Original subtitles

Male narrator: In the beginning, there was darkness.

And then... bang.

Giving birth to an endless expanding existence of time, space, and matter.

Every day, new discoveries are unlocking they mysterious,

the mind-blowing, the deadly secrets of a place we call the universe.

As they try to unravel the mysteries of the universe,

scientists are coming to an astounding conclusion.

To make sense of outer space, they need to understand

inner space-- The microscopic matter that

forms the foundation of everything we see.

But shrinking down billions of

times, into the realm of atoms and subatomic particles,

takes us into a strange unexplored world.

When we descend into the microscopic world, we find that

it's really weird, and indeed downright bizarre and

unbelievable.

Narrator: The stuff in this universe is far smaller than

anything we can see with a microscope, but it holds

the key to the cosmos.

We can only understand where we came from if we understand

this crazy microworld.

Narrator: So let's go on a fantastic voyage into

an uncharted world known as the microscopic universe.

Sync and corrections by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com

When people talk about the universe, they usually mean

the vast expanse of space, billions of light-years across,

that they can see with radio telescopes and cosmic imaging.

They think about stars and galaxies and planets, and all

the big stuff out there.

You have astronomical bodies moving under the force of gravity.

There are laws of nature, and you think that the laws

are right, once and for all.

Narrator: However, there is another universe--

An unseen world that governs everything we see.

When we go down in size, trillions of times smaller,

to the microscopic world... The rules are much less

intuitive than the ones we're used to from the large-scale world.

Narrator: The magic of the microscopic universe begins

at about a ten-billionth of a meter...

Or the size of an atom.

Matter behaves so differently at

rules to describe what's going on.

They call it "quantum theory."

And what it says is extraordinary.

This baseball represents a subatomic particle, like an

electron or a photon of light, that routinely does all sorts

of weird, strange things in the microscopic universe.

The subatomic version of this

baseball can be invisible, can go through solid objects with

ease, can be in multiple places at the same time, and can

seemingly go backwards in time and change the past.

This means I could throw this microscopic baseball

to first base and to home plate at the same time...

Or change the seemingly predetermined outcome of a play

while it's still going on.

Now this-- this is the stuff of science fiction.

But really we know it to be true, or at least it appears

to be true in our quantum world.

We get all sorts of weird things happening.

Narrator: If scientists can understand how these weird

things work, they'll be able to

put them to use in our everyday

world-- Revolutionizing modern computing, and perhaps even

allowing us to communicate across the cosmos instantly.

The key to making these miracles

come true is a process called "quantum entanglement."

And scientists are already harnessing this astounding

discovery for both civilian and military purposes.

In quantum physics, what happens to an object over here

can instantly affect an object

over here-- And over here could be millions of miles away.

Narrator: This is how it works.

When two subatomic particles interact, they can become

entangled-- That means their spin, position or other

properties become linked through a process unknown

to modern science.

If you then make a measurement of one of

the particles, then that instantaneously determines what

the behavior of the other particle should be.

And when the experiment is done,

it's found that indeed the other particle's quantum state is

exactly determined once you've made a measurement

of the partner particle's quantum state.

Narrator: That means if a scientist observes

one entangled particle and forces it to spin clockwise,

the other entangled particle will immediately start spinning

in the opposite direction.

That seems intriguing, but it's hardly earth-shattering

until you consider that the two entangled particles

can be separated by billions of light-years, and still,

the moment you observe one particle's spin, you've dictated

the other particle's spin.

That's weird, because it may suggest that information

has traveled instantaneously,

faster than the speed of light,

from one particle to another.

I don't understand it.

I don't know that anyone does.

"Spooky action at a distance,"

as Einstein called it.

Narrator: Quantum entanglement is more than

a curiosity of the microscopic world...

Because the effects of entangled

particles can be seen and felt in our world.

If scientists can overcome some fundamental obstacles, quantum

entanglement could someday help humans communicate across

vast distances instantly.

People sometimes think that quantum entanglement

will achieve the desired goal of transferring information

at a speed faster than that of light.

I don't think this will be achieved, because to set up these systems,

you had to have brought them there at speeds slower than

the speed of light.

But then what do I know?

A hundred years ago, they didn't think that we'd be going to the Moon.

Narrator: Quantum entanglement is far more likely

to transform modern computing.

Scientists hope to use the magic of the microscopic universe to

build powerful new computers.

We're going to see what this baby can do.

Narrator: At the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, Professor Seth Lloyd has helped create a prototype of

a quantum computer, which uses quantum bits rather than

traditional computer bits to perform its calculations.

