1. |
Our Story (intro)
01:38
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2. |
We Are All Connected
04:11
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[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically
[Feynman]
I think nature's imagination
Is so much greater than man's
She's never going to let us relax
[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature
[Nye]
I'm this guy standing on a planet
Really I'm just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There's billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks
[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself
Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned
I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we
[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??
(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)
[Feynman]
There's this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other
And it's all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it's all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature
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3. |
Ode to the Brain
03:40
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[Robert Winston]
It's amazing to consider that I'm holding in my hands
The place where someone once felt, thought, and loved
For centuries, scientists have been battling to understand
What this unappealing object is all about
[Vilayanur Ramachandran]
Here is this mass of jelly
You can hold in the palm of your hands
And it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space
[Carl Sagan]
The brain has evolved from the inside out
It's structure reflects all the stages through which it has passed
[Jill Bolte Taylor]
Information in the form of energy
Streams in simultaneously
Through all of our sensory systems
And then it explodes into this enormous collage
Of what this present moment looks like
What it feels like
And what it sounds like
And then it explodes into this enormous collage
And in this moment we are perfect
We are whole and we are beautiful
[Robert Winston]
It appears rather gruesome
Wrinkled like a walnut, and with the consistency of mushroom
[Carl Sagan]
What we know is encoded in cells called neurons
And there are something like a hundred trillion neural connections
This intricate and marvelous network of neurons has been called
An enchanted loom
The neurons store sounds too, and snatches of music
Whole orchestras play inside our heads
20 million volumes worth of information
Is inside the heads of every one of us
The brain is a very big place
In a very small space
No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain
We can change ourselves
Think of the possibilities
[Bill Nye]
Think of your brain as a newspaper
Think of all the information it can store
But it doesn't take up too much room
Because it's folded
[Oliver Sachs]
We see with the eyes
But we see with the brain as well
And seeing with the brain
Is often called imagination
[Various]
[Robert Winston]
It is the most mysterious part of the human body
And yet it dominates the way we live our adult lives
It is the brain
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4. |
We Are Star Dust
03:00
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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
We are part of this universe
We are in this universe
The universe is in us
Yes, the universe is in us
[Lawrence Krauss]
Every atom in your body
Came from a star that exploded
You are all star dust
From a star that exploded
[Tyson]
Look up at the night sky
We are part of that
The universe itself
Exists within us
We are star dust
In the highest exaulted way
Called by the universe
Reaching out to the universe
We are star dust
In the highest exaulted way
Reaching out to the universe
With these methods and tools of science
[Richard Feynman]
Stand in the middle and enjoy everything both ways
The tinyness of us;
The enormity of the universe
[Tyson]
The atoms that make up the human body
Are traceable to the crucibles
That cooked light elements
Into heavy elements
These stars went unstable in their later years
And then exploded
Scattering their enriched guts
Across the galaxy
[Refrain]
[Tyson]
We are part of this universe
We are in this universe
The universe is in us
Yes, the universe is in us
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5. |
Monsters of the Cosmos
03:25
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6. |
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[David Attenborough]
How could one species turn into another?
[Richard Dawkins]
How is it that we find ourselves surrounded by such complexity, such elegance?
[Bill Nye]
The genes of you and me
They're all made of DNA
We're all made of the same chemicals
DNA - we're all made of DNA
[Attenborough]
Only the fittest survive
And that is the key
Natural Selection
That is the key
[Dawkins]
We are surrounded by endless forms
Most beautiful, most wonderful
Evolution - the greatest show on Earth
There is grandeur in this view of life
Evolution - the greatest show on Earth
[Attenborough]
The history of life can be thought of
As a many branched tree
The five kingdoms of life
were established early on
Bacteria
Protists- amoeba like creatures
Fungi
Plants
And animals
[Dawkins]
We find ourselves perched on one tiny twig
In the midst of a blossoming tree of life
[refrain]
We are surrounded by millions of other species
Walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing,
Outpacing
[Attenborough]
Animals strive to reach this one ultimate goal
To ensure the survival of the next generation
This one ultimate goal
To pass on their genes
That is what life is all about
[refrain]
[Dawkins]
As we look back on the history of life
We see a picture of never ending,
ever rejuvinating novelty
[Attenborough]
Those animals may seem to us to be very remote,
strange, even fantastic
But all of us alive today
Owe our very existence to them
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7. |
The Quantum World
03:30
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[Morgan Freeman]
So, what are we really made of?
