Wonders of the Universe • 4 episodes •
Messengers
The final episode shows how the unique properties of light provide an insight into the origins and development of mankind and the Universe.
This episode documents how gravity has an effect across the universe, and how the relatively weak force creates an orbit. We also see how a neutron star's gravity works. Finally, there is a look back at how research on gravity has enabled us to better understand the cosmos.
The final episode shows how the unique properties of light provide an insight into the origins and development of mankind and the Universe.
Today Phil follows up last week’s look at the death of low mass stars with what comes next: a white dwarf. White dwarfs are incredibly hot and dense objects roughly the size of Earth. They also can form planetary nebulae: huge, intricately detailed objects created when the wind blown from the dying stars is lit up by the central white dwarf. They only last a few millennia. The Sun probably won’t form one, but higher mass stars do.
30 • Crash Course Astronomy • 2015 • Astronomy
The largest things in the universe are black holes. In contrast to things like planets or stars they have no physical size limit, and can literally grow endlessly. Although in reality specific things need to happen to create different kinds of black holes, from really tiny ones to the largest single things in the universe. So how do black holes grow and how large is the largest of them all?
Twin stars create an oxygen-rich atmosphere on Eden, where a teeming biosphere may parallel seasonal cycles of predation and reproduction o Earth.
S1E3 • Alien Worlds • 2020 • Astronomy
The idea of intelligence is explored in the concepts of computers (using bits as their basic units of information), whales (in their songs and their disruptions by human activities), DNA, the human brain (the evolution of the brain stem, frontal lobes, neurons, cerebral hemispheres, and corpus callosum under the Triune Brain Model), and man-made structures for collective intelligence (cities, libraries, books, computers, and satellites). The episode ends with speculation on alien intelligence and the information conveyed on the Voyager Golden Record.
11/13 • Cosmos: A Personal Voyage • 1980 • Astronomy
Ideas about time and space are explored in the changes that constellations undergo over time, the redshift and blue shift measured in interstellar objects, time dilation in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, the designs of both Leonardo da Vinci and spacecraft that could travel near light speed, time travel and its hypothetical effects on human history, the origins of the Solar System, the history of life, and the immensity of space. In Cosmos Update, the idea of faster-than-light travel by wormholes (researched by Kip Thorne and shown in Sagan’s novel Contact) is discussed.
8/13 • Cosmos: A Personal Voyage • 1980 • Astronomy
We strip apart the Sun and tear off boiling seas of plasma, light particles, and force fields layer by layer to explore the secrets that lie beneath the surface of Earth’s powerhouse.
2/6 • Strip the Cosmos • 2014 • Astronomy
