Origins: Back to the Beginning
Season 31 Episode 14 | 53m 31s | Video has closed captioning.
Learn about the elements and their roles in the universe.
Aired: 09/27/04
Expired: 12/15/15
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Problems Playing Video? | Closed Captioning
Season 31 Episode 14 | 53m 31s | Video has closed captioning.
Learn about the elements and their roles in the universe.
Aired: 09/27/04
Expired: 12/15/15
Problems Playing Video? | Closed Captioning
The National Science Foundation.
NARRATOR: A hellish, fiery wasteland...
a molten planet hostile to life...
yet somehow, amazingly, this is where we got our start.
How?
How did the universe, our planet,
how did we ourselves come to be?
How did the first sparks of life take hold here?
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Are we alone in the cosmos?
Where did all the stars and galaxies come from?
These questions are as ancient as human curiosity itself.
And on Origins-- a four-part NOVA miniseries--
we'll hunt for the answers.
This search takes unexpected twists and turns.
Imagine meteors delivering Earth's oceans from outer space.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Descend into a toxic underworld
where bizarre creatures hold clues to how life got its start.
And picture the view when the newborn Moon,
200,000 miles closer to Earth than today,
loomed large in the night sky.
This cosmic quest takes us back in time...
and retraces the events that created us,
this place we call home,
and perhaps life elsewhere in the cosmos.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
Coming up tonight, how did it all begin?
Right now, we're all eavesdropping
on the birth pangs of the cosmos.
The accidental discovery of the big bang
leaves scientists with nagging questions about the universe.
How big it is, how old it is, what's it made of
and what were the processes that made galaxies,
that made us?
NARRATOR: So a furious race is on to solve the ultimate mystery.
MAN: The spirit of competition is one of the things, of course,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] that drives scientists.
Keep our fingers crossed-- let's hope... and pray... okay.
NARRATOR: And as our new vision of the universe emerges,
strange ideas reveal themselves.
It seems that we are stardust.
Stars are the ultimate alchemists.
You get carbon and nitrogen and oxygen made in stars.
NARRATOR: Those elements are the building blocks of life.
That means...
WOMAN: Our universe is hospitable to life.
There are billions and billions of galaxies everywhere
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] making stars that are right for solar systems.
The habitat for life is everywhere.
NARRATOR: A scientific detective story takes you back to the beginning
on tonight's episode of Origins on NOVA right now.
NARRATOR: The grand dance of our universe is a breathtaking vision.
Stars parade across the sky in lockstep, night after night.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
The galaxies spin-- vast cities of stars
bound together to create stunningly elegant forms.
Until recently-- our own lifetime--
we couldn't hope to answer
the most basic questions about the cosmos.
Has the universe always been here?
Did it have a beginning?
I first encountered those grand mysteries
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] as a nine-year-old kid.
We came here on a field trip to the Hayden Planetarium.
It looked a lot different then.
But that first trip changed my life.
More or less on the spot,
I decided to become an astrophysicist,
even though I could barely pronounce the word.
And now, all grown up,
I've returned to the Hayden as its director.
And over that time, our understanding of the universe
has been transformed again and again.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Astronomers had long believed
that our cosmos had always existed, eternal and unchanging.
In its last version, the idea even had a name,
the steady state theory.
But that was really just an assumption.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins/tyson.html>[type:PROGRAM][name:a conversation with Tyson][CF7E] And like so much received wisdom in science,
it would ultimately be proved wrong... by accident.
The breakthrough came in the early days of the space race.
In 1962, astronauts were heroes,
and for a while, America went space crazy.
Space even made the charts when the song "Telstar,"
named for the first satellite
to transmit transatlantic phone calls,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] rocketed up to number one.
( "Telstar" playing )
The real Telstar satellite was built by AT&T,
the phone company.
( rumbling )
Telstar was the first link
in a truly global communications network.
But there were a few bugs in the system,
especially an annoying hiss
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] in those early calls relayed by satellite.
MAN: Hello?
Hello, can you hear me?
Hello?
Hello?
TYSON: AT&T engineers wondered if the problem might lie
in the way Telstar communicated with Earth,
using a form of energy called microwaves.
Telephones are actually very simple machines.
They all work in pretty much the same way.
( phone rings )
Hello.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] WOMAN: Neil, it's your mom.
I'm kind of busy now.
Look, can you call back later?
Oh...
All right, hang on a sec.
What they do is they convert sound waves
into electrical impulses
and then take those same electrical impulses
and convert them back into sound waves
at the other end of the line.
I got to go, I'm working here.
All right?
