Universe (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - The Big Bang: Before the Dawn - full transcript
It's the ultimate question: why are we here? Cutting-edge space missions take us back 13.8 billion years to the very beginning - the origin of the Universe.
Mach 1. Vehicle's now going
supersonic.
Our universe is an enigma.
An endless, inexhaustible paradox.
It's largely...
..a dark, cold and lifeless ocean.
But within this ocean...
..there are islands blazing
with light.
Galaxies.
Trillions of them.
Each one home to hundreds
of billions of stars.
And around many of these stars,
there are planets.
Alien worlds.
Each incomprehensibly strange.
There are trillions of planets
in our universe.
And one of them...
..nurtured beings capable
of contemplating this cosmic drama.
Miraculously improbable.
Brief candles flickering
against the eternal night.
As darkness begins to fall,
if you know that all those points
of light that appear one by one
in the darkening sky are distant
suns,
then it's impossible not
to be overwhelmed at the sheer scale
and majesty of it all.
The universe is infinite
in all directions and
terrifying in all directions.
But if you can overcome your fear,
then questions arise.
And surely the most profound
question of all is, how did all
this come to be here?
That's a question that's defined
much of human history, but it's only
in the last century or so that
we've had the intellectual
and technical tools to interrogate
nature directly, in search
of an answer.
And we've found that it looks for
all the world like there was a first
moment in time, a beginning
to the universe,
13.8 billion years ago -
the Big Bang.
For all the world, but not quite.
Because we've begun to suspect
that there's more to it.
And we've embarked on a heroic quest
to search for and to explore
the time before the dawn.
I can see everything quite
clearly. The light...
It has a stark beauty all its own.
Beautiful, beautiful...
For all the people back on Earth,
the crew of Apollo 8
has a message that we would
like to send to you.
In the beginning, God created the
heaven and the Earth, and the Earth
was without form - and void.
And darkness was upon the face
of the deep.
And God said, "Let there be light".
And there was light.
And God saw the light,
that it was good.
Since we first became conscious
of ourselves...
..we've looked to the heavens,
to those mysterious lights.
Searching for answers.
What is the universe?
How did it come to be?
And what is our place in the cosmos?
We sometimes doubt the creation
stories that our ancestors told.
But those ancient myths
conceal a profound truth.
The clues to the origins
of everything
can be found out there.
In light...
..which ripples to us...
..from beyond the stars.
If we're going to dare to know
about the origin of the universe,
then we have to have some
evidence, and the connection
we have with the deep past is light.
You see, light travels very slowly
on the universal scale, only 186,000
miles a second.
It takes light eight minutes
to journey from the sun to the
Earth.
It takes four years for light
to journey from the next-nearest
star.
And that means we see that star
as it was four years in the past.
So the further out into the universe
we look, the further back
in time we look.
And because we can look way out
into the distant universe,
we can look back towards
the beginning of time.
Go ahead, Charlie.
Well, we have a go for release,
and we're going to be a minute late.
OK, Charlie.
In the quest to find the origin
of the universe...
..we need a time machine.
..Look good,
and we'd like to go
to the next stage.
We concur, Charlie.
A telescope so powerful, that can
peer out so far into the universe
that it can capture the most
ancient light.
Telescope is released.
And carry us back...
..towards the dawn of time.
OK, Charlie.
The Hubble Space Telescope
has taken us on an odyssey
through the universe.
Revealing it's god's...
..and monsters.
Our universe is a place of beauty...
..and terror.
Hubble has shown us visions
of sublime creation...
..and images of awesome destruction.
Illuminating our journey
backwards in time...
..towards the dawn.
The Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery.
Clouds of gas nurturing newborn
stars in the Milky Way.
An image brought to us by light
that left the nebula
1,300 years ago.
The pillars of creation.
Towering, delicate structures,
light years tall.
7,000 years ago.
The Andromeda galaxy.
A glittering island
of a trillion suns...
..two and a half million years
ago.
A cosmic rose.
Galaxies colliding in a celestial
dance.
300 million years ago.
But Hubble's voyage has taken us
even further out into the uncharted
ocean of space.
Ever deeper into the darkness.
Glimpsing countless ancient
and faraway galaxies.
Wild and primitive shoals of stars.
Lighting the way to the primordial
past.
Until finally,
Hubble approached the farthest
shore.
A galaxy near the dawn of time.
This is a galaxy called GN-z11,
and it is one of the most distant
galaxies we've ever seen.
This is light from some
of the first stars in the universe.
It began its journey only
400 million years after
the Big Bang.
And it's taken
13.4 billion years to reach us.
When you think about that.
This light journeyed through the
universe,
and after nine billion years
of its journey, the Earth formed.
And then, during the whole history
of our planet, it completed the last
third of its journey,
and entered our telescopes.
So this is an image from the edge
of time.
GN-z11 was one of the very first
galaxies, formed at a time
when the universe itself
was taking shape.
Shortly after the Big Bang.
GN-z11 was a strange galaxy
by today's standards.
25 times smaller than the Milky Way.
But filled with enormous,
violent stars.
Lurking alongside these volatile
giants...
..there were other things.
Delicate objects struggling
in the maelstrom.
Some of the first planets
in the universe.
These were strange, primordial
worlds.
And over the horizon of one of them,
a sun rose.
Marking a new chapter in the history
of the universe.
The beginnings of a relationship
between stars and planets...
..that would,
billions of years later,
on a faraway world...