Dig deep inside the atom
and you'll find tiny particles
Held together by invisible forces
Everything is made up
Of tiny packets of energy
Born in cosmic furnaces
[Frank Close]
The atoms that we're made of have
Negatively charged electrons
Whirling around a big bulky nucleus
[Michio Kaku]
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world
[Brian Cox]
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
That's a wonderful and significant story
[Richard Feynman]
Suppose that little things
Behaved very differently
Than anything big
Nothing's really as it seems
It's so wonderfully different
Than anything big
The world is a dynamic mess
Of jiggling things
It's hard to believe
[Kaku]
The quantum theory
Is so strange and bizzare
Even Einstein couldn't get his head around it
[Cox]
In the quantum world
The world of particles
Nothing is certain
It's a world of probabilities
(refrain)
[Feynman]
It's very hard to imagine
All the crazy things
That things really are like
Electrons act like waves
No they don't exactly
They act like particles
No they don't exactly
[Stephen Hawking]
We need a theory of everything
Which is still just beyond our grasp
We need a theory of everything, perhaps
The ultimate triump of science
(refrain)
[Feynman]
I gotta stop somewhere
I'll leave you something to imagine
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8. |
A Glorious Dawn
03:32
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[Carl Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe
Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time
The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way
The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature
I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky
But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions
The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has its own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world
[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit
From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas
[Sagan]
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds
The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we've waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting
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9. |
Children of Africa
04:00
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[Jacob Bronowski]
Man is a singular creature;
He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals
So that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape
He is the shaper of the landscape
[Alice Roberts]
We are all children of Africa
They say this is where it all began
[Bronowski]
In a parched African landscape
Man first put his foot to the ground
[Roberts]
Africa was our only home
for tens of thousands of years
until a small handful of people made their way
out of Africa
[Carolyn Porco]
These beings with soaring imagination
Eventually flung themselves and their machines
Into interplanetary space
[Roberts]
We are all children of Africa
This landscape has been home to humans
Two hundred thousand years
[Porco]
We have come so far
All of this is cause for great celebration
We have come so far
This is a story about us
[Roberts]
Those early Europeans
Were people like you and me
But it is humbling
When you see the challenges they faced
People like you and me
Overcame the Neanderthals
People like you and me
Made it through the ice age
[Refrain]
[Jane Goodall]
We are not the only beings
With personalities, minds, and feelings
Chimpanzees have very clear personalities
[Robert Sapolsky]
Take a chimp brain foetally
And let it go two or three more rounds of division
And out comes symphonies and ideology
[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
Everything that we are
That distinguishes us from chimps
Emerges from that one percent
Difference in DNA
[Roberts]
People like you and me
Overcame the Neanderthals
People like you and me
Made it through the ice age
[Refrain]
[David Attenborough]
Using his burgeoning intelligence,
This most successful of all mammals
Has exploited the environment to produce food
For an ever increasing population.
Instead of controlling the environment
For the benefit of the population
Perhaps it's time we controlled the population
To allow the survival of the environment
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10. |
Beyond the Horizon
04:09
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Bill Nye:
We are at a time in history where we can change the world
What do we want to pass on to future generations?
That we just stayed here on Earth, that we didn’t look out
to find out where we come from and are we alone?
No!
We want to pass on this joy. This excitement.
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
When a nation dreams big, everything falls into place.