Okay, then.
Let's talk later, but thanks for calling.
Bye.
Love you.
Satellites take this one step further.
They convert the electrical impulses into forms of light
we call microwaves and radio waves.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] To get a handle on that,
let me introduce you to my cosmic tuner.
It's sensitive to all forms of light there are.
Most familiar is visible light with its rainbow of colors.
What makes one color different from the next
is simply its wavelength.
And I can use this knob to tune one wavelength to the next.
Let's start with violet.
It has the shortest of all wavelengths.
Moving to longer and longer wavelengths,
we pass from one color to the next
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] right on up to orange and then red.
There ends visible light.
But light continues beyond that.
Just increase the wavelength.
And what do you get?
Infrared.
Can't see infrared, but we feel it, we sense it as heat.
Beyond infrared we find microwaves
and then, the longest of them all, radio waves.
Both radio waves and microwaves we use to communicate
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] through Earth's atmosphere and through space itself.
As it happens, almost everything in the night sky emits energy
in the form of these same micro and radio waves.
Here is the Milky Way photographed in visible light.
And here is its image at radio wavelengths.
After World War II, this new way of looking at the sky
launched the field of radio astronomy.
And now it would lead to a phenomenal discovery.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias were both experts
in the new fields of radio and microwave astronomy,
and in 1964, AT&T's Bell Labs asked them to help figure out
what might be causing the annoying hiss
in satellite communications.
To do so, they began their detective work
with this giant antenna
that could receive signals from Telstar.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
To test the instrument,
they pointed it at an empty patch of sky.
Aiming at nothing, they expected to find nothing.
Instead, to their surprise,
they picked up a faint microwave signal,
apparently coming from empty space.
Sure that couldn't be right,
they looked for any possible source of stray microwaves.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] They even climbed into the horn
to clean up after a pair of unwelcome guests.
When was the last time we were in here?
38 years ago.
'65 or '64.
There'd been a pair of pigeons living there
and deposited pigeon droppings inside
and that was clearly
a possible microwave- loss material.
As a graduate student, I did worse things.
And you probably did, too.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Oh, yeah, you do what you have to do every day.
Probably best to plant your left foot...
NARRATOR: Nothing worked.
The hiss was still there,
and mysteriously, it seemed to be coming
from wherever they looked in the sky.
WILSON: We could by then
rule out that it came from the horn itself,
we were unaware of anything in the sky that should do it,
and we thought the horn
should not be picking up anything up from the ground.
It just was, uh... sort of surreal.
It didn't fit our idea of physics.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
TYSON: But the microwave hiss,
so perplexing to Penzias and Wilson,
did fit a radical idea
being explored by a group of physicists
just 40 miles down the road in Princeton, New Jersey.
The Princeton team was trying to prove
that our entire universe had actually been born
in a tremendous burst of energy billions of years ago.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
Team leader Bob Dicke believed
that some of that energy should still be detectable
as a faint hiss of microwaves in space.
To test that hunch, Dicke asked a young post-doc
named David Wilkinson
to set up this miniature antenna in his spare time.
WILKINSON: We weren't in any particular hurry.
Because Bob Dicke's idea was so original,
we weren't too worried
about somebody else getting there before we did.
We went down to Arch Street in Philadelphia
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] and dug around in the World War II surplus shops
to find things that were cheap.
TYSON: But before their instrument was up and running,
word reached Penzias and Wilson, who gave Dicke a call.
WILKINSON: He hung up the phone,
and I'll never forget exactly what he said.
These are his exact words.
He said, "Well, boys, we've been scooped."
TYSON: Scooped indeed, to the greatest discovery in cosmology,
the big bang.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] In the big bang, our entire universe,
all the matter, all the energy that would ever exist,
burst into being in a single instant.
A flash of light filled the cosmos,
and as the universe expanded, that light stretched with it
to longer and longer wavelengths
through the visible range, to the infrared.
Until now, that flash of light remains
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] as a faint glow of microwaves filling the entire sky...
the glow that Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias detected
with this antenna.
MAN: Penzias and Wilson's discovery of the microwave background
is what made cosmology a science.
It suddenly made you realize that history was being made.
The study of the universe, as understood by man,
was different to what it had been like yesterday.
All of a sudden you had data and you really tested a theory.
You had a theory that said
the universe started with this hot big bang,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] and what Penzias and Wilson saw
was this leftover heat from the big bang.
( trumpet fanfare playing )
TYSON: Their serendipitous discovery was so important
it won Penzias and Wilson the Nobel Prize.