..lead to the origin of life.
Now, we don't know when or where
the first dawn broke in the
universe.
But what we do know is that
the first dawn was not the first
moment.
The stars and planets
had to come from somewhere.
So the first dawn was preceded
by a long, dark night.
Astronomers call this era
the cosmic Dark Ages.
If we continued to journey
back in time,
we'd see shadows
fall across the universe.
The galaxies would disappear.
The first primitive stars
would be extinguished one by one.
And darkness truly would
be upon the face of the deep.
Here,
in the impenetrable gloom
of the cosmic Dark Ages...
..our quest to understand
the origins of the universe...
..would seem to end.
So how can we peer into the cosmic
Dark Ages to explore the origin
of the universe?
Well, perhaps counterintuitively,
the light from the stars
can still guide us, because that
starlight has been travelling
across the universe for millions
or even billions of years to reach
us, and information about the way
the universe has changed and evolved
becomes imprinted in that starlight.
The stars have illuminated
our voyage through time.
But their light can't guide us
directly across the Dark Ages.
Instead, their light can be used
to build maps of the universe...
..in space and time.
That allow us to navigate...
..towards the moment of creation.
And the most valuable light of
all...
..comes from very particular stars
in the spectacular swansong
of their lives.
Stars exist in a permanent state
of conflict because the force
of gravity is relentless. Left
to its own devices, it will crush
anything and everything,
without limit.
But fortunately, other forces
come into play. As the star
collapses, its core heats
up and turns into a giant
nuclear fusion reactor.
Hydrogen is converted into helium.
That releases energy, which creates
a pressure, which holds the star up.
But stars like our sun burn hundreds
of millions of tonnes of hydrogen
into helium every second.
And although they are big,
they're not infinite in size.
Stars, just like human beings,
have a lifetime.
They are subject to the relentless
march of time.
Now, for stars like our sun,
the collapse continues until it
produces a new and exotic type
of star, known as a white dwarf.
White dwarves are strange beasts.
The fading remains of stars.
Super-dense, planetary-size cores,
usually composed entirely
of carbon and oxygen.
Stars that were once a million times
the size of our planet,
crushed to the size of the Earth.
Subjecting the carbon to extreme
pressures.
And making white dwarves, in effect,
stellar diamonds.
These diamond stars are critically
balanced, able to resist
the relentless inwards pull
of gravity,
but only just.
And that can make them ticking
time bombs.
In 2018, Hubble was in orbit.
The telescope focused on a galaxy
far, far away.
Hunting for a distant white dwarf
that we knew was coming to the end
of its extraordinary life.
For millions of years, the white
dwarf had remained hidden.
Locked in orbit around a much
bigger star.
A red giant.
As they circled each other,
the white dwarf's gravity drew in
gas and plasma from the red giant.
The mass of the white dwarf
increased...
..until it approached,
a critical limit.
Known as the Chandrasekhar mass.
And surpassed it.
Triggering a colossal
thermonuclear reaction.
The white dwarf detonated...
..In a gigantic explosion...
..called a supernova.
That millions of light years away...
..was detected by Hubble.
That white dwarf star or, to be more
precise, the supernova
that it became, has a name.
It's called SN 2018 GV,
and even though it is 70 million
light years away, it is so bright
that we could make a movie on it.
I mean, imagine that - this is a
star the size of a planet
ending its life with a flash
of light that's as bright
as five billion suns.
Now, although supernovas
like these only shine
for a few days,
they cast a profound light
out across the universe.
We've given a name to the sort
of supernova Hubble saw.
They're called type IA supernovae.
And they're common enough to allow
us to map the evolution
of the universe.
Type IA supernovae really
are nature's gift to us.
Because they all explode
in the same way,
that means that they all shine
with the same brightness.
And that means that if we see
one that's dimmer,
it must be farther away.
And that allows us to measure
the distance to the galaxy
that contains the supernova.
And because they shine so brightly,
we can see them tens of billions
of light years away.
That means that we can measure
the distance to galaxies all the way
out towards the edge of
the observable universe.
But there's other information
encoded in the light.
When we look at the light
from distant supernova explosions,
we see something very interesting
and very surprising,
because the light from every
single supernova that's not
in our neighbourhood is redder
than it should be.
And the further away the supernova,
the redder the light. It's called
the redshift.
Now, light has a wavelength.
And the longer the wavelength,
the redder the light.
So the explanation is that
during the time the light
has been travelling from
the supernova to us, space itself
has been stretching, and that's
stretched the light.
And that means that the universe
is expanding.
In our quest to find the origin
of the universe,
this is a vital clue.
Because if the universe
is expanding today,
then tomorrow, everything
will be farther apart.
And it follows that, yesterday...
..everything was closer together.
So if we want to understand
how it all began...
..we have to wind back time...
..through billions of yesterdays.
We have to go back to a time
before the Earth and sun...
..to a time before the galaxies.
And, all the while, the universe
is shrinking.
Getting ever smaller...
..denser and hotter.
Until we arrive at the most
famous moment in the history
of the universe.
Our universe is a place
of infinite variety.
There are galaxies of exquisite
beauty.
Stars of stupendous power.
And planets.
Countless brave new worlds.
Galaxies, stars and planets
are the things that make
our universe remarkable.
They are the things that make
it more than a barren expanse.
How did a universe of light and life
emerge from the cataclysm...
..of the Big Bang?
Unfortunately, we don't know.
We don't even know if the universe
had a beginning.
But we do know a great deal
about how the universe evolved
from a very different state
a long time in the past.
We know that 13.8 billion years ago,
this space that I'm standing in now,
and the space you're standing in
now,
and all the space out to the edge
of the observable universe,
containing two trillion galaxies,
was very hot and very dense
and has been expanding ever since.
Now, that implies that way back,
everything was closer together.
Everything was contained
in a very small speck.
But how small was that speck?
And how did it come to be?
Well, we used to think
that the universe emerged
in that state, very hot and very
dense, at the beginning of time.
And we used to call
that the Big Bang.
But now we strongly suspect
that the universe
existed before that.
And in that sense, it's possible
to speak of a time
before the Big Bang.
So what was the universe
like before the Big Bang?
The first thing to say -
is that it was very strange.
There was no matter.
All that existed
was space-time, and energy,
an ocean of energy.
Almost still.
But gently rippling.
Before the Big Bang, the universe
was a cold, alien, featureless
place.
Picture it as a near-still ocean
of energy, filling the void.
Although it contained no structures,
that energy
did have an effect on space.
It caused it to stretch.
Not the gentle expansion
we see today,
but an unimaginably violent
expansion.
That expansion is known
as inflation.
Think of a speck, a tiny,
insignificant patch of space.
Insignificant, except that many
billions of years later,
this spec would have grown to become
our entire observable universe.
The speck expanded
at a phenomenal rate.
An exponential expansion...
..that lasted...
..for just a few billion, billion,
billion, billionths...
..of a second.
Now, the speck continued to expand
until it was about the size
of this cave, and then inflation
drew rapidly to a close.
And all the energy in that ocean,
that was driving the expansion,
was dumped into space and formed
the ingredients of everything
in our observable universe.
I mean, imagine that - a space
about this size filled with enough
energy to form two trillion
galaxies.
That's what we call the Big Bang.
So the Big Bang was not,
as we commonly imagine,
some kind of explosion.
It was actually a transformation
of energy
into matter.
And the fossilised remains
of these momentous events, the
memory
of the rippling ocean of energy
that drove inflation, became
imprinted
into our universe.
In fact, these fossilised
ripples shaped our universe.
Influencing where each galaxy
and star emerged.
Each planet...
..and moon.
But how do we know all this?
How do we know
that there was a Big Bang?
How do we know that there were
ripples in an ocean of energy
before the Big Bang?
The answer is...
Sept, six, cinq...
..that we've seen them.
..trois, deux...
Planck scanned the entire cosmos...
..looking for light.
Not light from galaxies or stars.
But light from the beginning
of time.
LIQUID DRIPS
This is a photograph of
the distant past.
It's the most ancient light
in the universe.
This is light that's travelled
for almost 13.8 billion years
to reach us.
It's a photograph of the entire
sky, it's like the celestial sphere,
if you like. Every direction
that we can look.
And it's been laid
flat, so we can see it all.
It's called the cosmic microwave
background radiation,
and it's an almost featureless glow.
There are no stars and no
galaxies in this universe.
Now, you might ask the question,
Well, if there are no stars
and there are no galaxies,
then where's the light coming from?
The answer is the light is coming
from the universe itself,
because this is only a few hundred
thousand years after the Big Bang,
so the universe was hot.
So what you're seeing here
is the afterglow of the Big Bang.
The most revealing thing
about this picture
is the detail.
The variation.
This pattern is one of the most
important discoveries
in all of human history,
because it represents one
of the necessary steps in the story
of how we came to be here.
See, that's still ocean of energy
that drove the rapid expansion
of space during inflation,
could not be entirely stellar.
There had to be ripples
in the ocean.
It's a consequence of the laws
of nature, as we understand them.
And those ripples in the ocean
were imprinted into our universe
through the Big Bang, and emerged
as those areas of slightly different
density in the young universe.
And then as the universe continued
to expand and cool, the regions
that were slightly denser
collapsed to form the first
stars and galaxies.
So without those ripples,
we would not exist.
But there's one more extraordinary
thing about these ripples.
And that's the fact
that we predicted them
before we knew they existed.
And then we ventured into space
to test our theory.
Planck's observation of the
afterglow of the Big Bang is strong
evidence
for our outlandish creation saga,
the story of the speck,
the ripples, and inflation.
These ripples, then, are the seeds
of our creation, and we dared
to guess that they exist,
from our vantage point here
on a small planet 13.8 billion years
after the moment of creation.
And then, because we're scientists,
we decided to launch a spacecraft
out into space and capture
the oldest light in the universe.
And we saw that our guess
was correct.
We dared to imagine a time
before the dawn, and we proved
that our creation story
is not a myth.
So here is the creation story...
..as told by science.
In the beginning, there was an ocean
of energy
that drove a rapid expansion
of space, known as inflation.
There were ripples in the ocean.
As inflation ended,
the ocean of energy was converted
into matter...
..by the Big Bang.
And the pattern of the ripples
was imprinted into our universe,
as regions of slightly different
density in the hydrogen and helium
gas that formed shortly
after the Big Bang.
The denser regions of
gas collapsed...
..to form the first stars...
..and the first galaxies.
And nine billion years later...
..a new star formed,
in the Milky Way.
The sun.
The star was joined by eight
planets...
..including...
..Earth.
And nearly 13.8 billion years
after it all began, we emerged...
..blinking, into the light.
To see the Earth as it truly
is, small and blue and beautiful
in that eternal silence
where it floats, is to see ourselves
as riders on the Earth together,
brothers on that bright loveliness
in the eternal cold.
Brothers who know now
they are truly brothers.
We all have moments of wonder.
We all dream.
Our thoughts float free, soaring
across the Earth and out
into a canopy of stars.
In our most reflective moments,
I think we all understand
that small though we are,
we are connected to the universe.
We are collections of simple atoms.
But atoms arranged remarkably.
With the urge to explore
the universe and to comprehend it.
And celebrate our own place
in this great cosmic saga.
And if we follow that saga back,
it takes us on a pilgrimage.
To a time before the dawn...
..and to strange ripples that
existed
in a universe before our own.
I think we all must wonder
about the meaning of it all.
What does it mean to be human?
Why do we exist?
Why does anything exist at all?
These do not sound like scientific
questions.
They sound like questions
for philosophy, or theology, even.
But I think they are scientific
questions because they're questions
about nature, they're questions
about the universe. And the way
to understand the universe
is to observe it.
I mean, we've seen ripples
in the most ancient light
in the universe, laid down by events
that happened before the Big Bang.
We've seen billions of galaxies
written across the sky in a giant
cosmic web, and we've seen thousands
of planets orbiting around distant
stars, worlds beyond imagination.
Now, the lesson, to me, is clear,
we won't answer the deepest
questions
by being introverted, by looking
inwards.
We will answer them by lifting our
gaze above the horizon and looking
outwards into the universe,
beyond the stars.
We used to look
to the sky and see only questions.
Now, we're beginning to see answers.
Hubble is a very special telescope,
it's kind of like the celebrity
telescope, and for a really
good reason.
It was the first time that we were
able to launch such
a powerful, large optical
telescope into space.
The Earth's atmosphere kind of blurs
out lots of our images.
And so by putting the telescope
in space, we get these precise,
crystal-clear images of our
universe.
Three, two, one and liftoff of the
Space Shuttle Discovery, with the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Our window on the universe.
The feeling that you get
when the space shuttle takes off,
there's just the sort of, the sound
and the vibrations.
It's just incredibly awe-inspiring.
The rocket boosters
have done their job.
Go ahead, Charlie.
We have a go for release, and we're
going to be a minute late.
We were all sort of sitting
on the edge of our seats, waiting
for the very first images
where Hubble is showing us
what it can see in the universe.
And that turned into an unexpectedly
long wait.
Engineers have discovered
that the giant telescope has a
warped mirror, which means the
images sent back to NASA are
distorted.
We had this very, very precisely
engineered mirror, but it
had been very precisely
engineered to the wrong shape.
For the first three years
in the life of the Hubble,
it wasn't producing the wonderful
images that everyone had expected.
The solution was the same solution
to the fact, that as a kid,
I couldn't read the blackboard.
The solution was basically to fit
the telescope with corrective optics
so something analogous
to spectacles.
And we have a go for main engine
start.
..Three, two, one.
And we have liftoff, liftoff
of the Space Shuttle Endeavour,
on an ambitious mission to service
the Hubble Space Telescope.
It's kind of amazing that
we have to be able to position
this optical equipment
to an accuracy of better
than a millimetre, something
that you'd have trouble doing even
on the ground in your bare hands.
Firm handshake with
Mr Hubble's telescope.
Copy that.
The Vice President and I wanted to
call you and congratulate you on one
of the most spectacular space
missions in our history.
And when Hubble opened its eyes
after they were corrected, the views
that we were able to get
from that telescope changed forever
the way we understood and
visualised the universe that we
live in.
CHEERING AND LAUGHTER
The pictures are remarkable.
The trouble with Hubble is over.
It's really hard to remember
what it was like before
we had the Hubble Space Telescope.
We've gotten so used to these
extraordinary photographs
of the near, of the far, of the
very, very far.
I think any time I look at a Hubble
image, my mind gets blown
a little bit.
I was the kid that had, like,
printouts of Hubble images
in their locker.
Anybody, whether they have the heart
of an astronomer or the soul
of a poet, they're going to find
things in the images from Hubble
that just appeal to them
from the point of pure wonder.
Hubble has not only done the things
that people expected and hoped
it would, but it's actually done
a lot of things that nobody
would have dared to dream of.
One of the biggest discoveries
that came from using the Hubble
Space Telescope is that not only
is our universe getting bigger,
it's not just expanding
and stretching, it's actually
getting bigger, faster.
We can well imagine that
the universe is going to continue
to expand and get so big
that eventually the galaxies
will just disappear.
They'll, they'll, be so far away
from us and moving so rapidly,
that we have no hope of seeing
any light from them.
And that's a real possibility
for what could happen in the future.
We still have these mysteries
of what's really driving
this new phase of accelerated
expansion, and we're building
new tools to try to refine
those questions.
The Hubble telescope,
which was a marvel for its time,
is really far behind what we would
design today.
It will be completely outclassed
by the next generation telescope,
the James Webb Space Telescope,
which will see even
deeper than Hubble.
And that will give us unprecedented
detailed views. We can use it to see
through some of the very dense,
murky dust clouds and actually see
stars in the process of forming.
We also can use it to look further
and further back in time.
That's going to be a very,
very exciting story,
which is going to unfold, I think,
within the next three or four years.
Hubble is still king because
it's still a big observatory
in comparison to what we've had in
space before. Hubble is a unique
instrument for making discoveries
that no other telescope
could possibly have made.
I think when you think about
an image of space, when you think
about space, you think of
a Hubble image.
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supersonic.
Our universe is an enigma.
An endless, inexhaustible paradox.
It's largely...
..a dark, cold and lifeless ocean.
But within this ocean...
..there are islands blazing
with light.
Galaxies.
Trillions of them.
Each one home to hundreds
of billions of stars.
And around many of these stars,
there are planets.
Alien worlds.
Each incomprehensibly strange.
There are trillions of planets
in our universe.
And one of them...
..nurtured beings capable
of contemplating this cosmic drama.
Miraculously improbable.
Brief candles flickering
against the eternal night.
As darkness begins to fall,
if you know that all those points
of light that appear one by one
in the darkening sky are distant
suns,
then it's impossible not
to be overwhelmed at the sheer scale
and majesty of it all.
The universe is infinite
in all directions and
terrifying in all directions.
But if you can overcome your fear,
then questions arise.
And surely the most profound
question of all is, how did all
this come to be here?
That's a question that's defined
much of human history, but it's only
in the last century or so that
we've had the intellectual
and technical tools to interrogate
nature directly, in search
of an answer.
And we've found that it looks for
all the world like there was a first
moment in time, a beginning
to the universe,
13.8 billion years ago -
the Big Bang.
For all the world, but not quite.
Because we've begun to suspect
that there's more to it.
And we've embarked on a heroic quest
to search for and to explore
the time before the dawn.
I can see everything quite
clearly. The light...
It has a stark beauty all its own.
Beautiful, beautiful...
For all the people back on Earth,
the crew of Apollo 8
has a message that we would
like to send to you.
In the beginning, God created the
heaven and the Earth, and the Earth
was without form - and void.
And darkness was upon the face
of the deep.
And God said, "Let there be light".
And there was light.
And God saw the light,
that it was good.
Since we first became conscious
of ourselves...
..we've looked to the heavens,
to those mysterious lights.
Searching for answers.
What is the universe?
How did it come to be?
And what is our place in the cosmos?
We sometimes doubt the creation
stories that our ancestors told.
But those ancient myths
conceal a profound truth.
The clues to the origins
of everything
can be found out there.
In light...
..which ripples to us...
..from beyond the stars.
If we're going to dare to know
about the origin of the universe,
then we have to have some
evidence, and the connection
we have with the deep past is light.
You see, light travels very slowly
on the universal scale, only 186,000
miles a second.
It takes light eight minutes
to journey from the sun to the
Earth.
It takes four years for light
to journey from the next-nearest
star.
And that means we see that star
as it was four years in the past.
So the further out into the universe
we look, the further back
in time we look.
And because we can look way out
into the distant universe,
we can look back towards
the beginning of time.
Go ahead, Charlie.
Well, we have a go for release,
and we're going to be a minute late.
OK, Charlie.
In the quest to find the origin
of the universe...
..we need a time machine.
..Look good,
and we'd like to go
to the next stage.
We concur, Charlie.
A telescope so powerful, that can
peer out so far into the universe
that it can capture the most
ancient light.
Telescope is released.
And carry us back...
..towards the dawn of time.
OK, Charlie.
The Hubble Space Telescope
has taken us on an odyssey
through the universe.
Revealing it's god's...
..and monsters.
Our universe is a place of beauty...
..and terror.
Hubble has shown us visions
of sublime creation...
..and images of awesome destruction.
Illuminating our journey
backwards in time...
..towards the dawn.
The Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery.
Clouds of gas nurturing newborn
stars in the Milky Way.
An image brought to us by light
that left the nebula
1,300 years ago.
The pillars of creation.
Towering, delicate structures,
light years tall.
7,000 years ago.
The Andromeda galaxy.
A glittering island
of a trillion suns...
..two and a half million years
ago.
A cosmic rose.
Galaxies colliding in a celestial
dance.
300 million years ago.
But Hubble's voyage has taken us
even further out into the uncharted
ocean of space.
Ever deeper into the darkness.
Glimpsing countless ancient
and faraway galaxies.
Wild and primitive shoals of stars.
Lighting the way to the primordial
past.
Until finally,
Hubble approached the farthest
shore.
A galaxy near the dawn of time.
This is a galaxy called GN-z11,
and it is one of the most distant
galaxies we've ever seen.
This is light from some
of the first stars in the universe.
It began its journey only
400 million years after
the Big Bang.
And it's taken
13.4 billion years to reach us.
When you think about that.
This light journeyed through the
universe,
and after nine billion years
of its journey, the Earth formed.
And then, during the whole history
of our planet, it completed the last
third of its journey,
and entered our telescopes.
So this is an image from the edge
of time.
GN-z11 was one of the very first
galaxies, formed at a time
when the universe itself
was taking shape.
Shortly after the Big Bang.
GN-z11 was a strange galaxy
by today's standards.
25 times smaller than the Milky Way.
But filled with enormous,
violent stars.
Lurking alongside these volatile
giants...
..there were other things.
Delicate objects struggling
in the maelstrom.
Some of the first planets
in the universe.
These were strange, primordial
worlds.
And over the horizon of one of them,
a sun rose.
Marking a new chapter in the history
of the universe.
The beginnings of a relationship
between stars and planets...
..that would,
billions of years later,
on a faraway world...
..lead to the origin of life.
Now, we don't know when or where
the first dawn broke in the
universe.
