legendary status
in the history of aviation.

But there's nothing
fundamental about it.

It's something that you can overcome
with some extremely clever engineering

and, in the early days,
guilte a lot of courage.

The reason we don't usually
think about sound

as having some kind of speed limit,
a limiting speed,

is because it is incredibly fast

compared to the things
we're used to in everyday life.

But today,
we're golng to try and breakit,

I'm going to try and breakit,
sat in this marvellous machine.

On Earth, the speed of sound,
depending on altitude,

iİs arocund 1200 kilometres per hour,

known as Mach 1.

(TALKING, INDISTINCT)

(WHIRRING)

This jet isn't designed
to fly that fast in normal flight.

But there is a way to make it
travel faster than sound.

And for that, we need to fliy high.

As the plane flies faster,

it begins to catch up
with its own sound.

The sound waves simply
can't get out of the way fast enough,

so they begin to pile up
at the front of the jet.

But to outrun our sound waves,

we need to push this jet
to its absolute limit.

In just seconds, the jet smashes
through the sound barrier.

This can be heard from the ground
as a sonic boom.

İt was a doddle, actually.

Well, you know, having said that, it was
inverted full throttle at 42,000 feet,

but that's
a different definition of "doddle".

(LAUGHS)

So this magnificent piece of engineering

is fast enough,
if you just push it a little bit,

to outrun its own sound.

So the sound barrier is negotiable.
You can smash your way through it.

But the speed oflight,
the light barrier,

well, that's a very different story.

Sound has a definite speed
that we can measure.

But for thousands of years,

the world's greatest minds
thought that light was different,

that it travelled instantaneously
from object to eye.

Then, arocund 350 years ago,
the truth about light was revealed

through a combination
of one man's genius

and the clockwork orbits of the heavens.

Ever since Galileo discovered
that Jupiter had moons,

astronomers realised that
you could use Jupiter and its moons

as a very precise clock in the sky.

So here's the solar system,

there's the sun, there's the Earth,
here's Jupiter,

and here is Jupiter's
innermost moon, İo.

Now, it was known that Io takes
precisely 42 and a half hours

to orbit around Jupiter.

So, if from the Earth,
you see Io emerge from behind Jupiter

at, say, midnight on a Tuesday,

then you know
that it should remerge again

at half past six on Thursday afternoon.

Beautiful.

Now, öne of the men
charged with making precise tables

of exactly when Io should be seen
to emerge from behind Jupiter

was the Danish astronomer Ole Romer.

But he noticed something surprising.

See, depending on the time of year,

Io emerged later than expected
or earlier than expected.

Now, Remer's genius was to
realise that had nothing to do at all

with the orbit of Io around Jupiter.

It was to do with the orbit
of the Earth around the sun.

See, what Remer noticed was that

when the Earth
was in a position in its orbit

so that it was close to Jupiter,

then Io emerged earlier
than it was expected to.

Then, as the year passed
and Earth moved around the sun

and got further away from Jupiter,

Roömer noticed that Io then emerged
later than it was expected to.

Römer realised that it takes time

for light to travel
from Jupiter to the Earth.

So when the Earth
is far away from Jupiter,

it takes longer for the light to travel

and therefore you see Io
emerge from behind Jupiter

later than you would expect.

Then, when the distance is small,

it takes less time
for the light to travel

and you see lo emerge earlier
than you might expect.

So Remer had discovered that light
doesn't travel instantaneously.

It moves through space
with a finite speed.

This remarkable insight led to
a measurement of the speed of light.

We now know that light travels
at precisely

299,792,458 metres per second.

That means that the time
it takes for me to click my fingers,

light has travelled
around the Earth seven times.

Or that it travels 10 million
million kilometres in one year.

And that's the yardstick we use
to measure the universe.

Because 10 million million kilometres
is approximately one light year.

The speed of light
is the speed limit of the universe

built into the very fabric
of space and time itself.

But because light travels
at a finite speed,

a light year isn't just a measure
of distance.

İt's also a measure of time.

The further away an obfect is,

the further back in time we see it.

Now, the distances
that light travels on Earth

are relatively short.

