Interesting Links
The following are some interesting links to websites, documents, and videos dealing with mankind and our relationship to the Earth and the universe. Simply click on the PLAY VIDEO or OPEN DOCUMENT button on the right of the description.
This video could be the most relevant regarding the impact of human technology and population on climate change. It attributes the mass extinction of life 250 million years ago to the increased volcanic activity in specific areas on Earth which ultimately caused increases in CO2 levels, leading to warming on land and in the oceans, finally causing methane at the bottom of the seas to cause a climate increase of 20 degrees C. In the end, a few underground burrowing creatures, living off of roots and tubules, may have been the few land survivors, allowing evolution to continue allowing humans to evolve. Very interesting.
I found this video to be one of the best examples of a complete theory on the entire evolution of life. This includes the beginning whereupon the Earth was created from debris in space, then the moon resulting from a collision with the Earth, then a detailed presentation of the fluctuations in radiation and the changes on the cooling Earth that may have created the chemical process of Life to begin. It then goes through the evolution of life from the simplest organism, to current day, and even the possible future that may result, even if there is new life of our own creation that replaces Humankind. It is one excellent collection of ideas from research over the years, capsulating the evolution of Life from the beginning to the end.
Home is a movie made by Yann Arthus-Bertrand about our Planet Earth. It is approximately one and 1/2 hours but it is well worth watching the entire movie. It has some amazing photography illustrating the cycles of Nature and the relationship of Life and our Planet. Put on your headset and prepare to be inspired and amazed with this movie.
I personally found this video a very excellent way of explaining why planets spin, solar systems spin, galaxies, and so on. I feel that the concept of rotation and spin are critical to understanding the equilibrium state of celestial bodies. In my opinion it could even be that the universe is like a giant galaxy in itself, one of many universes.
Could it be that just as there are a hundred billion stars in a galaxy (Milky Way), and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe, that there might also be a 100 billion universes? Is this a cooincidental pattern? Though there is no proof that the universe demonstrates spin, if we do find this is the case in the future, it might be a critical component in the proof of a multi-universe world. Spin may be a key in developing a theory that the universe is just one of hundreds of billions of universes. One clue may be that there are suggestions that the universe is flat as opposed to a sphere. If it exploded from a singularity like the big bang, could it be that spin and time may be giving the universe the shape of an older galaxy? If so might this be an indication that the universe in which we live is only one of many? Going further, might 100 billion universes also take the shape of a galaxy and have also come from some type of singularity? Who knows what science will tell us?
This is an incredible short video of photos taken from the Hubble telescope. The telescope was directed at a blank spot in space, or what appeared to be so and by taking a number of snap shots over many days a video was created. When watching it you feel as if you are moving through space watching the galaxies and stars go by.
More on the Hubble telescope. This video explains how the hubble telescope has been so useful in viewing galaxies from nearly the dawn of the universe, just over 13 billion years ago. One can see what galaxies looked like at the time near the big bang up to the current day given the time it has taken light to arrive to us from different galaxies. In order to view even further into the beginning of the big bang, a new telescope is being put up by Nasa in 2019 that will have higher resolution and view infra-red light which will allow us to determine better how the universe is expanding.
Star size comparisn. This is the best video I have found that compares the size of the various cosmic bodies out there. It certainly shows just how small the Earth, and even the sun are, relative to other suns and planets. It is worth the few minutes to view it! Great music as well!
Did you know that current theory suggests that the Universe is flat?. This video explains just what it means that the universe is flat. This is opposed to spherical or saddle-shaped as have been previously proposed. I believe that the implication that the universe is flat and continuing to expand is an important theory in understanding whether there might be other universes and that we are just in one of them.
This is a music video from various science figures of our age including Carl Sagan's Cosmos, The History Channel's Universe series, Richard Feynman's 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson's cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye's Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from NOVA's The Elegant Universe, Stephen Hawking's Universe, Cosmos, the Powers of 10, and more. It spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through the medium of music.
The Digital Universe, developed by the American Museum of Natural History s Hayden Planetarium, incorporates data from dozens of organizations worldwide to create the most complete and accurate 3-D atlas of the Universe from the local solar neighborhood out to the edge of the observable Universe.
Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only a s a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker- with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell. POWERS OF TEN 1977 EAMES OFFICE LLC (Available at www.eamesoffice.com)
From our origins in Africa, humans began migrating around the globe roughly 100,000 years ago. But it was only with the advent of agriculture about 12,000 years ago that our population started to swell to more than a million. This data visualisation from the American Museum of Natural History beautifully charts humanity s stunning and increasingly alarming exponential expansion to our current population of roughly 7.4 billion.
Video by the American Museum of Natural History
Producer: Laura Moustakerski
Animator: Shay Krasinksi
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