But what we do know is that
the first dawn was not the first
moment.
The stars and planets
had to come from somewhere.
So the first dawn was preceded
by a long, dark night.
Astronomers call this era
the cosmic Dark Ages.
If we continued to journey
back in time,
we'd see shadows
fall across the universe.
The galaxies would disappear.
The first primitive stars
would be extinguished one by one.
And darkness truly would
be upon the face of the deep.
Here,
in the impenetrable gloom
of the cosmic Dark Ages...
..our quest to understand
the origins of the universe...
..would seem to end.
So how can we peer into the cosmic
Dark Ages to explore the origin
of the universe?
Well, perhaps counterintuitively,
the light from the stars
can still guide us, because that
starlight has been travelling
across the universe for millions
or even billions of years to reach
us, and information about the way
the universe has changed and evolved
becomes imprinted in that starlight.
The stars have illuminated
our voyage through time.
But their light can't guide us
directly across the Dark Ages.
Instead, their light can be used
to build maps of the universe...
..in space and time.
That allow us to navigate...
..towards the moment of creation.
And the most valuable light of
all...
..comes from very particular stars
in the spectacular swansong
of their lives.
Stars exist in a permanent state
of conflict because the force
of gravity is relentless. Left
to its own devices, it will crush
anything and everything,
without limit.
But fortunately, other forces
come into play. As the star
collapses, its core heats
up and turns into a giant
nuclear fusion reactor.
Hydrogen is converted into helium.
That releases energy, which creates
a pressure, which holds the star up.
But stars like our sun burn hundreds
of millions of tonnes of hydrogen
into helium every second.
And although they are big,
they're not infinite in size.
Stars, just like human beings,
have a lifetime.
They are subject to the relentless
march of time.
Now, for stars like our sun,
the collapse continues until it
produces a new and exotic type
of star, known as a white dwarf.
White dwarves are strange beasts.
The fading remains of stars.
Super-dense, planetary-size cores,
usually composed entirely
of carbon and oxygen.
Stars that were once a million times
the size of our planet,
crushed to the size of the Earth.
Subjecting the carbon to extreme
pressures.
And making white dwarves, in effect,
stellar diamonds.
These diamond stars are critically
balanced, able to resist
the relentless inwards pull
of gravity,
but only just.
And that can make them ticking
time bombs.
In 2018, Hubble was in orbit.
The telescope focused on a galaxy
far, far away.
Hunting for a distant white dwarf
that we knew was coming to the end
of its extraordinary life.
For millions of years, the white
dwarf had remained hidden.
Locked in orbit around a much
bigger star.
A red giant.
As they circled each other,
the white dwarf's gravity drew in
gas and plasma from the red giant.
The mass of the white dwarf
increased...
..until it approached,
a critical limit.
Known as the Chandrasekhar mass.
And surpassed it.
Triggering a colossal
thermonuclear reaction.
The white dwarf detonated...
..In a gigantic explosion...
..called a supernova.
That millions of light years away...
..was detected by Hubble.
That white dwarf star or, to be more
precise, the supernova
that it became, has a name.
It's called SN 2018 GV,
and even though it is 70 million
light years away, it is so bright
that we could make a movie on it.
I mean, imagine that - this is a
star the size of a planet
ending its life with a flash
of light that's as bright
as five billion suns.
Now, although supernovas
like these only shine
for a few days,
they cast a profound light
out across the universe.
We've given a name to the sort
of supernova Hubble saw.
They're called type IA supernovae.
And they're common enough to allow
us to map the evolution
of the universe.
Type IA supernovae really
are nature's gift to us.
Because they all explode
in the same way,
that means that they all shine
with the same brightness.
And that means that if we see
one that's dimmer,
it must be farther away.
And that allows us to measure
the distance to the galaxy
that contains the supernova.
And because they shine so brightly,
we can see them tens of billions
of light years away.
That means that we can measure
the distance to galaxies all the way
out towards the edge of
the observable universe.
But there's other information
encoded in the light.
When we look at the light
from distant supernova explosions,
we see something very interesting
and very surprising,
because the light from every
single supernova that's not
in our neighbourhood is redder
than it should be.
And the further away the supernova,
the redder the light. It's called
the redshift.
Now, light has a wavelength.
And the longer the wavelength,
the redder the light.
So the explanation is that
during the time the light
has been travelling from
the supernova to us, space itself
has been stretching, and that's
stretched the light.
And that means that the universe
is expanding.
In our quest to find the origin
of the universe,
this is a vital clue.
Because if the universe
is expanding today,
then tomorrow, everything
will be farther apart.
And it follows that, yesterday...
..everything was closer together.
So if we want to understand
how it all began...
..we have to wind back time...
..through billions of yesterdays.
We have to go back to a time
before the Earth and sun...
..to a time before the galaxies.
And, all the while, the universe
is shrinking.
Getting ever smaller...
..denser and hotter.
Until we arrive at the most
famous moment in the history
of the universe.
Our universe is a place
of infinite variety.
There are galaxies of exquisite
beauty.
Stars of stupendous power.
And planets.
Countless brave new worlds.
Galaxies, stars and planets
are the things that make
our universe remarkable.
They are the things that make
it more than a barren expanse.
How did a universe of light and life
emerge from the cataclysm...
..of the Big Bang?
Unfortunately, we don't know.
We don't even know if the universe
had a beginning.
But we do know a great deal
about how the universe evolved
from a very different state
a long time in the past.