This lab has the world's best superconducting quantum bit

or "Q-bit" in it.

And when we do quantum computations with Q-bits, we

can have the quantum computer do multiple tasks simultaneously--

It can do this, it can do that at the same time.

It can add two plus two, it can add one plus three,

and it can add those two things simultaneously.

Narrator: The fact that a single Q-bit can perform many

calculations at the same time gives the quantum computer

the potential to be far more powerful than any computer ever imagined.

Like traditional computers in the 1950s... Quantum computers are in their infancy today.

The machines take up large rooms and can do only the most basic calculations.

But they hold great promise for the future.

Quantum physics is notoriously weird, strange, and counterintuitive.

And so quantum computers use this weirdness to compute in

ways that classical computers can't.

Narrator: The major stumbling block is figuring out how

to effectively code classical information-- the ones and zeros

that computers use-- in a way the microscopic universe can process

it using entangled particles.

But when scientists figure that out, quantum computers could

transform the planet.

Even if you have a quantum computer with not that very many

bits, you might still be able to do things like break all

the codes that people use to communicate on the Internet.

Or you could solve very difficult problems having

gajillions of variables, like try to figure out what happened at the Big Bang.

Narrator: That may be hard to believe, but the microscopic

universe gets even stranger.

In fact, the most famous experiment in quantum physics

shows how one object can be in two places at the same time--

A result that startled... the great Albert Einstein.

Narrator: As scientists explore the microscopic universe, they find it's

governed by rules that are often incomprehensible to those of us

in the normal world.

At the smallest scales imaginable, not only does

information appear to travel faster than the speed of light,

but human observation often seems to decide what happens.

It seems like the behavior of quantum mechanical stuff

is different when we're looking at it than when we're not looking at it.

Narrator: This profound conclusion comes from performing

the double-hole experiment.

Scientists first conducted this experiment a century ago,

firing photons of light through a metal plate with two slits.

The light that went through the holes hit a screen behind the plate.

I'm going to demonstrate the results of this amazing

experiment, with a bunch of baseballs and a barrier

that we've set up which has two holes in it.

Now normally, in the everyday world, if I throw baseballs

through one hole or the other, they'll form a predictable

pattern on a screen that we've set up behind home plate.

They'll be in one place or the other.

Now let's make that pattern with a whole bunch of baseballs.

I'm going to use this pitching machine.

Here's the first one.

Let's see what happens.

Now you see the balls landed on the screen in two bunches,

pretty much along a direct line from each of the two holes.

That's natural-- that's what we expect.

But when we descend into the microscopic universe

and use electrons, which are 10 trillion times smaller than

baseballs, we get a very different odd result when

we perform this experiment... A pattern that you would expect

if these were waves going through both holes at the same

time and interfering with themselves.

Well, we usually think of electrons as being particles.

So how can they exhibit wavelike properties?

Narrator: These test results were confounding.

The electron was a particle before it was fired at the

screen, yet it formed a pattern on the screen as if this single

electron had gone through both holes at the same time.

Does a microscopic particle spontaneously clone itself in midair?

After years of study, scientists still don't know

exactly what's happening.

Probably the most magical thing is that in quantum physics

an object can be in more than one place at the same time.

It actually can sense both slits and actually go through

and quantum-mechanically feel the structure of both slits in

the experiment.

Most physicists agree that the math is quite solid,

and leads to solutions that are undeniable and can be confirmed

with experimental measurements.

But exactly what is happening, and how, is a matter of debate.

Narrator: To try to grasp this amazing experimental

result, scientists decided to observe how individual electrons

behaved when they went through the double slit.

How exactly could a particle go through both holes at the same time?

Scientists got a front-row seat to observe the strange

behavior of these electrons or other subatomic particles,

or even photons of light-- Doesn't really matter as long as they're small.

They didn't just look at where they landed on the screen

back there, they also watched the behavior of the particles

as they went through the holes.

And then they saw something amazing.

When scientists were watching the holes, the electrons behaved

like particles, forming the baseball-like pattern

on the screen back there.

But when the scientists weren't

watching, then the electrons behaved like waves.

They formed a pattern that looked like the interference

pattern produced by waves on a screen.

That's really strange.

What you see depends on whether you're watching or not.

If you're watching, you see the particle-like behavior like baseballs.

If you're not watching, you see a wavelike behavior.

But not both at the same time.

Narrator: This was nothing less than astounding.

Observation seems to change the nature of subatomic particles.

