"[breath hissing in mask]" "[wind howling]" "[NARRATOR]:" "In the beginning, there were no names." "Things don't have names." "We made them up." "Many cultures have a creation story." "They often start in a similar way." "In the beginning, there was no time." "Or put another way, time is all there was." "You don't always need to know the name of what you see." "It doesn't matter what time it is." "I guess I kind of look at the sunrise or sunset the same way as you are looking at that, and I enjoy every minute of it, when I have the time." "The beginning of time, that's a much harder question, and, uh..." "this is part of the things that we try to understand, to get hints of what happened-- if we believe this model of the big bang-- at the beginning of the universe." "[laughs]" "Okay, so let's go for the real thing, no?" "We are trying to understand our world, okay?" "So, physics is what allows us, essentially, to explain the phenomena that we see, not only in everyday life, but it's true for everything." "This is the way we understand nature." "I'm an engineer, right?" "I don't do experiments." "My side of it is how you build the experiments." "So, we're somewhere around a hundred metres underground, in the machine, in the LHC." "It's a circle 27 kilometers around, and at four locations around the machine, you have a detector." "On the deeper level, when you go deeper below the surface..." "We have to walk through and go in the back." "..." "I think that each one of us has actually a very different way of looking at things, and I would have to be somebody else inside of me to understand, really, to quantify this." "To see how strange I actually am." "So, we go inside, no?" "You know this is basic research?" "So, it is something which pushes the technology to the limit, and, uh, it's... its basic gain is exploring for the sake of knowing." "It's amazing that nature has made structures which evolved to such a complexity that they can start" "I mean, I think we should maybe start from the complete beginning- ...nature can start thinking about itself and understanding itself." "I was kind of imagining here would be a good place because you can see the people working inside." "Ah, you haven't been here?" "We haven't been here before." "Oh!" "So uh, essentially what we do in particle physics is try to probe regions of time that we can't actually see naturally." "So, we have the big bang theory, and we know that the universe started off as a hyper-energetic, really hot, very dense fireball, and now everything has expanded and cooled to what we see more today." "So you get an idea." "That is essentially the cylinder of the detector." "So, you can see those big magnets over there." "Those are the round things, there are eight of them all around," "And that's the so-called neo-spectrometer, that means the particles that managed to get out after all the filters from the different kind of detectors, and they give us a hint of new type of particles that we are looking for" "in these type of interactions, okay?" "So, that's the part I'm in charge of..." "And the way we do it is to take particles, and to accelerate them up to nearly the speed of light, as fast as we can possibly get them, and we do this by accelerating them around, and around, and around a ring" "in different directions, and then we simply smash them together." "And from Einstein's equation, e=mc squared, if we have, if we have mass, if we lots and lots of energy, we can create massive particles that have not existed since fractions of seconds after the big bang." "...so, a proton is a very complex object that carries all those sub-particles inside, and what we are looking at are collisions between two protons..." "...if we're trying to get the perfect proton-proton hit, we can't guarantee that, and lots of them are sort of glancing..." "...but to observe that one," "I have to observe or measure a billion collisions" "That are of no interest." "..." "Sort of catch all the junk from spewing its way down the tunnel." "And the most important piece, the vacuum cleaner." "[laughter]" "That's because we are in Switzerland, and you have to keep it clean." "[chuckles]" "Okay?" "Okay." "C'est bon." "C'est bon?" "The amount of data that's coming out of this is... it's unprecedented." "The amount of data we've got to deal with..." "C'est bon." "Bon." "I mean, we really are looking for the smallest things in the universe, and not only do we want to detect them, we want to measure them really, really accurately." "[chuckling]" "So, we start all over again?" "Okay, fine." "So, as we said, for me, the meaning of time, in a sense, is a part of space." "And the problem is the following:" "as we have shown..." "I mean, we are made out of atoms, and those atoms are made out of electrons, and that go around, and we have a nucleus in the middle, but we-- that in principle, our ancestors, or our fathers," "thought that they were made out of protons and neutrons, but some 30 years ago, we demonstrated