PENZIAS: The actual ceremony in Stockholm was kind of a blur.
I never have quite gotten over the feeling
of not being a grown-up,
that other people are older, smarter and so forth.
I don't think that ever leaves.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] When the Nobel Prize was announced, I think probably
one of the first things I thought about
was "Do I really deserve this?"
and "Should my name be on the same list with Einstein?"
It just seemed completely wrong.
Over the years, I guess I've come to understand
that the Nobel Prize is given for discovering something,
not for being the smartest person around.
So while there are much smarter people around, uh,
we did something significant,
and I feel comfortable with it now.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Now that we know what to look for,
it's not all that hard to detect the big bang.
Take an ordinary TV set--
the old-fashioned kind before cable.
All you need to do is change the channel
until you come between two stations.
( static crackling )
Most of that static comes from stray local radio waves
hitting these rabbit-ear antennas.
But, amazingly, about one percent of the snow and noise
comes from microwaves produced in the big bang itself.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Right now we're all eavesdropping
on the birth pangs of the cosmos.
TYSON: The discovery of the big bang was revolutionary...
( exploding )
but from the start, there was a nagging problem.
According to the theory, the big bang made everything--
all the energy and all the matter in the cosmos.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] In the modern universe, matter is concentrated into lumps--
vast webs of galaxies
with hardly anything in the voids between.
But the microwave glow Penzias and Wilson had seen
showed no structure at all.
And that's the problem-- a big one.
The microwave glow of the big bang seemed perfectly smooth,
the same everywhere on the sky.
But if that were true,
then the universe that evolved from that big bang
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] should be just as smooth, like this formless fog.
So then how did our universe come to be filled
with clumps of stuff-- galaxies, suns and planets?
Maybe the early universe was not as featureless as it seemed.
Maybe it contained some tiny seeds--
little dense spots that gravity could shape
into the cosmic structures we see today.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Cosmologists figured
that those slightly denser regions in the early universe
would show up as bright spots
in the microwave glow of the big bang.
So they set out to find them.
They would look, and look, and look, for 30 years,
and they would find... nothing.
The astonishing thing is that the harder we looked,
the more mysterious the universe became,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] because all we saw was a blank sheet of paper.
Nothing was written on it at all.
And we went down to a part in 1,000.
It was a blank sheet.
We went down to a part in 10,000.
It was a blank sheet.
It was at this point
that my colleagues at Caltech started telling me
that I was proving we weren't here.
TYSON: No lumps...
no galaxies...
no us.
That's what every observation
of the big bang's microwave glow seemed to show.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Either we just didn't understand the big bang,
or secrets remained hidden
within the microwave glow of the infant universe.
Finally astronomers wanted
to settle the question once and for all.
Flying above Earth's atmosphere, this satellite, called COBE,
was designed to find the telltale bright spots
within the apparently uniform microwave glow,
if they were there.
MAN: As a member of the COBE team, we wondered all the time,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] would we detect this nonuniformity, or wouldn't we?
We thought that theoretically it should be there.
For 30 years people had thought that, too,
and went out and made measurements and didn't find it.
So we didn't know for a fact whether we'd see it or not.
It was a crapshoot.
MISSION CONTROL: Main engine start, and liftoff!
Liftoff of Delta 189,
and the cosmic-observation background explored.
TYSON: NASA launched COBE in 1989.
MISSION CONTROL: Solid rocket boosters have been jettisoned on time.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] All events are...
TYSON: It would spend two years in near-Earth orbit,
observing the microwave hiss-- the energy of the big bang--
at hundreds of thousands of points on the sky.
When it accumulated enough data, COBE revealed this.
A blotchy pattern
that doesn't look very dramatic to most people,
but to astronomers it was a revelation.
BENNETT: Well, we didn't, as some people said,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] see the face of God in the COBE picture.
What we did see was a spectacular face
of the early universe, which was just what we wanted to see.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins/universe.html>[type:PROGRAM][name:history of the universe][775E] TYSON: This was what they had been waiting for.
The blue colors reveal places
where there's slightly more matter in the early universe.
From these concentrations of matter,
gravity will carve out galaxies and stars, suns and planets,
and eventually, our home.
In one brilliant stroke,
COBE confirmed that the universe, as we know it,
evolved out of the cataclysm of the big bang.
But at the same time, it left much of the story untold.
You see, COBE had a limitation-- a kind of fuzzy vision.
A COBE picture of me would look something like this.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
You can tell that you're looking at a face,
but not whether I'm 20 years old or 60, or anything in between.
It was much the same with COBE.