Mysteriously, when we're not looking, things are waves.

When we are looking, they look like particles.

So even an electron, which seems to us like a particle,

has wavelike properties when we're not looking at it.

The fact that when we don't look, the electron appears

to go through both holes, but when we do look we always see it go through

one hole or the other, is what we call the "quantum enigma."

Narrator: How could our decision about whether to observe something

change how that something acts?

There is a technical explanation.

To make an observation, you somehow have to interact

with a system-- For example, you have to shine light on it,

which then bounces off and you observe the light.

That's how we can tell that a baseball is here or there--

We bounce light off of it.

Well, for macroscopic particles, that doesn't disturb them very much.

But for microscopic particles, the act of bouncing the light

off of the particle changes where it is and how it's moving.

Narrator: So in the microscopic universe, where photons of light are about

the same size as subatomic particles, these photons

have a big impact when they illuminate the particles so we can see them.

But this doesn't answer the question "why doesn't the light

simply change the direction of the subatomic particles?

Why does observation actually change the nature of what is being observed?"

The short answer is "we don't know."

This is the fundamental mystery of quantum mechanics,

the reason why quantum mechanics is difficult.

Mysteriously, when we look at things, we see particles.

And when we're not looking, things are waves.

This is something we scientists have argued passionately about now

for almost a hundred years.

And there's still no consensus.

Narrator: When they were first released a century ago...

These test results were enough to unsettle the brightest mind in science.

Einstein said, "I don't believe in quantum physics,

because I believe the Moon is there even when I'm not looking at it."

Einstein was of course referring to the implications of

the theory that the Moon really isn't anywhere until it's observed.

Narrator: However, the double-hole experiment's mind-boggling conclusions

don't end there.

In recent years, technology has allowed scientists to perform

a fascinating variation of the test.

Its results call into question our perception of time itself.

This is like a high-tech version of the double-hole experiment.

Electrons are being fired toward a barrier with two holes in it.

But the scientists can delay their decision about whether to

observe the electrons until after they've passed through

the holes, but before they hit the screen.

It's as though I'm on a baseball field and there's a baseball

being pitched toward the barrier with the holes in it.

But my eyes are closed, so it goes through and it behaves like a wave.

But then, at the last second before it hits the screen,

I open my eyes and decide to observe it.

Narrator: At that moment, the electrons, in essence,

become particles-- and seemingly always were particles from the

time they left the electron gun.

So it's as though they went back in time to before they went

through the holes, and decided to go through one or the other--

Not through both as they would have had they been behaving like waves.

That's really crazy!

That's the enigma-- That our choice of what experiment to do determines

the prior state of the electron.

Somehow or other we've had an influence on it which appears

to travel backwards in time.

Narrator: Scientists are only beginning to grasp what these

microscopic mysteries mean for time travel, and changing

the past in our everyday world.

But one thing is clear.

The rules that govern this subatomic world hint at

a universe that's just as mysterious as science fiction.

In fact, quantum physics may suggest that reality is simply

a figment of our imagination.

Narrator: After discovering mysteries in the microscopic

universe, scientists wanted to quickly unravel, study, and solve them.

But as they tried to figure out exactly what was going on in

this strange subatomic realm... They found something completely

unexpected... Nature refused to tell them.

When we descend into the microscopic world, we find

that there's a fundamental uncertainty in essentially

all quantities that we wish to measure.

And it's not a problem with the measurement process, it's that

nature herself does not know.

Narrator: Scientists call this the "uncertainty principle."

And as strange as it is, it may be the most profound

concept to emerge from the microscopic universe.

We simply cannot know anything with absolute certainty.

In our everyday world, we think we know a lot about

the things around us.

We can actually locate, for example, the position of this

cue ball, and strike it at a certain speed which we know.

And we can use that to collide it into other balls, and go

ahead and play a game of pool.

But what actually happens if we shrink everything down

trillions of times... In that world, these pool balls

are now actually like subatomic particles.

Narrator: In this microscopic

realm, quantum physicists have found they simply cannot

determine with any precision where these particles are

located... Because of their wavelike qualities.

And what's even stranger-- If scientists try to box in

a particle, it will always generate enough energy to break

out of the box before its position and speed have been

determined.

The uncertainty principle says nature will not allow its

fundamental elements to be boxed in.

So because in the microscopic world, because particles will

interact with a completely different set of rules--

The rules of quantum physics-- Microscopic pool will be

a completely different game.

Narrator: The uncertainty of the microscopic universe

extends far beyond the location of particles.

