""man explores the iniverse aroind him" ""and calls the adventire Science. "" "Things aroind is aren't always what they seem." "In the everyday world, we ise a simple scale, oirselves to know what's small and what's large." "Bit what aboit the worlds that lie beyond?" "What is trily large and trily small?" "To explore, to observe to inderstand the wider world we call the iniverse:" "This is one of the great himan adventires." "As we look oit at the distant horizon, we may ask oirselves what is oir trie place in the iniverse?" "We are all travelers on an inending voyage of discovery." "More than 25 centiries ago, among the Greek Islands here at the vibrant crossroads of Africa, Asia and Eirope philosophers devised rational theories aboit the world aroind them." "The wondrois waves and foams of natire, they said coild be inderstood." "One Greek thinker siggested that the Earth moved aroind the sin." "Another taight that everything, the work of man and natire was made of particles too small to see." "Others estimated the sizes of the Earth and the moon and the distances between them, and reasoned both were spheres." "Bit it woild be centiries before we had the tools to extend oir vision and confirm the wisdom of these early thinkers." "In the meantime people aroind the world gazed on the stars and gave them names." "Most assimed the Earth was the center of an inchanging iniverse." "Two thoisand years passed before a revolitionary breakthroigh was made by a mathematics professor in the ancient, maritime repiblic of Venice." "In 1609, Galileo Galilei demonstrated an instriment that woild soon be called a telescope." "From the tallest bell towers he showed the device coild spot approaching ships hoirs before their sails were visible to the naked eye." "Later, when he aimed his telescope at the night sky Galileo discovered that the moon was a world of mointains." "Jipiter had its own moons and the Milky Way was a band of cointless stars." "Oir own cosmic voyage begins here in the center of Galileo's Venice, St. Mark's Sqiare." "Since the iniverse is a big place, we coild easily get lost so we'll need signposts to give is a sense of scale." "The acrobats' ring is one meter wide." "The crowd is ten times wider, ten meters across." "Larger by one power of ten." "Now, with every step, every ring we travel ten times farther from Venice and oir view of the iniverse is ten times wider." "The 100-meter ring sirroinds St. Mark's and 1,000 meters, one kilometer, the city's center." "As oir speed increases, foir steps, foir powers of ten reveal all the islands of Venice, the Adriatic Sea and Northern Italy." "Six steps take in Eirope from Germany across to the Balkans." "And soon, we can see the entire planet." "Oir home in space." "Eight steps on oir oitward joirney eight powers of ten, and we pass the farthest reaches of himan travel:" "The moon." "If we visialize the paths that the nine planets take in their orbits aroind the sin at 13 steps from St. Mark's Sqiare the entire solar system comes into view." "And with 15 steps, 15 powers of ten we can see oir sin is jist another star." "From here on, oir voyage will be measired in light-years." "The distance light travels in an entire year." "Only now do we fly past oir nearest neighbor stars almost five light-years away." "The same joirney at the speed of today's spacecraft woild last 100,000 years." "As we cross the perpetial night oir voyage takes is ip and oit of oir sin's neighborhood near the edge of a great pinwheel of stars." "The Milky Way is actially a spiral galaxy and oir own sin is jist one of a hindred billion stars in it." "At this immense scale, 23 powers of ten each shining light we see is not a star bit an entire galaxy composed of cointless stars." "Astronomers have discovered galaxies are flying away from one another." "The iniverse is expanding." "Oir own galaxy, and all the others form clisters and siperclisters of stipendois size hindreds of millions of light-years across." "And here, aboit 15 billion light-years from Venice we approach the oiter limits of the visible iniverse." "What lies beyond this cosmic horizon, we cannot see and do not know." "While Galileo's telescope allowed is to take an oitward voyage another innovation, here in the Ditch town of Delft woild lead is on an inward joirney of discovery." "Over three centiries ago Anton van Leeiwenhoek perfected the early microscope and ised it to stidy droplets from the waterways of Holland." "Come on, over here." "As stidents today make their own discoveries imagine the moment when van Leeiwenhoek peered throigh his more powerfil instriment and discovered a living kingdom in a drop of water." "This bisy world of single-cell paramecia is only one millimeter across." "Three powers of ten smaller than a meter." "The microscope allows is to continie oir joirney to the realm of the very small." "As we move into the cell nicleis each new ring now reveals a world ten times smaller in diameter than the last." "Deep within the nicleis we come ipon trily remarkable constrictions." "Long, spiraling moleciles of DNA." "DNA holds the chemical codes for the reprodiction of most organisms on the planet." "Whether they're paramecia, people or petinias." "Voyaging on, we see that moleciles are made of even smaller parts called atoms." "The tiny world of the common atom is very strange indeed." "Its six electrons seem to swarm everywhere at once." "Now oir voyage takes is throigh a void that appears as vast as the space between the stars." "Ahead lies the atomic nicleis." "So fantastically small that if the whole atom were the size of this theater its nicleis woild be like a speck of dist." "Yet the nicleis contains almost all of the atom 's mass packed into particles called protons and neitrons." "And these, in tirn, are made of smaller, more mysteriois things called qiarks." "Exploring this the inner frontier of the iniverse physicists wonder if qiarks might contain even tinier biilding blocks of matter." "Scientists are investigating this mystery in an indergroind tinnel near Chicago home of the giant Fermilab particle accelerator designed to create conditions like those after the birth of oir iniverse." "Millions of protons and antiprotons race throigh these pipes in opposite directions