So the time it takes
light to travel to our eye

is imperceptible.

But when we look out to space
over astronomical distances,

to the stars, planets
and galaxies beyond,

then light's finite speed
has profound conseguences.

This is Tanzanlia in eastern Africa,

the cradle of humankind.

İIt's here that
some of our earliest ancestors walked,

two and a half million years ago.

And our evolutionary journey
from the distant past to the present day

ran in parallel with the journey
of the light from the stars.

The sun is 150 million kilometres away.

Now, that's very close
by cosmic standards.

But light travels at only
300,000 kilometres per second.

So that means that we're seeing the sun
as it was in the past,

actually eight minutes in the past.

But when we look beyond our sun
to far more distant stars,

we reach further back in time,
across the whole of human evolution.

And the deeper into space we look,

the further back in time we see.

As the sun dips below the horizon
and night falis,

the universe just fades into view.

And at first you see the bright planets.

I can see Venus over there,

and then the stars appear one by one,

thousands of them shining in the sky.

And then, as it gets darker and darker,

the Milky Way appears.

A vast swathe
of billions and billions of suns

as you look out towards the centre
of our Milky Way galaxy.

But I think for me the most magical
thing you can see in the sky

with the naked eye

is just below
the constellation Cassiopeia,

the W of stars in the sky.

There!

Look at that!

Actually, I've got to say,
that's amazing. Well...

See that misty patch of light
is not a cloud in the sky,

it's not even gas and dust
in our galaxy.

That is another galaxy.
It's the Andromeda galaxy,

which is roughly
the same size as our own,

an island of hundreds
and billions of stars,

25 million million million kilometres
in that direction.

Like the Milky Way,
Andromeda is a spiral galaxy,

two ringed arms
circling a light-filled centre.

The core of Andromeda is
packed with millions of old red stars.

Very few new stars are born here.

In contrast, its spiral arms shine

with the light from clusters
of hot, young, blue stars.

The light that pours
from this stellar city

connects us to a remarkable time
in the story of human evolution.

The light that I've just captured
in my camera

began its journey
two and a half million years ago.

At that time, on Earth,
there were no humans.

Homo habilis, our distant ancestors,
were roaming the plains of Africa.

And as those light rays
travelled through the vastness of space,

our species evolved
and thousands and thousands

and thousands of generations
of humans lived and died.

And then, two and a half million years
after their journey began,

these messengers
from the depths of space

and from way back in our past

arrived here on Earth

and I just captured them
and took that picture.

Light's finite speed
opens a window onto the past

and shows us Andromeda as it looked

when our early ancestors
walked the Farth

2.5 million years ago.

But by peering further
than the naked eye will allow,

we can fourney to a time
way before human history,

so far back that we can read
the entire history of the universe.

In the last 20 years,

powerful space telescopes
have carried us ever deeper into space

and we have become
virtual time travellers.

This is Centaurus A, one of
our nearest neighbouring galaxies,

only 10 million light years away.

That means that the light
began its journey

from these old red
and young white, blue stars

only 10 million years ago.

Now, stepping out a little further,
just 14 million light years,

there's this beautiful
barred spiral galaxy.

And again you can see just lanes
and lanes of bright young blue stars.

And this blue light has taken

14 million years to journey
across the universe to my eye.

This is NGC 520.

And it's the product
of a cosmic collision.

But this galaxy is a hundred million
light years away.

That means that the light began
its journey from this galaxy to my eye

when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

I think it's a beautiful thought
that by capturing this faint light

and rebuilding these spectacular images,

we are İn a very real sense
connected to these galaxies,

no matter how far away they are
across the universe,

connected by the light that's journeyed
billions of years to reach us.

But these spectacular galaxies

are not the end of
our fourney into the past.

In 2004, we peered further back in time
than ever before

and captured the light from the
most distant galaxies in the universe.

The image is called
the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

It's a picture take by
the Hubble Space Telescope

over a period of 11 days

and it focused its camera
on the tiniest piece of sky

just below the constellation of Orion.

Now, it's a piece of sky that
you would cover if you took your thumb,

held it in front of your face

and then moved it
20 times further away.