they are made out of sub-particles that are called "quarks,"" "and the more we try to find a structure in them, we find that they don't have a structure." "So, those particles, they don't exist as such because they are never in any given point in space." "Time is a part of space." "We can not differentiate or take away the time from the space." "So, this is the element that essentially makes us, makes the universe, and without which nothing would exist." "Uh, so for me, this is the meaning of time, okay?" "It's the meaning that we are." "somehow, we... perceive things in one direction, and not in the other, and we actually don't know where this comes from." "Our-- our perception of time... because in the end, it could just be a perception, but, as I say," "I would expect philosophically, I guess, that most of the physicists, the picture which most of the physicists have in mind is that of somehow a time which starts when the big bang starts." "but, actually, this is just A mental picture, that, you know, you are beyond physics when you go beyond the big bang, as far as we understand today." "So, what you get... [phone rings]" "Sorry." "Just let me take this." "You know that in many languages" ""time" and "weather" actually is the same word." "[chuckles]" "[bells jingling]" "[bells jingling]" "[rain pattering]" "[rustling gently]" "[ice cream truck song plays distantly]" "[fire crackling]" "The reason why you're interested in time, I guess, is because of the human connection, right?" "Which could be physiological, it could be, you know, just philosophical, but anyway, it's the human dimension of time." "I mean, I always wonder, like, do other living species have the same feeling of time as I do?" "Time is a" "Time can be really strange... ..a perception." "..." "How it passes." "Within the..." "because we still, you know, the laws of physics and physiology that are happening," "So that we can only go so fast?" "[voices overlapping]: -the days seem to drag sometimes..." "I know time exists-- -...and the years fly by..." "because I--we see things grow, and die, and change, so I think it's more than our perception." "[more voices overlapping]" "You know, time moves so fast, it's incredible now" "For me, time, it's..." "It's so much information, it's overloaded." "..." "I don't want to waste it." "Time is my chance to do something with..." "I want to remember more and more- ..." "What I am." "Whether there are definitions of time, there are, um... situations," "When time flow was such that our perception, our human sense of time flow, would have caused us to think, or to act, or whatever, differently." "This, I don't think anyone knows." "I certainly don't." "[morning chorus of birdsong]" "I get a feeling that... that the world is a very old place, and things are always changing, and I think that that's how the world works." "It has these..." "things that come through and shake it up every once in a while." "that's part of it." "[thunder rumbling]" "I'm never sure if nature is a conscious thing or just a set of circumstances." "If time is a part of space, then maybe it's not when you are, but where you are." "In 1905, when Einstein was 26 years old, he showed that space and time and matter are a fundamental unity." "That time is not absolute, it is relative." "Time depends on your movement in space." "You, just a few feet away, see a different rainbow than I do." "Water refracting light relative to where we stand." "We all see our own unique rainbows." "We feel our own time." "[crickets chirping]" "[distant singing]" "[singing]" "[voices fade] [wind gusting]" "If you think about all these islands and how they started out from the beginning, they really all started out as a blank slate from the sea." "This cooling rock coming out of the ocean, where nothing is alive." "And from that moment, things began to make it here, to this really remote place, very slowly." "There is this incredible harmony with the native species." "there is a stability to those ecosystems." "Relationships that have evolved over long periods of time tend to be more stable in nature." "If you think about the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years of time of these species co-evolving together... today, we have new alien species coming maybe eight or ten a year that are invasive," "just on people's shoes or in cargo planes." "So we've accelerated the rate of what's coming here." "The major difference is time." "When you have an invasive species that comes, they are so aggressive, that they disrupt the function of the native ecosystem." "[birds twittering, wind gusting]" "[distant buzzing]" "Do you hear those bees?" "[buzzing]" "I believe the trees have intelligence." "Some kind of thing to teach us if we're patient enough to learn." "We evolved together, animals and plants, from the same chemistry, so it's no accident that we're related that way." "[footsteps crunch]" "I didn't want to... live like everybody else, like the multitudes." "that just