Nye:
Beyond the horizon
Over the next hill
That’s where we make discoveries
Tyson:
That’s the next frontier
Nye:
It is in us to look farther and deeper
It’s deep within us
That is why we are all here
Over the next hill, beyond the horizon
Tyson:
Dream of tomorrow
Long for the open seas
Call for this adventure
Dream big
Dream of tomorrow
Long for the open seas
Emily Lakdawalla:
There are lots of huge frozen worlds
Caught beyond Neptune
Huge frozen worlds
Seek out these other worlds
Hundreds of other worlds
Caught beyond Neptune
Seek out these other worlds
Tyson:
Audacious visions have the power to alter mindsets
To change assumptions about what is possible
[refrain]
Nye:
If we are to discover life on another world,
It will change the way everyone feels about what it is to be a living thing in the Cosmos.
Tyson:
Is a virus alive? Is crystal alive?
Does life need this, does life need liquid water?
Is a virus alive? Does life have metabolism?
Does life need, life need, life need, life need this?
Is a virus alive? Is crystal alive?
They’re asking these questions
Bill Nye:
Working together I claim we can
Change the world!
Carl Sagan:
There’s just a tremendously exciting prospect called solar sailing
And it works exactly as an ordinary sailboat does
It takes you to where you wanna go
It’s a whole new kind of idea
It travels on the wind from the sun
X2
Tyson:
These dreams prevail in the citizen’s ambitions.
It is time to set sail for the 21st Century.
[refrain]
Tyson:
Find your place in space
Space is vast and unexplored
And there’s a lot of work to do.
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11. |
The Poetry of Reality
03:05
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[Michael Shermer]
Science is the best tool ever devised
For understanding how the world works
[Jacob Bronowski]
Science is a very human form of knowledge
We are always at the brink of the known
[Carl Sagan]
Science is a collaborative enterprise
Spanning the generations
We remember those who prepared the way
Seeing for them also
[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
If you're scientifically literate,
The world looks very different to you
And that understanding empowers you
Refrain:
[Richard Dawkins]
There's real poetry in the real world
Science is the poetry of reality
[Sagan]
We can do science
And with it, we can improve our lives
[Jill Tarter]
The story of humans is the story of ideas
That shine light into dark corners
[Lawrence Krauss]
Scientists love mysteries
They love not knowing
[Richard Feynman]
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things
I think it's much more interesting
[Brian Greene]
There's a larger universal reality
of which we are all apart
[Stephen Hawking]
The further we probe into the universe
The more remarkable are the discoveries we make
[Carolyn Porco]
The quest for the truth, in and of itself,
Is a story that's filled with insights
(Refrain)
[Greene]
From our lonely point in the cosmos
We have through the power of thought
Been able to peer back to a brief moment
After the beginning of the universe
[PZ Meyers]
I think that science changes the way your mind works
To think a little more deeply about things
[Dawkins]
Science replaces private prejudice
With publicly verifiable evidence
(Refrain)
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12. |
Onward to the Edge
03:36
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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
The act of moving onward means we pass these sign posts
One of them was first leaving earth
The next one is hanging out on the moon
What's next? The planets
Onward to the edge
We're moving onward to the edge
Here we are together
This fragile little world
[Brian Cox]
This is our sun
Just another star in a sea of stars
The heart of the solar system
Just another star in a sea of stars
Mercury is the closest planet
This tortured piece of rock has been stripped naked
[Tyson]
The moon has a sky
It has a horizon
It's another world
It's got earth in the sky
Just the way we have the moon in the sky
(refrain)
We're not the only world to think about
Worlds unnumbered
We're not the only world to think about
Think about worlds unnumbered
[Carolyn Porco]
There is a powerful recognition
That stirs within us
When we see our own little blue ocean planet
In the skies of other worlds
The Saturn system
Offers splendor beyond compare
Because of its rings
And very diverse moons
[Tyson]
These are no longer abstractions
These are worlds
Maybe there's life there
They've changed how we think about Earth
[Cox]
A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam
The pale blue dot
(refrain)
The laws of nature create
Vastly different worlds
With the tiniest of changes
[Tyson]
When I reach to the edge of the universe
I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery
There are times when, at least for now,
One must be content to love the questions themselves
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melodysheep Seattle, Washington
musicmaker. filmmaker. pacific northwest.
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