The Hubble captured the faintest lights

from the most distant regions
of the universe

and it took this photograph.

Now, almost every point
of light in that image

is not a star but a galaxy

of over a hundred billion stars.

The most distant galaxies in that image
are over 13 billion light years away.

That means that the faint light
from those galaxies

began its journey to Earth
13 billion years ago.

That's over three times
the age of the Farth.

Hubble allows us peer back
almost to the beginning of time itself.

And out here, in deep space,

it reveals a clue
to how our universe began.

When the space telescope
stared across the cosmos,

it saw galaxies glow
in all different colours.

But when it peered to the very edge
of the visible universe,

it captured these images

and saw that every galaxy glowed red.

Written in the red light
from these distant worlds

is the story of our universe's
origin and evolution.

To reveal it, we must explore one of
the most beautiful gualities of light.

For centuries people thought
that light just illuminated our world,

you know, allowed us to see
and nothing more than that.

But we've since learned that there is
a vast amount of information and detail

contained within every beam of light.

And that information
is written in colour.

To reveal how colour can unlock
the secrets of our universe's creation,

I've come to öne of the most spectacular
natural wonders on Farth.

This is Victoria Falls in Zambia.

This waterfall stretches for
almost two kilometres,

making it the largest curtain
of falling water in the world.

But I'm not here to marvel
at the scale of this wonder.

İ've come to see
a much more delicate feature

that appears above the water.

These magnificent rainbows

are a permanent feature in the skies
above Victorla Falls.

Now, rainbows are a beautiful phenomena.

But I think that
they're even more beautiful

when you understand how they're made
because they are a visual representation

of the fact that light is made up of,
well, all the colours of the rainbow.

Rays of light from the sun
bend as they enter the water droplets.

The light beams then reflect
off the back of the droplets

and are bent for a second time
as they leave.

This bending and reflecting
splits the light

and the colours hidden inside
the white sunlight are revealed.

But colour can tell us much more.

Because understandıng
the reddening of the galaxies

has given us a profound insight
into the nature of the universe.

What we see as different colours

are actually different
wavelengths of light.

So, blue light has a relatively
short wavelength.

And then you go through
green and yellow,

all the way to the red end
of the spectrum,

which has a very large wavelength.

Starlight is made up of
countless different wavelengths.

All the colours of the rainbow.

When light is emitted
by a distant star or galaxy,

its wavelength
doesn't have to stay fixed.

It can be sguashed or stretched.

And when light is stretched,
its wavelength increases

and it moves to the red end
of the spectrum.

So the interpretation of the fact that
the most distant galaxies appear red

is that the space in between them
and us is stretched

during the time it's taken the light
to journey over that vast distance.

That means that our entire universe
is expanding.

Now, just think about
what an exparnıding universe implies.

Because if the galaxies
are all rushing away from each other,

that meanrıs that if you rewind time,

then they must have been
closer together in the past.

Naturally, if you just keep rewinding,

then you find that
at some point ir the past

all the galaxies we can see in the sky

were guite literally
on top of each other.

The universe
was sguashed down to a point.

That implies that the universe
may have had a beginning.

And that is the Big Bang Theory.

Well, that's probably
many people's picture of the Big Bang.

You know, this vast explosion
that flung matter out into the void.

But that's completely wrong.

As we understand it at the moment,
all of space was created at that moment.

So the Big Bang didn't just happen

somewhere out over there
in the universe,

it happened everywhere at the same time.

It happened here.
So this space here was at the Big Bang.

So, when we look at the distant galaxies

and we see that they are flying
away from us,

that's not because they were flung out

in some massive explosion
at the beginning of time.

It's because space itself is stretching

and it's been stretching
since the Big Bang.

The universe we see today
is a network of galaxies

spanning almost a hundred billion
light years.

Bur remarkabiy, the blueprint
for this astonishing structure

is written into the very first light
released into the universe.

Even more remarkabiy,

it's a blueprint that we can read today.

This first light is no longer visible
but it's there.

You fust need to know
how to look for it.

This sea of shifting sand
is the Namib Desert,

the oldest desert in the world.