Its picture was too fuzzy
to reveal much of what was really happening
in the early universe.
It was as though we had seen the Earth,
and we knew there were oceans
and we knew there were continents.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] But we didn't know how continents formed.
We didn't know that there were mountain ranges.
We didn't know that there were grand canyons,
that there were polar caps.
SPERGEL: The microwave background
has encoded in it a tremendous amount of information
about the properties of the universe--
how old it is, what it's made of,
how many atoms there are in the universe,
how fast it's expanding.
And with the COBE data,
we couldn't answer any of those questions.
TYSON: In other words, COBE was teasing us.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
Its fuzzy picture concealed clues to fundamental mysteries--
everything from the age of the universe
to the events that unfolded
in the first moments of the big bang itself.
To uncover these clues, we needed a much sharper image
of the big bang's microwave glow.
That's why NASA built this: COBE's successor--
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] a satellite called WMAP.
The "W" stands for the late David Wilkinson--
one of the Princeton group that pioneered the search
for the remnants of the big bang.
Its 20 horns were designed to collect microwaves
from the infant cosmos with unprecedented precision,
and its state-of-the-art electronics
could then assemble an ultrasharp image
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] from the faint signal that the horns collected.
The WMAP team started work on its satellite in 1996,
and from the beginning,
as mission leader Chuck Bennett recalls...
The enemy was Murphy.
Murphy's Law happens.
Murphy's Law says that if anything can go wrong,
it will go wrong, and believe me, it's true.
Did you hear about the problem we're having with the grounding?
No, tell me.
What's going on?
TYSON: This was Chuck Bennett's life--
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] coping with the inevitable crises
that almost daily threatened the WMAP mission.
It would take at least seven years to get results--
a schedule that would give NASA's rivals
a window of opportunity.
Ambitious observers like Tony Readhead set out
to see if they could beat NASA
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] to major discoveries of their own.
READHEAD: I think it's very important to recognize, of course,
that the spirit of competition is one of the things, of course,
that drives scientists, just like everybody else.
And then the idea that the... the huge agency of NASA
was going to go out there
and they were going to really do the job properly--
they were going to provide people
with a three-course meal-- made many of us feel
that we would really like to go out there
and perhaps get a few appetizers in,
which might answer the most fundamental
and interesting questions first.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
TYSON: Beginning work in 1999, Tony knows he cannot compete
with the space agency's formidable resources,
so he sets his sights on one piece of the puzzle.
He decides to make remarkably detailed observations
of a few tiny patches of the sky,
hoping to capture the sharpest images yet
of the big bang's microwave glow.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
If he succeeds, he will be the first
to go beyond COBE's fuzzy picture
and identify the tiniest seeds of matter
that gave rise to the universe we live in.
To make this discovery, Tony and his team build an instrument
called the Cosmic Background Imager.
( instrument whirring )
What looks like an array of giant tin cans
is 13 sensitive microwave antennas linked together.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] This kind of array is the perfect design
to produce the exceptionally detailed images Tony seeks.
But there's a price to pay for such precision.
READHEAD: In order to do observations of the microwave background,
you have to get above most of the water vapor
in the atmosphere,
so you either have to go to space--
but that's very expensive--
or you have to go to the South Pole
or come to a place like this,
which is up at a very high altitude in the Andes.
In other words, you really have to get halfway to space
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] if you're going to want to compete
with the guys who are out in space.
TYSON: But to work up this high-- almost 17,000 feet--
the team must use oxygen tanks, and they are always vulnerable
to the bitter cold, the wind and the weather.
Just ahead of what was supposed to be a routine observing run,
a ferocious three-day blizzard
knocks out a key telescope drive motor.
When you tried to drive, it just didn't move.
TYSON: The instrument can't track the sky
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] with the precision Tony needs.
But this won't power up.
TYSON: If the telescope can't move, Tony can't observe.
READHEAD: Okay, so it's really sure that it's in the control box.
TYSON: It's a setback, but a minor one, Tony devoutly hopes.
If it's a problem with the motor, that's a big problem.
Of course this is extremely annoying,
because we go to extraordinary lengths
to try to ensure that we don't lose any observing time.
We really cannot afford to be down for a few days,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] and if we're down for six weeks,
it is a very big problem indeed for us.
ALL: 2.8... 2.8... 2.8.
And then, perhaps, just pick another...
TYSON: Isolated on their mountaintop,
Tony, Ricardo and Eduardo now struggle without backup
to fix their broken motor.
But in a way, they're fortunate.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] The WMAP team will have no such luxury
to fix anything that breaks,
once their satellite reaches space.