never interested me." "It's amazing how much you can do without." "You know, all that... all the trappings of the civilized world back there." "'Cause it all costs something." "[helicopter whirrs overhead]" "My last neighbour got taken out in the latter part of 2008, and..." "I've been the last one ever since." "I'm used to the solitude up here, and I don't mind being... out of it." "Do you feel like you're out of time somehow here?" "It's kind of a timeless place out here." "Time can be really strange, how it passes." "I mean, the days seem to drag sometimes, and the years fly by." "I've been out here for over 30 years." "Where did the time go?" "I don't know." "[rock creaking and crackling]" "For three years, it just built a cinder cone up there." "It didn't make lava flows, and after that, it started what they call "the shielding phase,"" "which is what built these islands." "Used to be nothing but pristine forest for as far as you could see in any direction." "You know, it's all just this big engine called "earth."" "I mean, it's a very unique thing we have... it's unique as far, as we know, in the whole universe." "I had hoped things would get better in my lifetime as far as the world situation." "But, um, I don't know, it just seems to be spinning out of control." "I just wasn't interested in being a wage-slave all my life." "You only get to go through it once." "You can choose." "[helicopter whirring overhead]" "It's like a slow movie." "I was putting in the last window when it all started, and I've had a front row seat for all the action ever since." "I'm just still here because I haven't gotten in the way." "[chuckles]" "These islands are pretty young, really, in geologic time, so there has been a lot of activity out here." "In fact, just south of here, 20 miles out, there is Lo'ihi, another island coming up." "That's going to be a few million years." "I can't even think about that." "That's too much to think about." "[chuckles]" "[tone chimes]" "this is Cobo Center Station." "I think, you know, everything that's happened has happened before, and we're just either replaying it, or rewriting it with a slightly different pen, or a different paintbrush, you know?" "It's always a big experiment." "You're never going to know what the outcome will be." "I really don't think you can take Detroit out of the equation of everything that happened for techno, especially in the beginnings." "And for me." "I try to spend not too much time thinking about time, because it's one of those things that kind of twists my brain to a point where I start to feel uncomfortable." "But I definitely do feel that I'm trying to live on that edge of between now and tomorrow." "When you have those quiet moments, where you're-- where people are kind of reflecting on who they are, and where they want to go in the future, it always comes back to re-looking at those moments in the past" "and how you got to where you are." "Right on time, huh?" "[dogs barking, birds twittering]" "[ice cream truck song plays distantly]" "[ice cream truck approaches]" "[ice cream truck song reverberates softly] 380 00:58:06,015 -- 00:58:10,351" "The periods of history are so short," "and I don't know if that has to do with being in the times that we live in, or if it has to do with America." "There were two million people here, or more," "50 years ago, and now there's 800,000 or something, and it's dwindling, and so it's like one of those things, one of those dreams that keeps resurfacing." "The Earth will heal itself." "Humans will be gone, and the Earth will live on." "I see Detroit as so emblematic of American society, of, like, if the whole plan had all worked out, it would still be prosperous here." "There is, like, a blank slate, so it's whatever you want it to be, right?" "It's whatever anybody who comes here dreams it up to be, so... [sirens wail distantly]" "Today, this is a parking lot, yesterday, a movie theatre, and before that, a workshop, where Henry Ford invented the Model T." "The car changed our perception of time, by changing our perception of distance, by measuring miles per hour." "Ford perfected the assembly line here." "He paid a high hourly wage, enough for the workers to buy the car they were building, and time became money." "We still design technologies with the hope that in the future they will save us time." "But they don't save time, they spend it." "You have to be inclined to seek out the positive... [voices overlapping]" "And I want to make time a friend of mine instead of an enemy," "So I practice." "I pretend that I'm going to die tomorrow." "[laughs]" "You know, we see things, acts of destruction, and life fading all the time" "I hope it's a cycle." "I hope it's a circular construct." "You know, there is the theory that time goes in-- around and around instead of straight ahead, and I think that..." "that's more comforting to me because it's more like the things that I aspire to be, like the bees, or like the seasons, or... [clock ticking]" "[♪]" "I