And as the wind blows
the sand off the top of the dunes,

this landscape is constantly changing.

This world has been sculpted by the sun.

It drives the winds that shape the dunes

and its light paints this place
a deep orange.

But even when
the sun disappears completely,

this desert
is still awash with light and colour.

We just can't see it.

Visible wavelengths of light
are just a tiny fraction

of all the light in the universe.

Beyond the visible spectrum,

our world is illuminated
by invisible light.

This sand has been under
the full glare of the sun all day.

And I can feel the heat
radiating off it.

Well, heat is nothing more
than a form of light.

Although we don't
normally call it light.

It's actually infrared light.

And the only difference between infrared
and visible light is the wavelength.

Infrared has a longer wavelength
than visible light.

Infrared isn't the end of the story.

There are even longer
wavelengths of light.

Throughout most of human history
we've been blind

to these more unfamiliar forms of light.

But to detect them you don't need
a billion pound satellite

or a telescope
built into the side of a mountain.

You just need one of these. A radio.

Because when we tune a radio,

we're tuning in to a form oflight.
Radio waves.

(JAZZ MUSIİC PLAYING ON RADIO)

But detecting them and
understanding them provides the key

to understanding the origin
of the universe.

(STATIC ON RADIO)

And when you detune the radio a bit,
you can just hear static.

But about 196 of that static
is music to the ears of a physicist.

Because that is stretched light
from the Big Bang.

So that sound is the sound
of the first light

released at the beginning
of the universe.

The reason we can't see
this ancient light

is because as the universe expanded,
the light waves were stretched

and transformed into radio waves
and microwaves.

This first light is called the cosmic
microwave background, or CMB.

The CMB fills every part
of the universe.

Every second,
light from the beginning of time

is raining down on the surface
of the Earth in a ceaseless torrent.

If my eyes could only see it,
then the sky would be ablaze

with this primordial light
both day and night.

These waves have been travelling
towards us for over 13 billion years.

They are messengers carrying information
about the origin of our universe.

In 2001, a satellite called WMAP
took a photograph of our entire sky

to capture this ancient light.

The image reveals that the blueprint
of the entire universe

Was created moments after the Big Bang.

This is one of the most important images

of the sky ever taken
in the history of science.

It doesn't have the beauty
of a spiral galaxy or a nebula,

but to a scientist, to a cosmologist,

it is the most beautiful picture
ever taken.

Because it contains
a vast amount of information

about the very earliest
history of our universe.

When the CMB was first detected,

it appeared that the universe was
exactiy the same in all directions.

But WMAP shows us that
the early universe was far from uniform.

Some areas were denser than others.

And it's these ripples that seeded
all the structure in the cosmos.

The explanation for those ripples
in the CMB

is absolutely mind-blowing.

Because it's not that they originated

in the first billion billion
billion billionths of a second

after the universe began,

when the whole observable universe

was billions of times smaller
than a grain of sand.

And little fluctuations
called guantum fluctuations

made little bits of the universe
a bit denser.

Those dense regions
then got denser and denser

as the universe continued to expand.

And they seeded the formation
of the first stars

and the first galaxies in the universe.

The early universe was a hot,
almost uniform sea

of matter and radiation.

As the universe expanded,

the slightly denser regions
became increasingly dense.

Atoms clumped together
to form the first structures.

Over time, these structures
grew so massive

that they collapsed
under their own gravity.

Hydrogen fused, releasing
enormous amounts of energy.

Two hundred million years
after the Big Bang,

the first stars in the cosmos
burst into life.

Darkness was banished and the cosmos
began to fill with light.

Planets formed and fell into orbit
around the stars,

and these yourng solar systems
orbited the galaxiles.

And the only reason why
any of this exists

is because of those
tiny density fluctuations

that appeared when the
observable universe

was smaller than a grain of sand.

Without them, there would be
no planets or stars and no galaxles.

Our universe would look the same
in every direction.

For billions of years,
generations of stars lived and died.

And then, nine billion years
after it all began

in an unremarkable piece of space
in the Orion Spur of the Perseus Arm

of the galaxy called the Milky Way,
a star was born that we call the sun,

that illuminated
our embryonic solar system with light.