BENNETT: Once you launch the thing,
you don't get to turn that screwdriver one last time
or make an adjustment or replace the part that broke.
It's got to be right.
One of the key things to make sure that you've got it right
is to test it, and test it, and test it again.
The MGSC has been left here.
Right.
No tools left behind.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] TYSON: WMAP's final hurdle comes in this giant vacuum chamber,
built to replicate the cold and the airlessness of space itself.
The satellite cycles through here again and again to ensure
that no mission-threatening flaw remains.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Ricardo, can you check
that there are no ladders around the telescope?
TYSON: Tony's struggle is paying off.
After three days,
the team believes they have resuscitated their broken motor.
Is it done?
Okay, please switch on the drive key.
It's on.
I'm going to try a small slew in azimuth.
Yes, keep your fingers crossed.
Keep our fingers crossed.
Let's hope and pray, okay.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Yes, it moved.
That's fantastic.
READHEAD: This is really great.
We came back from a major crisis here
over the last three days.
These guys have done a wonderful job.
Excellent.
Great.
TYSON: With his telescope operational again,
Tony can finally get back to the painstaking task
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] of collecting cosmic microwaves.
It's slow work.
It takes a minimum of 50 nights
to create a usable image of a tiny patch of the sky.
Finally, five years into the project,
the WMAP satellite passes its last test.
There's nothing left to do.
Either the instrument will work in space, or it won't.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] It's time to fly.
Chuck, of course, continues to fret.
BENNETT: We finally reached a point in the project
when it was time to package up the satellite
and send it down to the Kennedy Space Center.
Of course the problems didn't stop there.
We had to put some things back together again
that we had to take apart,
and we found little problems along the way.
TECHNICIAN: Igniters armed; green board.
Five, four, three, two, one...
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] main engines start, and liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket
with the MAP spacecraft.
BENNETT: In the end we launched within the first seconds
of the first day of our launch window.
It was a picture-perfect launch, everything went very smoothly.
TECHNICIAN: Initially a smooth flight being reported.
Solid motors are now at maximum thrust.
PAGE: When it was being launched, your heart's in your mouth.
You've poured your life into this thing.
You know, you eat it, you drink it, you breathe it,
you wake up at night thinking about something
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] that you might have not done right.
And it launched, and it got off the ground
and that was incredible.
TYSON: After its launch, WMAP still has a three-month journey
to reach its final destination:
a million miles from Earth, a special location--
the Sun and Earth's second Lagrangian point, or L2.
At L2, the combined gravitational pull
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] of the Sun and Earth will hold the satellite in a fixed orbit.
In that position, WMAP's shielding can block out
the contaminating microwave radiation
from the Sun and the Earth.
But getting there takes one of the most complex trajectories
ever planned for a space science mission.
BENNETT: One of the headquarters officials
was visiting me one day
and asked me, "What part are you most worried about?"
And I said, "Getting from here to there."
TYSON: WMAP's guidance systems perform flawlessly.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] But once it reaches L2,
the satellite still needs a full year
to produce its first results.
That year gives Tony just the time he needs.
Before NASA's WMAP can report back,
Tony manages to gather enough data to yield a major discovery.
One tends to forget,
because of all the difficulties that one has to go through,
just the true wonder of what we are seeing.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] TYSON: What we are seeing are fine details,
more than 100 times smaller than those COBE saw--
the first direct observational link
between the early universe and the one we live in.
READHEAD: These brighter spots-- hotter in temperature--
are showing where there is more stuff,
and that's extremely exciting, because it's actually showing
where all the structure in the universe
that we see around us today came from.
TYSON: Over billions of years,
gravity will transform this slightly denser clump of stuff
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] into this: a cluster of galaxies,
home to trillions of stars like our own sun.
READHEAD: Had there not been seeds
like this in the microwave background
showing that there was more stuff,
we wouldn't be here today talking about it.
This is a wonderful time in science.
This is actually the best time in science,
because we have the satisfaction
of through these observations and these discoveries
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] having confirmed certain predictions.
We are actually on the brink of a revolution
of unimaginable proportions.
TYSON: In February 2003, that revolution takes off.
In just over a year, WMAP has sampled
more than two million points in the sky.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Finally, almost four decades
after the faint glow of the big bang was first detected,
the satellite delivers a beautifully detailed picture
of the peaks and valleys
that mark where the matter lies in our newborn universe.
So, David, this is it, huh?
This is the map.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] This is what the universe looked like
380,000 years after the big bang.
Were you the first one to see this
when it came from the telescope?
I think I was the first one
to see this particular version of the map.