feel like I, um," "I feel like I experience time in cycles so much, that it's hard for me to believe that my death will be the end... for me, even." "I like the idea that I'm not just heading toward, you know, an end, but that my end will be a beginning also." "That seems just more natural, but I don't know if it is that way." "It was very strange to sort of come in and pick up where someone had left off, especially because they had left off in such a bad state." "Actually, there was a really wonderful moment one time, where we were still working on the house, and this woman comes in the house, like, tears in her eyes, and so excited, and she said, "I haven't been in here in 30 years,"" "and she wouldn't even see what was there." "she'd walk around going," ""that's where the stove used to be." "That's where my grandmother slept."" "And she went upstairs and she said," ""there used to be a little door here, and my grandma would keep her liquor in there."" "It was only 30 years ago, when her reality was happening here, but who knows?" "Who knows where they went or what happened, but they couldn't stay here anymore..." "Who knows, you know, what happened here in 30 years." "They were just gone." "We're building our houses at the pace where time is slower." "It's..." "I think it's a healthy place for my kids to grow up, and I love building the house, and the gardening." "The things that sustain our life." "Time doesn't really make me sad or upset." "It's gone before you can conceptualize it, before you can, before you can..." "I used to play that game when I was little" "I'm sure you did, too-- like, "it's now!" "no, it's now." "no, it's now!"" ""it's now," and you can never catch it, because it's gone by the time you've said it." "[insects buzzing]" "I think that's what meditation is about, isn't it?" "Just trying to, um, be present and see what's around." "listening." "To be present, and not worry about time, but be in time." "[ice cream truck song plays distantly]" "[song playing]" "Leading edge technology is what, kind of, turns me on." "You know, I want to give people an experience, you know, of something new." "I'm always looking to the... you know, I guess the future." "[♪]" "When you're, you know, with your machines, you know, it's a very personal thing, and, um, and it just happens to be plugged into the outside world." "It's, um, you know, it is a little bit like a singularity, in a way, where you could feel like everything else around you has stopped." "[♪]" "Everyone talks about living in the moment." "There is a moment where something happens, where you experience something for the first time, and, for that second, you don't understand, you kind of want to, you don't want to understand." "You want to just live in that second." "[♪]" "[song ends] [cheering and applause]" "[chanting softly]" "If you have a beginning, then there is always a problem, but if it is beginning-less, then there is no problem." "When you talk about time," "I think, uh, time itself, I think, is a kind of a label." "There is a, uh, from this perspective, I think we can say there is no such thing as "this is time."" "And everything has to be born, and then remain, and then die, and then we label them as "time,"" "and then we label them as "the past," "the present," and "future,"" "but I think, in reality, there is no such thing as time by itself." "For every Buddhist," "I think it really helps their practice, when they come and see this place, where the Buddha was enlightened." "All the rituals, and all the pujas [prayer rituals] and everything, actually, is kind of secondary for me." "You can also see The Bodhi Tree, sit under there, and you can actually experience... anyone can experience that power." "There is definitely something in the air." "[people chatting]" "This is the place where Buddha achieved his enlightenment, sitting under this luminous tree," "The Tree Of Wisdom." "That's why thousands of people, every year, pour in here, to pay their respect." "Things change, because, somehow, our perception changes." "It's the perception that drives our action and our speech, so the perception has to change, and the perception can change only through understanding, only through reason." "And to help the perception change," "I think having an open mind really, really helps." "For me, I still kind of," "I'm still entangled in the idea of time." "I still see things, you know, in the past, present, and future, so I still operate on that level to some extent, but I try to live in the present moment as far as possible." "Whatever we can do, it's in the present moment." "If we do things right in this present moment, then there is a possibility that things will change, because everything is dependent on each other, so the future is dependent on the present, nothing else." "It's a very powerful thing and we should not let it slip." "[distant shouts of anguish and mourning] [mourners talk seriously]" "[mourners weep]" "[chanting and singing]" "[pall-bearers