So the light from the star that bathes
the Farth has its ultimate origin

in the tiny ripples that appeared in the
first moments of our universe's life.

By capturing the light from the skies,

we've been able to tell the story
of the universe's origins and evolution,

and it's worth reflecting
on what a remarkable thing that is.

You know, little beings like me
scurrying around

on the surface of a rock on the edge
of one of the galaxies

have been able to understand the very
origin and evolution of the universe.

But there's öne more twist
to this story.

Because that ability to use light,

to capture it and use it
to understand our world,

may have played a key role in
the emergence of complex life on Earth.

This is the Yoho National Park
in the Rocky Mountains of Canada,

öne of the most spectacular
mountain ranges in North America.

A hundred years ago, a fossil field was
discovered here at the Burgess Shale

that may reveal how light
shaped life on Farth.

This is one of the most important
fossil sites in the world.

And actually, it's one of the most
important scientific sites of any kind.

And it's not just because of the
number and diversity of animals

you find fossilised in these rocks.

It's because of their age.

These fossils are over
500 million years old.

There is virtually no record of
complex life on Farth before this time.

İt's as if at one instant
in this time we call the Cambrian era,

complex multi-cellular life
suddenly emerged,

almost intact, on the planet.

It's called the Evolutionary Big Bang.

This is one of the beautiful animals
you find up here in the fossil beds.

It's called a trilobite.

It's a very complex organism.

It's got an external skeleton,
it's got jointed limbs,

but perhaps most remarkably, these.

Because these are compound eyes.
They were very sophisticated.

And this was one of the first predators

to be able to detect shapes
and see movement.

And it could successfully
chase its prey.

These creatures were among the first

to harness the light
that filled the universe.

Before they emerged,
the rise and fall of the sun

and the stars in the night sky
simply went unnoticed.

Now, there is a speculative theory
that the emergence of the eye

actually triggered
the Cambrian explosion,

this Evolutionary Big Bang.

Because once one species got eyes,

then other species had also
to develop eyes

to either chase them as predators
or evade them as prey.

And that led to
an evolutionary arms race.

More and more complex
life forms developed.

So the evolution of the eye
may have played a fundamental role

in the emergence
of complex life on Earth

and could have led
to the evolution of our species.

See this little thing,
although it looks unimpressive,

may be the most important animal that
we've ever discovered in our history.

It's called a pikaia,
and it's a little worm-like creature.

But it's thought that
this is a chordate,

and that is the branch of life
that we're in.

So, it could be that this is
our earliest known ancestor.

What's also fascinating
is it's also thought

that this may have been able
to detect light,

it may have had primitive cells
that were sensitive to light

and allowed it,
in a very loose sense, to see.

And if that's true, then this little guy
may be our direct ancestor.

And those little cells may be the things

that evolved over hundreds
of millions of years into our eyes.

Without pikala,
we may never have evolved

and developed the ability
to see how this story unfolded.

Ünderstanding the universe
is like a detective story.

And the evidence has been carried to us
across vast expanses of space by light.

We've even been able to capture
the light from the beginning of time.

And we've glimpsed in it
the seeds of our own origins.

And we've seen things
our ancestors wouldn't believe.

Stars being born in distant realms,

alien worlds created by gravity

and spectacular galaxies frozen in time.

But we are not mere witnesses
to these evenits.

Because the story of the universe
is our story.

We've learned how the dust of the stars
makes each and every one of us,

how a simple universal chemistry set
makes everything we see.

We've explored how the secrets
of deep time

shape the destiny of the universe

and marvelled at the brief flickering
moment in which life can exist.

And we've seen how stardust falls

to build the grandest structures
in the universe.

We know all this because of messages
carrfed on beams of light.

And isn't it a wonderful thing
that these biological light detectors

that first emerged
half a billion years ago

in the Cambrian explosion

have evolved
into those most human of things,

our green, blue and brown eyes that
are able to gaze up into the night sky,

capture the light from distant stars
and read the story of the universe?

(PURE IMAGINATTION BY MAROON 5 PLAYING)