What did it feel like?
Oh, it was so cool, I mean, you know...
to know that you are one of the few people
who get to see this first was just awesome.
TYSON: In this version of the WMAP picture,
the peaks are hot spots that show
where the superclusters of galaxies will form;
the valleys will become empty space.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
Most important, this pattern is so detailed
that cosmologists can now piece together almost the entire story
of what happened during the birth of the universe
to create the structures we see today.
The big bang itself remains shrouded in mystery,
although WMAP tells us that the universe's birthday
came 13.7 billion years ago.
Using WMAP data, we can reach back almost to that beginning,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] at a time when the universe was tiny--
much smaller than this pearl.
We're not sure what came next, but our best current idea
is that an event called inflation
triggered a hyper-fast expansion,
enlarging the universe
a trillion-trillion- trillion fold.
But just as suddenly as it began, inflation stops,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] leaving behind a dense, hot, violent universe.
All of space is filled with a zoo of exotic particles,
the precursors of ordinary matter...
and all the light within the cosmos
is trapped in an endless pinball game
bouncing off these particles.
But as the universe continues to expand, it cools,
until at last, 380,000 years after the big bang,
temperatures fall to the point<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
at which familiar, stable atoms can form.
In that instant the primordial fog clears,
and the light from the big bang flashes free...
forming the image that WMAP has captured--
a true baby picture of the cosmos.
SPERGEL: The really remarkable thing that MAP found
was the universe was incredibly simple.
I think we're now close to the right story
for how the universe evolved
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] from a second or so after the big bang till today.
TYSON: But not so fast.
There are no signs of life in this picture.
The WMAP universe contains only the simplest atoms,
mostly hydrogen-- just a single proton with one electron--
along with a little bit of helium.
Living chemistry requires more complex building blocks--
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] carbon, oxygen, iron and the rest.
But if they didn't exist in the early universe,
where did they come from?
Recent supercomputing simulations
show the infant universe
filled with vast, billowing clouds of hydrogen.
Almost immediately, the clouds begin to condense,
pulled together by their own gravity.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
As hydrogen piles on,
the central region grows more and more dense...
until something brand new lights up the universe-- a star.
These first stars are hydrogen giants,
100 times or more larger than our own sun.
Such massive stars are short-lived--
two or three million years at the most--
and they go out with a bang...
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] in explosions so big, they have been dubbed "hypernovae."
And it's with these cataclysms
that the universe begins to accumulate
the building blocks of life.
All the atoms in the universe heavier than hydrogen and helium
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] are forged by stars.
MAN: Stars are really interesting;
they don't just sit there.
You know, because they last so much longer than we do,
we think they're permanent.
Stars are the ultimate alchemists.
They turn light elements into heavier ones.
They get the energy that they need to glow that way.
A star begins its life
made out of hydrogen and helium, mostly--
about 70% hydrogen, 28% helium in the case of the Sun.
TYSON: In a star's core,
the temperature and pressure are so high
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] that hydrogen atoms fuse together to make helium.
Hydrogen fusion releases prodigious amounts of energy--
the heat and light of a star.
That's the story for 90% of the life of a star:
fusing hydrogen to make helium.
TYSON: Eventually, though, the star runs out of hydrogen
and begins to fuse its stocks of helium,
making yet heavier elements.
And so the way it works-- and it always works this way--
is that it contracts and it gets hotter.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] And if it can find something new to burn,
whether it's the kitchen sink or coal or whatever,
it will burn it.
Helium is taken three at a time to make carbon.
You can add one more helium to that carbon
and make element number eight: oxygen.
KIRSHNER: That's a tremendous step forward.
You get carbon and nitrogen and oxygen made in stars.
Now, this is great, because on the board
we already have the principal elements of life.
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] TYSON: Carbon fuses next, and still heavier elements begin to form.
WOOSLEY: Sulfur, argon, chlorine...
KIRSHNER: Potassium, calcium, scandium.
The pace of this gets faster and faster.
Back in the middle,
silicon is starting to burn at 3.5 billion degrees,
a stupendous temperature.
KIRSHNER: It makes titanium, vanadium, chromium...
WOOSLEY: Manganese, cobalt, nickel and iron.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Iron is really the end of the road--
it's sort of the nuclear turnip
out of which you just cannot squeeze any more.
It's the end of the game.
A star that has relied on fusion
has come to the point where it has nothing more to spend.
The star is suddenly caught in a disaster.
There's radiation going out from the outside,
but deep in the inside there's no more fuel.