It applies to everything, including a particle's energy.

And this gives rise to a stunning phenomenon called

"quantum tunneling."

In classical physics, if you throw a ball at a wall and

you don't throw it hard enough,

it won't go through the wall, it will bounce back.

But if it's an electron, and you don't throw it hard enough

to go through the wall... It might go through anyway.

We call that quantum tunneling.

Narrator: How can this be possible?

It may sound bizarre, but one

way to explain quantum tunneling is that the uncertainty of

the microscopic universe allows a particle to borrow

energy from the future to breach the barrier, and then

pay it back after it gets to the other side.

The electron actually already is on the other side

of the wall, and therefore it can go through it and appear

on the other side of the wall.

Narrator: Ever since these wonders of the microscopic world

were discovered a century ago, people have asked if quantum

tunneling-- being in multiple places at the same time, and

what appears to be traveling backwards in time-- can be

achieved in our everyday world.

Some scientists say we'll never be able to throw a baseball

through a solid barrier.

A baseball is a huge number of particles.

You would need all of them to collectively suddenly appear in

another place for the baseball, as a whole, to appear in another place.

And that's just extraordinarily unlikely.

A single electron or a single proton can do this.

But the bigger your particle or the bigger the collection

of particles, the more difficult that process of tunneling is.

Narrator: However, a growing number of physicists are

developing a more outrageous theory for what's going on.

We know that these tiny particles can be in two places at the same time.

But, hey, I'm made of these kinds of particles.

So if they can be in two places at once, so can I.

Narrator: Scientists call this the "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum physics.

They say, just like the electron in the double-hole experiment,

human beings are all in multiple places at the same time.

They say any time anyone makes a decision, we don't actually

choose one option over another... Instead we do them both,

in slightly different versions of reality.

What happens when you use your mind and your will

to decide things is you end up actually making many choices at

once, and all of them become realized in different parallel universes.

The many-worlds hypothesis of quantum physics says that when

I throw a curveball, I do so only in this universe.

In another universe I might be throwing a fastball.

And in still another one, I throw a knuckleball for the

first time in my life.

And in yet another universe, I heave this ball to the outfield.

In the many-worlds hypothesis, all of these choices are

outcomes that occur in universes that are parallel to our own--

Just not in ours, but in parallel universes.

That's what the many-worlds hypothesis tells us.

Narrator: This may sound far-fetched, but an impressive

array of theoretical physicists believe it's the way

the microscopic world works.

If it's true, the implications of this startling theory go far

beyond the baseball diamond.

In essence, it suggests there are universes parallel to our

own in which... The Nazis won World War II.

And in another, the American government foiled the 9/11 hijackers.

So the World Trade Center still stands in Manhattan.

If you take quantum mechanics absolutely at face value, it

says that every time you observe something quantum-mechanical,

you become two different copies of yourself...

There's the copy that got one answer, and a copy that got another answer.

It just implies there's a huge number of other copies of you

that saw slightly different things happen in the universe.

These days it's completely accepted that the microworld is weird.

Many people had hoped that this weirdness could be confined

to the microworld, so that big things like us would be immune

to it and always be in a single place.

But it's become clear now that that hope [Laughs] was naive.

The weirdness can't be confined.

Narrator: The fascinating debate about the many-worlds interpretation

of quantum physics will rage until physicists finally solve

the mysteries of the microscopic universe.

However, some astronomers are concluding that we will never be

able to fully explain any of these mysteries.

Because, according to their calculations, the vast majority of matter

holding the universe together exists in a higher dimension

that we can never explore.

Narrator: If there's anything in the microscopic universe

stranger than quantum particles, it's the mysterious matter that

scientists have never seen but that plays a crucial role

in the formation of planets, solar systems, and galaxies.

Astronomers know that there's all sorts of matter out there

that exerts a gravitational influence but that we can't see.

We call that "dark matter."

I wouldn't exist if it weren't for dark matter, because

dark matter has this nurturing force of bringing things

together to form structure, to form galaxies which are

absolutely necessary for life.

Narrator: Dark matter makes up a staggering 85% of

the gravitationally attractive stuff in the universe.

If the dark matter is some kind of particle, then typically, millions of

dark matter particles will pass through me every second.

Narrator: But even though they know dark matter exists,

astronomers have been confounded by a microscopic mystery-- What is it?

At first, they thought it was ordinary matter that, for some

reason, they couldn't see.

But what happened was astronomers went and took an inventory.

We know how much ordinary matter there is in the universe.