chant a call-and-response]" "[roar of traffic passing] [chanting funeral procession passes on foot]" "[traffic horns blare]" "We live in a very mysterious world." "Essentially, everything we touch is based on previous death, the previous death of beings." "We are sitting in a cemetery." "It's a little bit scary, going into a, sort of, you know, dark, but you don't know exactly where you're going." "It's going very rapid, very fast." "[mourners talking and planning]" "It's kind of hard in terms of scale to place how long it took for life to appear on this planet." "It's been a long process." "We are in a very quiet place of our galaxy." "It is not very dense." "You know, we are in a very quaint neighborhood of our galaxy, so that has played a big role so far in these billions of years for the planets to evolve nicely, you know, especially Earth." "And how long it took for life to actually adapt to a changing environment, and to actually evolve into what we are today." "You know, just like, it just takes time, but it takes a lot of time to be conscious about all this." "We are the universe looking at itself, and I love that concept." "[footsteps crunch]" "When you look closer to the ridge, there are some of those clouds closer in, and human shadows showed up." "Right here, we see some of those rainbow-type colors around the edges..." "Yeah, it's pretty neat." "Which is really kind of wonderful." "It is still considered, you know, this special, sacred, holy place, an abode of the gods on earth, that kind of thing." "It's one of those things that you can appreciate just being out here, but to understand what it meant to people" "500 years ago is almost impossible." "It's easy to kind of get lost in these buildings if you don't know somewhat your way around." "I mean, there are light switches, but if I turn them on, then I'll have to turn them off." "Fourth floor." "The control room floor." "We've got another..." "45 minutes." "45 minutes until the sunrise." "I think it's 6:20 or something, officially, sunrise, so... [door creaks open] so, Lisa, the world is still out there?" "Yup." "Good." "[computer beeping]" "Okay." "Yeah, the light is starting to show up." "With the naked eye, you can look at two million light years away." "point a telescope on it, and then you start counting in billions of years away, and, um, because you are looking far out, the light that it took for it to travel back to us has taken as much time as the distance, right?" "so you are starting to look at the way the galaxies was four, five, ten billion years ago." "So that's what's remarkable about astronomy." "It's a fantastic time machine." "We look away, we look in the past." "The further we go, the further back we are." "Out we go!" "And the wind is blowing and the sky is brightening up." "But right now, with the less stars visible, the scorpion stands out nicely." "There's the legend of Maui the demigod fishing with his brothers, and hooking onto the islands, and rowing and rowing, paddling their canoe, and pulling up the islands." "So this is the big fish hook that was in place to hook up the islands and pull them up." "our Sun is less than halfway through its lifespan." "It will not be humans who watch the sun's death six billion years from now." "Astronomer Martin Rees points out any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria today." "[♪]" "When Joe Kittinger jumped to earth, in the pursuit of knowledge, he fell faster than the speed of sound, yet with no point of reference, he thought he was suspended in space, as though time had stopped." "While light is still reaching us from the beginning of the universe, this moment travels through space towards some being of the future." "[♪]" "[train slowing down] [station tone chimes]" "This is Cobo Center Station." "[♪]" "[tissue rustling]" "[♪]" "[reverse splash]" "In the house where I grew up, there was a book by the Russian author Dostoyevsky... it read:" ""In the Apocalypse, the angel swears that there will be no more time."" "It said very clearly and exactly," ""When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won't be any time because it won't be needed."" "Time isn't a thing." "It's an idea." "It'll die out in the mind." "So all we can do is hope that all goes well." "What is time?" "Uh, excuse me?" "What is time?" "What the time is now?" "No." "Don't forget that I'm a foreigner." "I'm not that perfect in English." "What did you mean?" "Um, what is time?" ""What is time?"" "The time is to enjoy everything you possibly can do." "Is that the right answer?" "I don't think there is a right answer." "I think we just have to make whatever time we have in our life, we have to make the most of it." "I look at it that way." "So does time go faster and faster?" "Yes." "As you get older, the time definitely goes faster and faster, and, um, we don't have that much time to do all the things one wants to do." "What day is it today?" "Today is May the 9th, 2010, and by God, it's Mother's Day." "[♪]"