TYSON: Iron can't fuel this stellar furnace,
and so when a star builds up too much iron, it dies.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] The core collapses, it bounces...
And it begins to move out--
first slowly, and then faster and faster.
And that sends a very sharp wave back out through the star.
And now, what was falling down is going out--
the whole thing is blowing up.
And you've made a supernova.
KIRSHNER: The supernova explosion
can be as bright as four billion stars like the Sun.
A stupendous explosion.
TYSON: Such outrageous energies
overcome the iron barrier, cooking atoms
into all the rest of the elements on the periodic table.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] So starting down here, you can go copper...
WOOSLEY: Zinc...
KIRSHNER: Gallium.
Germanium.
Arsenic.
Zirconium.
( voices blending as Woosley and Kirshner list elements )
...Protactinium, uranium.
Done!
( chuckling )
That's enough elements.
TYSON: We are all stardust:
the carbon in our bodies, the iron in our blood,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] the calcium in our bones.
Every last atom was formed in a star.
But it's not that simple.
No one star can produce
more than just a dusting of heavy elements.
So, to create an environment friendly to life,
the universe had to find a way to concentrate the good stuff--
which it did, in a process that is remarkably like
the way chef Michael Romano cooks up a bowl of soup.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] As you know, a cornerstone
of great cooking is a rich soup,
and all soup starts with water.
So let's add some water in the pot.
Mm-hmm.
TYSON: In this culinary cosmos, these ingredients stand in
for the first stars--
each flavoring the surrounding broth just a little bit.
ROMANO: And then we need heat, which we have.
There's no shortage of heat in the cosmos, it turns out.
Well, that's a good thing.
TYSON: In the broth left behind by the first stars,
new stars form-- that's this second round of ingredients--
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] and as they simmer,
the interstellar soup gets stronger and stronger.
Look at how rich that's become.
I...
I still can't wait.
Yeah, you remember that water we started with--
and look what it's turned into.
It's actually thickened and a lot of flavor in there...
So I think at this point it has enough flavor
to support adding the star of the show,
which is our shellfish and fish.
TYSON: Finally this cosmic soup is nearly ready,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] to the point where, after bubbling for billions of years,
it can support the kind of life that would emerge on Earth.
And there you go, Neil, that's for you.
Thank you, Michael.
Enjoy it.
Thank you.
TYSON: What Michael just did is entirely analogous
to what happens in the real universe,
where each generation of stars
enriches the broth out of which the next generation forms
until, at last, the cosmic soup is rich enough for life.
TYSON: We know this occurs, because we can see it happening next door,
right in our own Milky Way galaxy...
in perhaps the most famous astronomical image ever made:
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins/hubble.html>[type:PROGRAM][name:creating this image][E7A0] the Hubble space telescope portrait of the Eagle Nebula.
MAN: It does feel like this image is everywhere,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] because this image is everywhere.
It's not everybody who gets to see something that they've done
show up on a postage stamp,
or happen to see something that you've done on a T-shirt
with somebody just walking across campus.
My wife will see this picture in some context
and she'll poke me and say, "Now, explain to me again
why we don't get any royalties off that picture."
( chuckling )
TYSON: That picture of the Eagle Nebula has been dubbed
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] the "Pillars of Creation."
It's become a modern icon.
When the Hubble first transmitted it back to Earth,
scientists themselves were stunned at what they saw.
HESTER: We were not prepared for what we saw
when we finally got the images
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] of the Eagle Nebula put together.
We weren't prepared for the beauty of what we had assembled.
We weren't really prepared for the science
of what emerged from it.
It... every now and then, you get lucky.
TYSON: What the image revealed
were places in our own Milky Way galaxy
where new stars are actually forming.
HESTER: You see these little nodules
sitting around here.
Each one of those is large enough
to swallow our solar system several times over.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] Embedded in at least some of those,
we can see that there are young stars--
stars that will become stars like our sun,
around which are going to form solar systems
perhaps like our own.
Is it possible that 4 1/2 billion years from now
some civilization on a planet orbiting that star
will look up at the sky
and wonder about where they came from?
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] I'm not going to say it's likely,
but it is certainly possible.
TYSON: Possible because conditions in the Eagle Nebula
are close to what they are here,
the one place in the universe we know that life exists--
our own solar system.
The Eagle Nebula contains
just about the same mix of heavy elements that our sun does--
carbon, nitrogen and the rest.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] But the big question is whether life,
or at least the conditions that could allow life to emerge,
are widespread throughout the cosmos.
Do we live in a universe that welcomes life?
Or are the hundred billion galaxies out there
mostly barren, empty desert?