By "ordinary matter" we basically mean atoms-- Things

that are made out of protons, neutrons and electrons,

the elementary particles that go into making you, me, everything on Earth.

And it just doesn't measure up.

There's not nearly enough ordinary matter in the universe

to make up the total.

Narrator: This conclusion was bizarre.

How could most of the matter in the microscopic universe

not be made of protons, neutrons, and electrons?

It's been quite shocking to discover that these atoms

actually make up just a small minority of all the stuff in the universe.

There's six times more of an altogether different substance

which is invisible to us.

It's interesting to think that science has brought us

to the point where we realize not only are we not the center

of the universe, we're not even made of the same stuff

as the universe is made of, for the most part.

Most of the stuff in the universe is this dark matter,

and it's some small particle beyond the reach of our direct detection.

Narrator: Some theoretical physicists speculated that

dark matter might be made of neutrinos-- Tiny particles

a thousand times smaller than an electron, that fit many

of the known characteristics of dark matter.

We know neutrinos exist.

And they have mass, they contribute weight, so maybe we're done.

But now it's turned out that they're not neutrinos.

Most of the dark matter is probably not normal neutrinos,

because they travel very, very quickly.

And they wipe out the formation of what's called "large-scale

structure"-- The clumping of material on the scale of

galaxies, early in the universe's history.

So it would be much harder to produce galaxies if the universe

is filled with lots and lots of neutrinos zooming around.

So the dark matter is not ordinary matter, it's not

neutrinos-- It's some wholly new kind of particle that we haven't

detected yet.

It has to be some sort of weird subatomic particle left over

from the Big Bang, when the universe was very hot and dense.

A whole zoo of particles was created.

Most of them annihilated or decayed into other particles.

But some were left over, and they are what are thought

to be the dark matter.

Narrator: But what could this exotic microscopic particle be?

Since it's nothing known to science, astronomers proposed

an entirely new particle that embodied all of dark matter's

characteristics, and then began searching the universe for it.

They call it a "WIMP"-- A "weakly interacting massive particle."

One of the problems with the WIMP hypothesis is that

we've never actually detected a WIMP in a laboratory.

In fact, there's several experiments going on right this

minute to look for WIMPs in underground laboratories.

And you'd also like to make them in particle accelerators,

like the large hadron collider in Geneva.

So there's a multipronged attack to detect WIMPs directly if

they're the right answer.

Narrator: If scientists find evidence of dark matter, will

they also find evidence of another world of dark planets...

dark life-forms... and a dark matter table of elements?

I don't think they are like us, in that the dark matter

particles can form planets and so on.

Because if they could, then we would expect most of the planets

in our Solar System to actually be made of dark matter.

But I think it's much more likely that the dark sector

is many different kinds of particles that are much more

complex than just one.

Narrator: However, modern science still has not found

evidence of this mysterious microscopic material.

And a growing number of scientists argue that's because

it's not something else... It's somewhere else,

like other dimensions.

People have taken very seriously the idea that the

dark matter comes from other dimensions, or represents

ordinary particles that are actually moving in the other dimensions.

The thing about other dimensions are we don't see them, we don't

interact with them very strongly, so they're a natural

place to put the dark matter.

It's conceivable that the gravitational influence

in galaxies and clusters of galaxies that we attribute to

dark matter in our own universe, is actually caused by

concentrations of matter in other dimensions that are

felt within our dimensions, but will never be discovered within

our dimensions, because they're actually somewhere else.

Narrator: Whatever or wherever it is, many physicists

are confident they'll eventually discover a complete solution

to the dark matter mystery... Unless, they say, it simply

exists at an incredibly small size-- Far smaller than humans

have ever been able to explore.

That raises the question... "What does exist at the smallest

scales of the microscopic universe?"

That's what viewer Jason L., from Houston, Texas, wanted to...

Jason, I'm glad you asked that question.

The smallest things in the universe are the fundamental

subatomic particles-- like electrons, or the quarks

that make up protons and neutrons or neutrinos.

Now all these particles are thought to be different

vibrational modes of a little tiny entity called a "string"--

A little tiny package of energy.

And that then is the smallest thing from which everything else is made.

Narrator: Scientists have just started trying to explore

strings, and other incredibly small stuff in the microscopic universe.

And what they found offers tantalizing clues... to a world beyond.

Narrator: As they delve into smaller and smaller spaces

in the microscopic universe, scientists have successfully

looked inside atoms.

But what exists if we continue our fantastic voyage still

deeper into this subatomic netherworld?