We know that 13.8 billion years ago,
this space that I'm standing in now,
and the space you're standing in
now,
and all the space out to the edge
of the observable universe,
containing two trillion galaxies,
was very hot and very dense
and has been expanding ever since.
Now, that implies that way back,
everything was closer together.
Everything was contained
in a very small speck.
But how small was that speck?
And how did it come to be?
Well, we used to think
that the universe emerged
in that state, very hot and very
dense, at the beginning of time.
And we used to call
that the Big Bang.
But now we strongly suspect
that the universe
existed before that.
And in that sense, it's possible
to speak of a time
before the Big Bang.
So what was the universe
like before the Big Bang?
The first thing to say -
is that it was very strange.
There was no matter.
All that existed
was space-time, and energy,
an ocean of energy.
Almost still.
But gently rippling.
Before the Big Bang, the universe
was a cold, alien, featureless
place.
Picture it as a near-still ocean
of energy, filling the void.
Although it contained no structures,
that energy
did have an effect on space.
It caused it to stretch.
Not the gentle expansion
we see today,
but an unimaginably violent
expansion.
That expansion is known
as inflation.
Think of a speck, a tiny,
insignificant patch of space.
Insignificant, except that many
billions of years later,
this spec would have grown to become
our entire observable universe.
The speck expanded
at a phenomenal rate.
An exponential expansion...
..that lasted...
..for just a few billion, billion,
billion, billionths...
..of a second.
Now, the speck continued to expand
until it was about the size
of this cave, and then inflation
drew rapidly to a close.
And all the energy in that ocean,
that was driving the expansion,
was dumped into space and formed
the ingredients of everything
in our observable universe.
I mean, imagine that - a space
about this size filled with enough
energy to form two trillion
galaxies.
That's what we call the Big Bang.
So the Big Bang was not,
as we commonly imagine,
some kind of explosion.
It was actually a transformation
of energy
into matter.
And the fossilised remains
of these momentous events, the
memory
of the rippling ocean of energy
that drove inflation, became
imprinted
into our universe.
In fact, these fossilised
ripples shaped our universe.
Influencing where each galaxy
and star emerged.
Each planet...
..and moon.
But how do we know all this?
How do we know
that there was a Big Bang?
How do we know that there were
ripples in an ocean of energy
before the Big Bang?
The answer is...
Sept, six, cinq...
..that we've seen them.
..trois, deux...
Planck scanned the entire cosmos...
..looking for light.
Not light from galaxies or stars.
But light from the beginning
of time.
LIQUID DRIPS
This is a photograph of
the distant past.
It's the most ancient light
in the universe.
This is light that's travelled
for almost 13.8 billion years
to reach us.
It's a photograph of the entire
sky, it's like the celestial sphere,
if you like. Every direction
that we can look.
And it's been laid
flat, so we can see it all.
It's called the cosmic microwave
background radiation,
and it's an almost featureless glow.
There are no stars and no
galaxies in this universe.
Now, you might ask the question,
Well, if there are no stars
and there are no galaxies,
then where's the light coming from?
The answer is the light is coming
from the universe itself,
because this is only a few hundred
thousand years after the Big Bang,
so the universe was hot.
So what you're seeing here
is the afterglow of the Big Bang.
The most revealing thing
about this picture
is the detail.
The variation.
This pattern is one of the most
important discoveries
in all of human history,
because it represents one
of the necessary steps in the story
of how we came to be here.
See, that's still ocean of energy
that drove the rapid expansion
of space during inflation,
could not be entirely stellar.
There had to be ripples
in the ocean.
It's a consequence of the laws
of nature, as we understand them.
And those ripples in the ocean
were imprinted into our universe
through the Big Bang, and emerged
as those areas of slightly different
density in the young universe.
And then as the universe continued
to expand and cool, the regions
that were slightly denser
collapsed to form the first
stars and galaxies.
So without those ripples,
we would not exist.
But there's one more extraordinary
thing about these ripples.
And that's the fact
that we predicted them
before we knew they existed.
And then we ventured into space
to test our theory.
Planck's observation of the
afterglow of the Big Bang is strong
evidence
for our outlandish creation saga,
the story of the speck,
the ripples, and inflation.
These ripples, then, are the seeds
of our creation, and we dared
to guess that they exist,
from our vantage point here
on a small planet 13.8 billion years
after the moment of creation.
And then, because we're scientists,
we decided to launch a spacecraft
out into space and capture
the oldest light in the universe.
And we saw that our guess
was correct.
We dared to imagine a time
before the dawn, and we proved
that our creation story
is not a myth.
So here is the creation story...
..as told by science.
In the beginning, there was an ocean
of energy
that drove a rapid expansion
of space, known as inflation.
There were ripples in the ocean.
As inflation ended,
the ocean of energy was converted
into matter...
..by the Big Bang.
And the pattern of the ripples
was imprinted into our universe,
as regions of slightly different
density in the hydrogen and helium
gas that formed shortly
after the Big Bang.
The denser regions of
gas collapsed...
..to form the first stars...
..and the first galaxies.
And nine billion years later...
..a new star formed,
in the Milky Way.
The sun.
The star was joined by eight
planets...
..including...
..Earth.
And nearly 13.8 billion years
after it all began, we emerged...
..blinking, into the light.
To see the Earth as it truly
is, small and blue and beautiful
in that eternal silence
where it floats, is to see ourselves
as riders on the Earth together,
brothers on that bright loveliness
in the eternal cold.