That's the question that brings Sandra Faber
to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii:
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] What are the odds for life in the cosmos as a whole?
It's important to realize that astronomically,
the seeds of life on Earth were sown 4 1/2 billion years ago
when the Sun and solar system formed.
That's a long time back in the past,
but we can ask ourselves now,
can we see the seeds of life in other galaxies
in great abundance back then,
or maybe even perhaps earlier than that?
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] TYSON: Sandy uses the Keck Telescope
as a kind of time machine that can look deep into the past.
Its giant mirror, 36 feet across,
can capture a snapshot of galaxies
when they were much younger than our own.
But merely seeing such distant galaxies is not enough.
Sandy wants to discover what they're made of.
To find out,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] she uses an instrument called a spectrograph.
Sandy's spectrograph, called DEIMOS,
is one of the most powerful in the world.
It takes the light from up to 150 galaxies at a time,
each isolated in a single hole
in a sheet of metal called a slit mask.
DEIMOS then breaks that light up into the visible spectrum--
the rainbow of colors from violet to red.
Zooming in on a galactic spectrum
reveals a forest of bright and dark lines,
patterns that reveal the presence of particular elements.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins/spectra.html>[type:PROGRAM][name:decoding cosmic spectra][E080] FABER: Using spectra as our tool,
we can tell you what elements exist in that galaxy--
oxygen, carbon, iron.
And we can tell you whether the galaxy
is rich in those elements-- has the broth cooked a lot--
or is it still too dilute to make planets?
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337]
TYSON: That's what Sandy will do tonight--
measure the amounts of heavy elements
to determine each galaxy's readiness for life.
Sandy and her team ultimately plan
to examine 65,000 galaxies in all,
in a massive census dubbed the Deep Survey.
Oh, beautiful.
Oh, isn't that great?
TYSON: Here are the results, hot off the telescope.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] FABER: This is fantastic.
That's the kind we're talking about.
FABER: That's... that's oxygen, and oxygen here.
TYSON: This bright spot marks the presence of oxygen
in a galaxy five billion light-years away.
Just purely by coincidence, we're looking at galaxies...
their light left just when our sun was forming
in our own galaxy.
Right?
And so this one...
TYSON: Sandy uses the Sun's level of oxygen
and other heavy elements as her benchmark.
If a galaxy has a similar mix of elements,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] then potentially it could support
the same living chemistry we find here at home.
So that would be... that galaxy
would be a really good place to look for... for planets,
because it's even more abundant in metals
than our own galaxy is.
TYSON: Two years into a projected ten-year observing program,
the Deep Survey team has already detected
thousands of distant galaxies
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] that are rich in the elements of life.
And that leads to a startling conclusion.
FABER: Our universe is hospitable to life.
There are billions and billions of galaxies everywhere
cooking elements, making stars that are ripe for solar systems.
The habitat for life is everywhere.
TYSON: That's no proof that life itself exists
anywhere else in the universe.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] But Sandy's work does confirm
that the elements essential to life as we know it
are widespread throughout the cosmos.
FABER: The message of the Deep Survey,
and all the other information that we're getting,
is one beautiful story-- a new version of Genesis,
a new version of the cosmic myth.
Only this time, it's scientifically based.
From the big bang to now:
big bang, formation of galaxies,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] formation of heavy elements in supernova,
Sun, Earth, life--
one unbroken great chain of being.
Just in the last few years, we've reached the point
that we can start with the origins of the universe,
we can end with a conversation among intelligent beings
about how things work,
and have an awfully good understanding
of every step that came in between the two.
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] It was as if we were basically assembling this puzzle,
and all of a sudden you look down at the puzzle
and you realize you've got it.
The pieces are there.
TYSON: For almost all of human history,
the heavens have been beyond our reach.
( chorus singing majestic music )
For our ancestors, it was a place where the gods lived,
or else simply a vast, untouchable realm
of lifeless beauty.
( chorus singing )
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] But now, the study of cosmic origins tells a different story.
It tells us that the story of life-- of us--
extends far beyond Earth.
It tells us that the emergence
of the conditions for our kind of life
was no accident.
Instead, it was a natural outcome
of almost 14 billion years of cosmic evolution,
a chain of connections that links the birth of the universe
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] to us, right here, right now.
To order this program on VHS or DVD,
<http://www.pbs.org/nova/origins>[type:PROGRAM][name:NOVA: Origins: Back to the Beginning][D337] or the book,
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution,
please call 1-800-255-9424.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org
NOVA IS A PRODUCTION OF WGBH BOSTON.
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