Even scales that are smaller than the electron are really

a vast unexplored territory, more so than solar systems or

galaxies or even the universe.

Because we can make observations of planets and stars and

galaxies and the universe, but it's hard to conduct experiments

that allow us to directly explore tiny scales in time and space.

Essentially what you need to examine the microscopic world is

a sharper and sharper tool, something that actually allows

you to distinguish the details down at that very small level.

Narrator: But as scientists try to probe spaces smaller than

the atom, they cannot possibly focus enough light to illuminate them.

They need something more powerful.

To look more finely, you need more energy.

We can go to incredibly small details, using high-energy

devices of various kinds.

Now the state-of-the-art are actually particle accelerators.

We use elementary particles to actually probe the structure

of other elementary particles by colliding them together...

Letting them interact with each other, and then seeing what

comes out at various energy scales.

So we can continue this process of examining smaller and

smaller distances in space and time, by actually going to

higher and higher energy with collider experiments.

[Explosion]

Narrator: However, the world's largest particle accelerators have not yet

generated enough energy to probe things much smaller than

the elementary particles inside atoms.

Even so, scientists believe something exists at even smaller scales...

At a size so tiny, the human mind cannot possibly comprehend it.

Physicists are now trying to understand what's called

the "planck length"-- 10 to the minus-33-power centimeters.

That's 20 factors of 10-- 20 orders of magnitude smaller than an electron.

Now an electron is yea big, and I exaggerate a lot.

So the planck length is just almost unimaginably smaller

than any objects we can actually measure.

Nevertheless, physicists are trying to deal with these scales.

And that's what string theory is all about.

String theory says that everything that we think of as

a particle is actually a tiny vibrating loop of string.

To get an idea of how tiny it is, I have here an eyedropper.

We're going to put out one drop of water.

That has about a trillion trillion atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.

Now imagine taking one hydrogen atom and blowing it up

by 10 billion times.

It becomes about 1/2 a meter across.

You might say, "can we now see the individual strings inside

that hydrogen atom?"

But the answer is no.

We can continue to make it bigger-- make one hydrogen atom

the size of the Solar System.

The strings are still too small to be seen.

It's only when we make that atom the size of our observable

universe, that a string becomes macroscopically large.

If one hydrogen atom is as big as the whole observable

universe, how big is a string?

Only about the size of one of these trees.

The amazing thing is that we human beings can even talk

sensibly about what exists at this microscopic scale.

Narrator: Not only can scientists talk sensibly,

they've also formulated theories about what happens down there.

This is really one of the "holy grails" of all of science.

We think that ordinary space and time cease to exist at the planck length.

What we don't know is what takes their place.

We need to replace our idea of space itself by something more

fundamental... Something that might involve

different numbers of dimensions or just a different concept entirely.

Narrator: One possibility is that space at the planck length

resembles the grid on a football field.

The yard lines are the fabric of our universe, and there's simply

nothing in between.

It could be that time jumps from one discrete point to

another, and there are no steps in between.

And, like, little quantum mechanical ants could tunnel

from one spot on the grid to another spot on the grid

without ever going into the intervening space in between.

Why? 'Cause there isn't any intervening space in between.

Narrator: Whatever exists at this incredibly small scale,

most scientists believe that the concepts of space and time

segue into another kind of universe where shrinking smaller

is a meaningless concept.

It could be that time and space are what we call "emergent

properties" of the universe, but that if you go to very small

spatial scales, or very small intervals of time, the concepts

of time and space break down-- they don't make sense.

Narrator: Scientists say the conditions of the planck length

may be very similar to those that existed before

the Big Bang, when everything in our universe was probably

concentrated in a microscopic pinpoint.

Maybe the same answers to the question about "what happens

to the universe at the very smallest scales" may also be

connected to knowing "what was the universe like before the Big Bang?"

Did it just come into being at the Big Bang?

Or was there something different which then turned into the

universe that we're familiar with at the Big Bang?

These are all questions we don't know the answer to,

but are all connected to the issue of what's going on at the planck scale.

You might think that these tiny planck-scale things have

nothing to do with us who are much bigger.

But actually it has everything to do with us.

It's our origins.

Our entire universe, if we extrapolate backwards,

would have been smaller than the planck length.

Narrator: Whatever exists at the smallest scales of the

subatomic world, and however these things behave, scientists

say they must make sense of it all before they can possibly

comprehend the cosmos above, human behavior, and what

might have existed before the Big Bang.

It's a mind-boggling amount of information tucked inside

an unimaginably small space of our microscopic universe.

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