Brothers who know now
they are truly brothers.
We all have moments of wonder.
We all dream.
Our thoughts float free, soaring
across the Earth and out
into a canopy of stars.
In our most reflective moments,
I think we all understand
that small though we are,
we are connected to the universe.
We are collections of simple atoms.
But atoms arranged remarkably.
With the urge to explore
the universe and to comprehend it.
And celebrate our own place
in this great cosmic saga.
And if we follow that saga back,
it takes us on a pilgrimage.
To a time before the dawn...
..and to strange ripples that
existed
in a universe before our own.
I think we all must wonder
about the meaning of it all.
What does it mean to be human?
Why do we exist?
Why does anything exist at all?
These do not sound like scientific
questions.
They sound like questions
for philosophy, or theology, even.
But I think they are scientific
questions because they're questions
about nature, they're questions
about the universe. And the way
to understand the universe
is to observe it.
I mean, we've seen ripples
in the most ancient light
in the universe, laid down by events
that happened before the Big Bang.
We've seen billions of galaxies
written across the sky in a giant
cosmic web, and we've seen thousands
of planets orbiting around distant
stars, worlds beyond imagination.
Now, the lesson, to me, is clear,
we won't answer the deepest
questions
by being introverted, by looking
inwards.
We will answer them by lifting our
gaze above the horizon and looking
outwards into the universe,
beyond the stars.
We used to look
to the sky and see only questions.
Now, we're beginning to see answers.
Hubble is a very special telescope,
it's kind of like the celebrity
telescope, and for a really
good reason.
It was the first time that we were
able to launch such
a powerful, large optical
telescope into space.
The Earth's atmosphere kind of blurs
out lots of our images.
And so by putting the telescope
in space, we get these precise,
crystal-clear images of our
universe.
Three, two, one and liftoff of the
Space Shuttle Discovery, with the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Our window on the universe.
The feeling that you get
when the space shuttle takes off,
there's just the sort of, the sound
and the vibrations.
It's just incredibly awe-inspiring.
The rocket boosters
have done their job.
Go ahead, Charlie.
We have a go for release, and we're
going to be a minute late.
We were all sort of sitting
on the edge of our seats, waiting
for the very first images
where Hubble is showing us
what it can see in the universe.
And that turned into an unexpectedly
long wait.
Engineers have discovered
that the giant telescope has a
warped mirror, which means the
images sent back to NASA are
distorted.
We had this very, very precisely
engineered mirror, but it
had been very precisely
engineered to the wrong shape.
For the first three years
in the life of the Hubble,
it wasn't producing the wonderful
images that everyone had expected.
The solution was the same solution
to the fact, that as a kid,
I couldn't read the blackboard.
The solution was basically to fit
the telescope with corrective optics
so something analogous
to spectacles.
And we have a go for main engine
start.
..Three, two, one.
And we have liftoff, liftoff
of the Space Shuttle Endeavour,
on an ambitious mission to service
the Hubble Space Telescope.
It's kind of amazing that
we have to be able to position
this optical equipment
to an accuracy of better
than a millimetre, something
that you'd have trouble doing even
on the ground in your bare hands.
Firm handshake with
Mr Hubble's telescope.
Copy that.
The Vice President and I wanted to
call you and congratulate you on one
of the most spectacular space
missions in our history.
And when Hubble opened its eyes
after they were corrected, the views
that we were able to get
from that telescope changed forever
the way we understood and
visualised the universe that we
live in.
CHEERING AND LAUGHTER
The pictures are remarkable.
The trouble with Hubble is over.
It's really hard to remember
what it was like before
we had the Hubble Space Telescope.
We've gotten so used to these
extraordinary photographs
of the near, of the far, of the
very, very far.
I think any time I look at a Hubble
image, my mind gets blown
a little bit.
I was the kid that had, like,
printouts of Hubble images
in their locker.
Anybody, whether they have the heart
of an astronomer or the soul
of a poet, they're going to find
things in the images from Hubble
that just appeal to them
from the point of pure wonder.
Hubble has not only done the things
that people expected and hoped
it would, but it's actually done
a lot of things that nobody
would have dared to dream of.
One of the biggest discoveries
that came from using the Hubble
Space Telescope is that not only
is our universe getting bigger,
it's not just expanding
and stretching, it's actually
getting bigger, faster.
We can well imagine that
the universe is going to continue
to expand and get so big
that eventually the galaxies
will just disappear.
They'll, they'll, be so far away
from us and moving so rapidly,
that we have no hope of seeing
any light from them.
And that's a real possibility
for what could happen in the future.
We still have these mysteries
of what's really driving
this new phase of accelerated
expansion, and we're building
new tools to try to refine
those questions.
The Hubble telescope,
which was a marvel for its time,
is really far behind what we would
design today.
It will be completely outclassed
by the next generation telescope,
the James Webb Space Telescope,
which will see even
deeper than Hubble.
And that will give us unprecedented
detailed views. We can use it to see
through some of the very dense,
murky dust clouds and actually see
stars in the process of forming.
We also can use it to look further
and further back in time.
That's going to be a very,
very exciting story,
which is going to unfold, I think,
within the next three or four years.
Hubble is still king because
it's still a big observatory
in comparison to what we've had in
space before. Hubble is a unique
instrument for making discoveries
that no other telescope
could possibly have made.
I think when you think about
an image of space, when you think
about space, you think of
a Hubble image.
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