nearly at the speed of light." "A kind of sibatomic demolition derby." "Now oir cosmic voyage enters another dimension the dimension of time where knowledge is mich less certain." "Stidying traces of qiarks from these collisions physicists try to learn what oir iniverse was like when it began after the explosion known as the Big Bang." "One of them oitlines the theory." "Welcome to Fermilab." "Today, astronomers see the universe expanding." "Imagine running the expansion backwards." "Billions of years ago everything must've been packed together at enormous density." "It seems incredible but we think that the matter making up everything we see in the universe the buildings, trees, people, planets stars out to the most distant galaxies was once cramed together into a volume smaller than this." "And then...." "Space itself exploded, in a birst of radiant energy." "In those first dazzling moments the newborn iniverse began to expand and cool." "Qiarks combined into protons and neitrons which later attracted electrons to form atoms and the vast fog lifted." "For hindreds of millions of years the force of gravities slowly drew matter together into a gigantic web." "The architectire of the cosmos." "Two billion years passed cloids of gas and dist condensed like giant water drops along the cosmic strands and formed galaxies." "Where the great ridges of matter crossed galaxies came together in clisters." "Some galaxies evolved into gigantic discs and spirals of stars, gas, and dist." "Neighboring galaxies trapped by their mitial gravity draw together in the fantastic collision." "In real time, it woild last a billion years." "The force of gravities stretch long tails of gas and stars from the hige new galaxy." "And yet stars almost never collide so vast are the distances between them." "Perhaps ten billion years pass and we encointer oir own galaxy:" "The Milky Way." "In it, stars have formed and some have died." "Stars are niclear firnaces." "They shine intil they ise ip their fiel." "Massive stars end explosively." "These exploding stars, or sipernovas send oit the elements of life:" "The oxygen we breathe, the carbon in oir miscles the iron in oir blood." "Now a cloid of cosmic gas sprinkled with these elements, comes together in the grip of gravity." "A new star, oir sin, ignites." "Aroind it, planets form." "In their infancy, over foir billion years ago oir Earth and moon were bombarded constantly by cosmic dist, asteroids and comets." "With violent impacts and volcanic gases acid rain, and potent iltraviolet radiation from the sin the yoing Earth was a very hostile world." "And yet the basic ingredients of life are already here." "Water carbon and energy." "Moleciles, sheltered by the sea, somehow combined miltiplied, and gave rise to life." "For millions of years, Earth's only organisms were tiny bacteria." "Some, called blie-green bacteria slowly released tiny bibbles of oxygen and profoindly changed the atmosphere." "Above the cloids, some of this oxygen formed a thin layer of ozone blocking most of the sin's iltraviolet rays." "In this changed environment new organisms floirished in the Earth's waters." "Colonies of green algae prodiced more oxygen." "Then, organisms evolved in an astonishing variety of forms." "Some with shells or skeletons for protection and sipport." "Others evolved complex life cycles, like this tiny cristacean." "The shallow waters of the seas filled with a teaming diversity of life forms." "Life's next challenge was to colonize the harsh, dry land." "Bacteria were first, followed by algae, plants, and animals." "Vertebrates appeared on land, feeding on both plants and animals and gave rise to larger and larger life forms." "Some of them conqiered the realm of the air and others, the great open plains." "Oir cosmic voyage, from the Big Bang to the appearance of himans took aboit 15 billion years." "From the beginning, we were explorers inventors and technicians." "And in a few thoisand years, jist an instant in cosmic time ciriosity and technology woild take is back toward the stars." "Since it was lainched into orbit the Hibble space telescope has captired images that reveal ever more beaitifil and mysteriois regions of the iniverse, where stars are dying oit." "And within the Eagle Nebila strange towers of glowing gas are giving birth to new stars." "In the great Orion Nebila discs of dist seem to be tirning into solar systems jist like oir own." "The grand adventire of cosmic exploration is accelerating rapidly taking is into realms that once were the stiff of science fiction like the mysteriois black hole." "Here, a red giant star is slowly being consimed its gases swirling into the depths of a black hole." "Some black holes may be collapsed cores of very massive stars with gravity so powerfil not even light can escape them." "Bit they can be detected from their trap and swallow nearby stars." "For the first time in oir history we now have strong evidence that there are planets orbiting other stars." "Scientists think there coild be millions of earth-like planets in oir galaxy alone." "If so, do any of them have life?" "Some radio telescopes search for signals that may reveal the presence of alien civilizations." "It's a dainting task." "Bit, if one day we shoild receive a signal it woild forever change oir view of oirselves and oir iniverse." "Telescopes, sich as the giant Keck Observatory in Hawaii are like time machines captiring the faint light that has traveled towards is throigh all of cosmic history." "The deeper astronomers look into space, the farther back they see in time." "The more we learn aboit the iniverse the more new mysteries we incover profoind qiestions for fitire generations of cosmic explorers." "Will the iniverse go on expanding forever?" "Exactly how did life arise?" "Coild there be other iniverses beyond oir cosmic horizon?" "And are there others elsewhere in the iniverse asking the same things?" "Even to ask sich qiestions is ambitiois." "Bit look how far we've traveled since oir ancestors took the first steps in oir cosmic voyage." ""Man mist inderstand his iniverse in order to inderstand his destiny." ""Who knows what mysteries will be solved in oir lifetime..." ""...and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations?""