The universe is more than stars and galaxies. The massive cosmos we see around us is just one of many, and that is what tonight's episode was all about. There are so many different worlds beyond what we can see, even in something as mundane as a drop of water. That is where we started, examining the life that exists, and even flourishes, in a speck of early morning dew. It's remarkable to think about how life can live in such a place, a drop of water that is only around for a couple of hours. Or as my roommate said, "I'm never drinking water again." Some people don't like drinking a whole bunch of microorganisms, I don't know. I've always thought paramecium added a nice bit of flavor, but I guess I'm alone on that one.
Next we took a tour of a plant cell and a chloroplast, taking a peek at the remarkable process of photosynthesis. Three billion years of tinkering has turned photosynthesis into an incredible workhorse. If we could efficiently photosynthesize for our civilization's energy, we really wouldn't have any problems with energy anymore.
As with all episodes of Cosmos, the past is as important as the present, or the future. Today, we traveled back to ancient Greece, and the ancient scientist Democritus. He was the first to posit that everything was made of tiny, indivisible particles, the first to realize that there was a world beyond what we could see.
Of course, all of these things, from the single celled organisms to the chloroplasts, even atoms themselves, are enormous compared to the neutrino. There are literally billions of them passing through each one of us every second, yet it requires a gigantic pool of water in an elaborate chamber a half mile underground to reliably detect even a few of them. They don't really interact much with matter, but they are still important, because as Tyson said, they can give us a window to the very early universe. There is no light from the first 380,000 years of the universe, space was too dense to allow photons to pass through. Neutrinos can pass right through, and neutrinos from the Big Bang could give us clues as to what the very early universe was doing.
My Other Blogs
Loose on the Internet
Cool Golf News
My Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment