Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.
Good evening.
Roughly 41 years ago today...ish,
Rutland Weekend Television,
the world's smallest TV station,
did a special starring Beatle George Harrison.
And now, tonight, 41 years later, we're back
to put on another TV special with the Beatle of science,
Professor Brian Cox.
And tonight, our subject is the entire universe,
which we'll be covering in one hour...
as a musical. OK, so...
Without further ado, please welcome,
all the way from Rutland,
Muriel Tritt...
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
..and the Muriel Tritt School Of Music And Dance.
# The Muriel Tritt School Of Music And Dance
# Gives young people a wonderful chance
# To appear in a show
# To star in a play
# And one day we may be
# On Broadway
# For 13 years through rain and snow
# Every year we put on a show
# We did The Sound Of Mucus
# And Zombie And Son
# The Little Barmaid
# And Second To Nun
# We did Spamma Mia
# And Porky & Bess
# And an all-new version of G&S
# We did Mersey Boys And Richard The Turd
# We did Hello Polly About a dead bird
# We sank the Titanic On a real boat
# The 007 musical Legally Bond
# So relax, throw your hats And hang on to your butts
# For tonight we proudly present
# The Entire Universe
# Yes, tonight we'll be thinking Out of the box
# Will you all please welcome our smart
# Professor Brian Cox! #
- Where the bloody hell is he? - Ah, bit of a snag - he's not here.
- But he should be on the way from the airport. - This is a live show!
- Yeah, he'll be on his way. - I hope so! - Anyway, that's not the snag.
- You see, I haven't been able to speak to him for the last few weeks... - What?
Well, I haven't been able to explain to him
that isn't so much a kind of lecture, it's more of a...musical.
- You didn't a get hold of him? - Well, it's not my fault, is it?
He's been to Patagonia testing magnetism, or something.
- You know, no cellphones. - So, he doesn't know it's a musical?
'He's here!'
Oh, jeez.
- Eric! - Brian! Where have you been? - Well, I'm sorry I'm late.
- Can you just pay for the taxi? - What? We've already started!
It's funny, isn't it?
We can send probes into space at tremendous speeds,
but one lane closed on the M25 and you're stuck forever.
We've been trying to reach you for weeks.
I've been in Patagonia measuring micromagnetism.
It's very interesting, cos the earth's poles are beginning to shift.
We phoned! We texted! We tweeted!
I can't use cellphones, because we're measuring micromagnetism.
- But tell me, you did get the script? - Not unless you sent it by llama.
- What?! - What's this?
It's just a costume. Oh, no time to explain.
- But I haven't got my lecture. - It's all right, it's all on the autocue.
- Here we are, here's the set. And good luck for the show. - Hey, Brian.
- Robin. What are you doing here? - Er... Helping.
I'm putting in the correct number of billions and billions
in the autocue for you.
I've put in loads, you'll love it.
Now...
Pointer.
Clicker.
Showtime.
Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome, Professor Brian Cox.
Thank you.
Good evening.
This is the Hubble Deep Field image,
it's the deepest image of our universe ever taken.
# Oooh eee oooh eee oooh. #
It's a photograph of the piece of sky you would cover
if you took a five-pence piece and held it about 75 feet away.
# Oooh eee oooh eee oooh. #
It contains over 10,000 galaxies,
each with over 100 billion stars.
# Oooh eee oooh eee ooooooh. #
Look, what the hell is that?
- Er, it's the universe music, Brian. - It's distracting.
- It sounds really good. - Yeah, it sounds really, really brilliant.
It really kind of jazzes up the universe.
Tell them I don't need any music in the lecture.
Well, you know, with the BBC broadcasting it worldwide live...
Hang on a minute, I thought it was only broadcast in Rutland.
Well, mainly Rutland, but also the rest of the world.
But, look, just read the autocue, please, love,
because we're running a bit late, OK?
"Please welcome Professor Brian Cox!"
This is the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This is real data.
It's a fly-through of nearby galaxies
in the observable universe,
which contains around 350 billion large galaxies,
each with 200 billion stars, just like our Milky Way.
So, if we multiply 350 billion galaxies
by 200 billion stars,
that means, in the observable universe,
there are at least 70 thousand billion billion stars,
7 followed by 22 zeroes.
7 billion trillion stars.
And that's just the observable universe.
We've got good reason to think the universe extends
way beyond that little patch we can see.
It might even be infinite in extent.
Now, today, after expanding for 13.8 billion years,
we can see out to the edge of a giant sphere,
centred on the earth, 90 billion light years wide.
PING!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
What's this?! What the hell is this?!
Robin? Eric?
Eric! Eric!
# It's so damn big It's so damn vast
# It's so damn huge and it's so damn fast
# It's so massive With such weight
# It's so enormous It's just great!
# We're living in a sphere And it's 14 billion years
# 98 billion light years In diameter
# Standing in a bubble At the speed of Hubble
# It's so damn huge In each parameter
# 30.7 billion years
- # On every side - Every side
# Which makes our universe
# 93 billion light years wide
# 350 billion galaxies
# With 70 million trillion stars
# That's 70 thousand thousand thousand
# Thousand thousand thousand thousand stars
# It makes you feel so small
CHEERING
# Stuck on the surface of the spinning ball
# When you consider the size of it all
# It makes you feel so...small
# It makes you feel so small
# Wondering why we're here at all
# Trying to walk before we can crawl
# It makes you feel so small
# The universe so big and vast
# And oh so very shiny
# It makes you feel irrelevant
# So useless and so tiny
# It makes you feel so small
# The universe holds us all in thrall
# When you consider the size of it all
# It makes you feel so small
# Aah aah aah aaah
# Yeah! #
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Science isn't a bloody musical!
Everyone's very excited.
I really look like a prat.
- You have looked like a prat before. - Look, science isn't showbiz.
- Well, it can be. - It's not The Morecambe & Wise Show, is it?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It could be.
Eh - you can see the join!
- Definitely a wig! - Definitely. - Definitely.
APPLAUSE
All right, Brian?
- Warwick Davis. Big fan. - Warwick.
- What are you doing here? - I'm playing The Big Bang.
Ba-da-ba-baa!
- What? - I know. Irony.
Warwick's tip-top on science, Brian.
- Per foot, he knows more about science than Tim Peake. - Aww.
Yeah, that's right. Isn't it, Tim?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
That's right, Brian. Absolutely. It's right.
- What? - No, really.
Warwick is really good on science, Brian. He's absolutely amazing.
He could have been on the International Space Station with me.
He would have saved a lot of space.
- Cheers, Tim. Are you still on for dinner Tuesday? - Absolutely, yeah.
- Your turn to pay. - Oh, OK.
Um, Tim. I've got a couple of questions.
- Listen, ask me any question you like. - All right.
What's a light year?
A light year is when you don't have very much on -
say, a panto in Woking and a possible telly.
No, it's a measure of distance.
The distance light travels in one year, which is...
6 trillion miles.
Am I right?
- Yeah. - Yeah. 6 followed by 12 zeroes.
- Now, let me ask you a question. - OK.
- What's hot, dense, and forever expanding? - Well...
The Kardashians!
- Lovely joke, Warwick! - Oh, thanks, Eric.
- It's G-string theory! - Ohh! - There's another. - I love it!
We'll have a shot of Kim's bum, and that could be like Saturn.
- What, like a great gas giant? - Ohh! Boo-boom!
You see, material like this writes itself, Brian, so...
Moving on now. On the autocue, love.
"If you think of the universe as..."
If you think of the universe as a balloon...
Ah, great metaphor.
..with the galaxies represented by dots on the balloon,
then the expansion of our universe
is just like the expanding surface of the balloon.
All the galaxies appear to be rushing apart from each other.
All right. Carry on.
We used to think the universe was slowing down
under the effects of gravity
until we measured the expansion rate very precisely
back in the 1990s
and discovered that it is in fact speeding up
because of the effects of something known as dark energy.
Now, we don't know what dark energy is,
but it accounts for 70% of the energy density of the universe.
Dark matter makes up a further 25%.
We don't know what that is either. And the stuff... Are you all right?
Yeah, I'm hyperventilating. Quickly!
The stuff we can actually see shining as stars,
and out of which we are all made, is only 5% of the universe.
So, the universe is expanding, but from what?
If we were able to reverse time, wind back the clock
so that everything rushes back together again...
Ohh!
BALLOONS DEFLATE NOISILY
Sorry!
If we wind everything back to the beginning,
and we go back in time
13.8 billion years before there were any stars or galaxies,
and all the matter of the universe
was crammed into a tiny, wrinkly little pea,
unimaginably hot, unimaginably dense,
containing all the energy and the ingredients
to build the hundreds of billions of galaxies
and billions of trillions of stars in our universe,
contained in a single primordial atom...
we call that the big bang.
And hold it there, love, for the Big Bang Song.
- The big bang isn't a song. - It is now!
- What are they doing? - Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?
They're elementary particles.
Look, they're banging into each other and then disappearing.
- Particles? - Yeah, much better than your boring old equations.
Ah! So, what do you think?
I'm a professor.
No-one will take me seriously if they think I'm in showbiz.
Yeah, I think that ship might have sailed some time ago. Erm...
Oh, and the BBC did say they were going to pay you more money.
The early cosmos can be thought of as a series of epochs
as, in the gradually expanding and cooling universe,
the forces of nature separate out,
and the particles we see today - the protons, neutrons and electrons,
out of which we are all made - are formed.
Time itself started 13.8 billion years ago,
and once time had started...
Sorry, Brian. Can we hold time?
- What? - Can we just hold time for a minute, please.
Well, time isn't here yet.
- What? - Hannah Waddingham is playing time
but, unfortunately, she's late.
She's stuck in traffic, so if you could give us just a bit more BS...
I'm sorry, a bit more science about the early universe
until she gets here. Thanks a lot.
You could say that more happened in the first three minutes
of the life of the universe
than in the next 13.8 billion years.
By the time the universe was around three minutes old,
it had cooled down to a temperature of only a billion degrees
and was filled with what we call plasma,
a soup of electrically charged particles
through which light couldn't pass.
Now, light can be thought of as a stream of particles called photons,
and they have no mass.
But other fundamental particles, like electrons, do have mass,
and they get it through their interaction with the Higgs field,
which permeates the universe
and has a particle associated with it called the Higgs boson.
Har-har, Cap'n Cox!
Har-har!
- Who are you? - It got better. Um...
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Who?
I'm the Higgs boson, me hearties! Har-har!
Noel Fielding, meet Brian.
- Brian, Noel. - Hey, Brian, I'm a huge fan. Love your astrology.
Astronomy.
Whatever. What's your star sign?
I haven't got a star sign.
Come on, everyone's got a star sign.
All right, gin and tonic.
That's not a star sign.
- He's a Pisces. - I knew it. I'm a Gemini.
- We get on instantly! - We don't.
All right.
Unless you've got Jupiter rising.
I've got anger...rising.
I've got a very finely tuned drivel detector,
and it goes off every time anyone mentions astrology.
It's all true, isn't it?
Well, it's not really. It's cack.
What kind of talk is that? Cack?
You'll be saying crop circles don't exist next!
Crop circles don't exist.
This is ridiculous. Next, you'll be saying
global warming is a real thing that we should all be worried about.
- Eric, can we just have a word? - Just keep going, keep going.
Brian, the thing is, I love science.
I love Scientology.
LAUGHTER
I love all the sciences.
I hope one day to have a haemorrhoid named after me, like you.
- Asteroid! - Whatever.
You get what you want named after you,
and I'll get what I want named after me.
And I'm getting a haemorrhoid!
Like you!
Brian, do you know my theory about the universe?
- You've got a theory about the universe? - Yes.
- You don't know about my theory? - I don't know your theory about the universe.
I've looked through all the literature - I've seen no record of your theory about the universe.
You don't know? This is going to blow your mind.
I've been working on this for over four and a half days.
LAUGHTER
I believe that the universe is entirely made of water.
It's just that the molecules are so far apart
you can't tell it's water, unless you're outside, looking in.
Pwhoa!
Pwhoa! It's too much for you, isn't it?
I can see.
Your knees are trembling.
That's your theory?!
That's... That's your theory?!
- That's...? - That...
- That is my theory. - All that?
All of that is my...
I've copyrighted that, mate.
- In fact, Deepak Chopra says... - That's...!
Don't you like Deepak?
In my opinion, Deepak is full of more methane than "Uranus".
LAUGHTER
He's great, isn't it?
He's like a rhinestone guru.
# Like a rhinestone guru!
# Ding-aga-ding-aga-ding! #
Why are you dressed as a second-rate character from Pirates Of Penzance?
Second mate. He's got it. He's very bright, isn't he?
Well, he's a professor.
Actually, he's a double professor.
I thought he looked a bit bi!
He was checking me out earlier in the lifts.
What are you supposed to be?
Well, I'm the Higgs boson, aren't I?
Get it? Har-har, me hearties!
- "Boson"... - Yes?
..is an elementary particle.
Right.
"Bosun" is the second mate on a ship.
So what's your point?
Well, the point is, it's silly.
It's not silly. It's a metaphor.
They like it - you like it, don't you?
- AUDIENCE: - Yes!
- Shall I sing? - AUDIENCE: - Yes!
Excusez-moi, Brian. My audience calls.
Stay away from my theory, yeah, Spock?
# There's a Higgs boson
# And there's leptons and there's gluons
# There's the Higgs boson
# And there's positons and muons
# There are photons There are protons
# There's neutrinos, posit-inos
# There are quarks and there's electrons
# In the Higgs boson
# Oh, the Higgs boson All the particles will scatter
# Oh, the Higgs boson As they're starting to be matter
# There are leptons There are gluons
# There are positons and muons
# There are photons There are protons
# In the Higgs boson
# There's a Higgs boson
# And there's electrons and there's muons
# There's a Higgs boson
# And there's positons and muons
# There are photons There are protons
# There's neutrinos, posit-inos
# There are quarks and there's electrons
# In the Higgs boson
# There's neutrinos, Angelinas In the Higgs boson
# There are Sauvignons and Pinots In the Higgs boson
# There are Bonos, Yoko Onos Brian Enos, cappucinos
# Latinas and Latinos In the Higgs boson
# There are gluons, there are muons In the Higgs boson
# There are many, there are few ones In the Higgs boson
# There are gobbles There are gluons
# There are old ones There are new ones
# We haven't got a clue what's in the Higgs boson! #
Har-har!
APPLAUSE
You stop. Stop.
Stop clapping.
Stop clapping!
Number one.
Number one, there's no such element as a Brian Eno.
- And number two... - There should be.
..this is...
Number two, this isn't physics - it's music hall.
- Thanks a lot. - It's not a compliment.
That wasn't a thank you!
- Noel... - Please, call me Cuddles.
That's what Deepak calls me.
I call him Douchepak. We have such a laugh together.
You see, he's like you, he's very clever -
but he's got a sense of humour.
LAUGHTER
We can't upset him. He's part-Vulcan.
He's got no feelings.
We'll have to explain to him later what went wrong.
Listen, science isn't a panto.
Well, it can be.
It can't.
- ALL: - Oh, yes, it can!
Oh, no, it can't.
- ALL: - Oh, yes, it can.
No, it can't.
- ALL: - Oh, yes, it can.
- Well, what's that, then? - Where?
- ALL: - Behind you!
Meow!
It's a pantomime cat.
A cat, but not just any cat.
Er, it's Schrodinger's cat.
- And what's that? - That's a box.
Right. So if the cat goes in the box...
I might be able to salvage something here.
This is Schrodinger's famous thought experiment about a cat in a box.
The cat represents elementary particles
in an entangled quantum state.
So the idea is, you have a radioactive source in the box.
When it decays, it releases radioactive poisonous gas,
something like cyanide, into the box.
That means that before you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead.
But when you open the box, the cat will be seen to be alive or dead.
Like Keith Richards?
LAUGHTER
Well, let's see, then, shall we?
You want to see in the box, don't you?
- ALL: - Yes!
Ta-da!
APPLAUSE
You see? It demonstrates particles.
A cat met an anti-cat and disappeared.
There's no such thing as an anti-cat.
Oh, really? Oh, really?
Says Mr CERN.
Says Mr Particle Collider.
Says Mr Let's Bang Things Into Each Other And See What Comes Out.
Oh, really?
Says Mr I'm A Pirate Of Penzance And I Don't Know Much About Quantum Mechanics
But I Dress Warwick Davis Up As A Little Cat
And Put Him In A Box And Make Him Disappear.
Is that Warwick Davis? Should have got a selfie, right?
Well, let's see, shall we? Let's see. Yeah?
- Let's open the box. Yeah? - Go ahead. - OK.
Ta-da! Hannah Waddingham, everybody!
APPLAUSE
- SHE GIGGLES - Thank you!
- Brian, Hannah's playing Time. - I'm so sorry I'm late.
Traffic on the M25.
Gynaecologist in Hackney.
Off you pop, Cox.
CLOCKS STRIKE, CHIME AND CUCKOO
# Time
# Will go on
# On and on, dear
# For ever
# Although time is slow
# It will go on
# Whenever you hear
# This song play
# And you will say
# Oh, look there
# Hey
# There's that song about time
# That'll go on and on
# On and on
# And on and on
# On and on and on
# And on and on
# And on
# This song will still go on
# Time's song will still go on. #
APPLAUSE
DRUM FILL
# On and on
# And on and on
# On and on and on
# It'll still go on, still go on
# And on
# Oh, ah-ah, ah, ah
# Time's song will go-ooooo-oooo-ah
# Time's song
# Will still go on
# Oh oh
# Oh-oh
# On. #
APPLAUSE
Oh, thank you!
APPLAUSE
Stop! Stop clapping!
Stop, stop!
Stop!
Stop.
It's not right.
- It's not right. It's not right, it's not right. - Says who?
- Well, science, actually. - Ugh!
What are you supposed to be?
I'm Time, Brian. Obvs.
There's no such thing as time.
There's only space-time.
FaceTime?
Space-time.
See, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity,
published in 1905, time and space
are no longer to be thought of as separate entities.
They're supposed to be considered as an indivisible whole
called space-time.
You see, Einstein said...
E = mc2.
Ha-ha, ha-ha!
- Ah! - Hello, Brian!
Hello, Albert. Which means...
Energy and matter are interchangeable.
LAUGHTER
Correct, Albert.
You're damn right, Brian.
Before that, we used to think of space as an arena.
- Oh, what, like Wembley? - Well, if you like.
Actually it's a good metaphor. But Einstein showed us we were wrong.
Absolute space doesn't exist.
- And... - Nothing goes faster than the speed of light.
Oh, sorry!
So, in the new Einsteinian worldview,
moving clocks run slow and moving rulers shrink.
Right, so if the Queen could travel at the speed of light...?
- Not that kind of ruler. - Ah.
- All right, er, if the Sheikh of Qatar... - Not that kind of ruler.
It's more like a measure.
Right. So, er, would the Queen shrink at the speed of light?
Well, hypothetically, yes.
As Her Majesty approached the speed of light,
she would shrink and become more massive.
What, she'd become Queen Victoria?
Brian, I have a question for you.
We know the speed of light, yeah?
- Yeah. - That's one of mine. Thank you.
What is the speed of darkness?
- It's the same. The same. - Ah, coincidence.
Hey, guys, maybe I see you afterwards, yeah,
for some crazy fun times!
OK.
# There's the Higgs boson
# And there's electrons and there's... #
APPLAUSE
Brian, um, I've actually got a science question.
Go on.
Can you have sex in zero gravity?
Why don't you ask Tim Peake?
Tim PEAKE!
Oh!
Um...!
Can we have sex in zero gravity?
- Well... - Oh!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- Ah! - SHE LAUGHS
As the universe continued to expand and cool,
gravity began to take hold of the particles of matter
and clumped them together to become the first stars in galaxies.
Do you remember the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
that snowstorm of galaxies?
This shows us the distribution of those galaxies across the universe.
So gravity pulls everything together.
And hold it there for the Gravity Song.
You're going to love this one, it's really your era.
- Yeah. '80s. - Mm.
LAUGHTER
It's all right, Brian. Things can only get better.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
UPBEAT MUSIC
LAUGHTER
# Ever since the apple fell
# On Newton from its tree
# He began examining the force of gravity
# His ruminations gave equations very logically
# Explanation, gravitation was the force to free
# Free that apple from the tree
# It applies to you and me
# Isaac Newton simply found
# What keeps our feet down on the ground
# It's a force of gravity
# Gra-Gra-Gra-Gra-Gravity!
# It's a force of gravity!
# Galileo...
- # Galileo... - # Oh, oh, oh, oh...
# One day Albert Einstein watched
# A worker on the roof
# Instantly he thought up what he called his happiest truth
# If the man was careless
# And he slipped and had a fall
# Einstein realised he wouldn't really fall at all
# He's not crashing to the ground
# Waiting there to greet him
# He is simply floating round
# And the ground comes up to meet him
# It's a force of gravity!
# Gra-Gra-Gra-Gra-Gravity!
# It's a force of gravity!
INSTRUMENTAL
# Newton's theory of gravity
# Appeared in the 17th century
# And eventually we have to face
# It was inaccurate in space
# Einstein then began to see that light is a bit like gravity
# Energy is matter
# And matter energy
# We live in four dimensions
# And space-time is its name
# And Einstein found the formula
# Which really changed the game
# For E equals mc2
- # Gra-Gra-Gra-Gra-Gravity! - # For E equals mc2
- # Gra-Gra-Gra-Gra-Gravity! - # E equals mc2!
- # Re-Re-Re-Relativity! - # E equals mc2!
# Re-Re-Re-Relativity!
# It's a force of gravity! #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well, no-one's more surprised than me, but that's right.
Einstein did come along with a general theory of relativity,
modifying the Newtonian view of gravity.
We now know that space-time is four-dimensional,
and massive objects curve and warp it.
So, matter tells space-time how to curve,
and space-time tells matter how to move.
Now, relativity describes everything down to the quantum level,
but at very small distances, at high energies at the subatomic level,
general relativity breaks down...
All right, who are you?
- Who are we? - Who are we?! - Who are we?! He's good, isn't he?
THEY LAUGH
Who are we?
Quantum mechanics.
LAUGHTER
Shouldn't have asked.
Hey, carry on, sunshine! Carry on.
You're doing well, you're doing well.
GENTLE LAUGHTER
The century since Einstein published his theory
has been filled with the most spectacular scientific discoveries.
We've discovered a universe filled with wonders, pillars of gas,
thousands of light years,
tall clouds of bright gas where young stars are born,
and we see the deaths of stars,
producing pulsars, quasars
and supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies.
This is the CMB.
It's the cosmic microwave background radiation.
This is the picture of the whole sky, the celestial sphere.
It's a stunning image.
This is the afterglow of the big bang.
It comes from every direction in space.
So this really is a picture of the universe
as it was 380,000 years after the big bang.
This is the oldest light in the universe.
These tiny fluctuations that you see as different colours
are density fluctuations in the early universe.
These are the reasons that we have galaxies at all.
So this is a kind of a static buzz that permeates the universe.
You used to be able to pick it up on old TV sets,
a bit like Morecambe and Wise.
LAUGHTER AND GROANING
There's no need for that, is there, eh?
GENTLE APPLAUSE
As the universe continues to expand and cool
after the release of the CMB,
matter eventually began to collapse and clump around the denser regions
to form stars and galaxies,
and the universe was filled with light once more.
Only around 200 million years after the big bang,
the age of stars had begun.
- MUSIC - # Oh, oh, oh, ah-oh, ah-oh
# Oh, oh, oh, ah-oh, ah-oh
- # Oh, oh, oh, ah-oh, ah-oh - CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
# Oh, oh, oh, ah-oh, ah-oh
# Baby, let me tell you what it's all about
# Lying on your back with your tush hanging out, oh!
# Hey, la...
# Oh, oh, oh, ah-oh, ah-oh
- # All you need is a... # - MUSIC WARPS AND STOPS
- LAUGHTER - Oh!
What are you now?
I'm a star, darling.
It's not the kind of star that I meant.
Did you mean an astronomical object
in which nuclear fusion happens?
Protons being fused together to make helium?
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Actually. The oldest stars in the universe
were over 13 billion years old.
But there's one very special star,
which formed 4.6 billion years ago in an outer spiral arm
of the Milky Way galaxy, and we call this star...
The sun.
GENTLE LAUGHTER
And that was followed in less than a million years
by the most significant moment in our history.
The birth of the Earth.
LAUGHTER
# The Earth, the Earth
# Is the planet of our birth
# But the girth of the Earth is quite small
# So to understand
# The size of it all
# Let's take a flight into the night
# Remembering Einstein's great sound bite... #
Nothing goes faster than the speed of light!
# Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light! Hey!
# Albert Einstein one bright night
# Said!
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light!
# A shy German man but quite polite
# Said!
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light!
# His equations were quite right
# As he worked in the office of the Swiss copyright
# Despite a moving car with its headlights shining bright
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light! #
Yeah!
# Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing!
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light!
# Hey!
# Suppose I could fly at the speed of light
# And I took off from the Earth up into the night
# In 1.3 seconds Which is really quite soon
# I'm flying past a lovely moon
# Flying past a lovely moon
# Heading for the sun Which is really far
# Takes me 8.5 minutes to our local star
# From the sun Then Mercury's three minutes away
# And three minutes more to Venus
# There's nothing more to say
# Our Earth is nine minutes' flight from the sun
# And Mars at light speed is 30 minutes further on!
# Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing!
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light!
# Hey!
# To fly on to Jupiter at maximum power
# Takes me another three quarters of an hour
# Saturn with its rings make a lovely display
# But they're still 90 minutes away
# That's very far away
# Beautiful Uranus, such a delight
# Two and a half hours at the speed of light
Yeah!
# Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing!
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light!
# Hey!
# Two hours further on like a great balloon
# Is the giant gas mask that we call Neptune
# Six hours away at the speed of light
# Suddenly Pluto comes into sight
# And Pluto may be feeling a little bit sore
# For Pluto's not a planet
# Any more...
# No, Pluto's not a planet any more
# Its days of glory faded
# Its reputation jaded
# It has sadly been downgraded
# And Pluto's not a planet any more
# First they heavily promoted it
# And now they have demoted it
# Because it's been confirmed by all
# That it was just too small
# It's enough to give you haemorrhoids
# There are 10,000 planetoids
# Each of them has big as Pluto Circling round the sun
# I guess it needed to be done
# In size it is deficient
# They thought it more efficient
# To get rid of it
# Ah-ah
# But still I feel quite sore
# That Pluto's not a planet
# Any more
# No, Pluto's not a planet
# It's been relegated, dammit
# And Pluto's not a planet any more-ore-ore
# And so I leave our solar system for a brighter star
# Centauri Proxima is still very far
# Four and a half light years of flight
# To reach our closest neighbour at the speed of light
# At the speed of light
# To cross the Milky Way at 17 billion miles a day
# Takes 100,000 Earth years
# No way!
# To reach the next galaxy Andromeda appeals
# It would take me two and a half million years
# That's a lot of years
I know!
# Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light! Hey!
# Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing
# Nothing goes faster than the speed of light! Hey! #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Actually, that's not right.
The reality is that nothing travels through space-time
faster than the speed of light,
but galaxies can recede from each other faster than light,
because they ride along with space-time as it expands
and it can stretch at any speed that it wants.
Now there's a remarkable new theory
about the origin of the universe called inflation.
We've got good evidence to suggest
that before the universe was hot and dense,
at what we used to call the big bang,
the universe was still in existence in a different form,
it was doing something else,
it was doubling in size unimaginably fast.
This exponential expansion stopped, certainly,
to form our universe, but some cosmologists think
that it may only have stopped in patches.
The bits that stop form universes through a big bang,
like our own, but the rest keeps on going.
If this theory is correct, it's known as eternal inflation,
then there's a striking and, I think, mind-blowing prediction.
The prediction is that there will be other universes out there,
some being created as we speak,
and this process may have been going on possibly forever.
There may be an infinite number of universes.
And if there are, then it's possible that we all could exist
somewhere out there in the multiverse in quite different forms.
So for example, in this universe,
I'm wearing this T-shirt and I look like me...
And in another universe, I might be wearing
this, rather fetching, off-the-shoulder red dress.
LAUGHTER
Now, you see, in this universe,
I'm obviously dressed in this dowdy nerd garb.
But in another universe I might be dressed in this blue miniskirt,
showing off my beautiful, beautiful knees.
LAUGHTER
In this universe I am me, but in another universe,
I might be a beaver.
LAUGHTER
In our universe, I can be me,
but in another one, a camel in a poncho.
LAUGHTER
In this universe, I can be the size I am, but in another,
I could be as tall as the Eiffel Tower!
CHEERING
And French.
LAUGHTER
In this universe, I'm looking a little bit saucy and fierce,
but in another universe I might be the Queen of the Fairies.
- AUDIENCE: - Aw!
Here, the royal family are dressed for a royal occasion.
But in another universe,
they might be dressed for a tribal dinner.
LAUGHTER
And in another universe,
they might be gorillas.
LAUGHTER
And in yet another universe,
they could all be aquatic sea creatures from space.
Such speculation is endless,
and it might seem ridiculous, but it's not,
it's illustrating the possibilities of an infinite universe.
SKIFFLE MUSIC
# I find quantum mechanics confusing today
# Now science is all the rage
# The Hadron Collider is banging away
# Trying to guess our age
# A particle here
# A particle there
# In this weird quantum world Bits can be anywhere
# Which might just explain why I'm losing my hair
# In the infinite monkey cage
# T'other day I heard Mrs Schrodinger say...
I'm going to put out the cat!
CAT SCREECHES
# Mrs Heisenberg said...
Oh, it might be quite dead!
I'm uncertain if you should do that.
# Unless you've got that Robin Ince and Professor Cox
# I'd leave that poor pussy alone in its box
# That cat may be both dead and alive said the sage
# In the infinite monkey cage
# Scientists say all the world's just a stage
# That physics is passing through
# There may be an infinite number of mes
# And an infinite number of yous
# God help us!
# If an infinite universe seems a bit nuts
# Scientists sometimes talk through their butts
Ooh!
# Proof, you can't do That there are more of you
# In the infinite monkey cage. #
# This linear superpositional thing
# Is blowing my mind away
# The multiverse seems to be made out of string
# That's what some particle physicists say
# If infinite monkeys write every day
# They may accidentally write Hamlet the play
# But they'd probably just poop on it and throw it away
# In the infinite monkey cage
# Them naughty monkeys
# In the infinite monkey cage
# Without their trousers
# In the infinite monkey cage! #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
WHISTLING IN AUDIENCE
Nothing lasts forever.
Stars die, galaxies die,
even universes gradually wind down.
The formation of new stars grinds to a halt,
we already see evidence of this in our own Milky Way galaxy.
So, ultimately, eventually, the universe will die.
Oh. That's all very cheery-uppy.
Once stars run out of fuel, there are only three possibilities.
Our sun will keep fusing hydrogen into helium
for another five billion years or so
until it burns through the last of its hydrogen fuel.
After that, it swells to become a red giant
approaching the Earth's orbit
before collapsing like a dying fire.
The core will compact to a planet-sized ember
and it will become a white dwar...
LAUGHTER
Sorry?
LAUGHTER
A white dwarf, it's, er...
It's a technical term, like black hole.
Oh, racist as well.
LAUGHTER
More massive stars will collapse in supernova explosions that,
for a few brief moments,
are amongst the brightest objects in the universe.
The core will be squeezed by gravity into a neutron star,
a spinning ball, 12 miles in diameter.
Oh, about the size of Oldham.
GENTLE LAUGHTER
Well, yes, but with the mass of the sun,
a sugar-cube fragment would weigh a billion tonnes on Earth.
If you took a marshmallow and dropped it,
the gravitational pull is so big it accelerates towards the ground
and hits it with the power of an atomic bomb.
Hold on - where would the marshmallow come from?
Well, don't you see - it's a metaphor?
Oh, like "white dwarf"?
LAUGHTER
Brian, does anything become spam?
LAUGHTER
Spam?
Yeah, spam!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Most of the stars we see today in the night sky
have planets around them.
Data from observatories, like the Kepler space telescope,
tell us that around one in ten stars
may have Earth-like rocky planets around them,
perhaps with rivers, seas and oceans.
That's around 20 billion potentially Earth-like planets
in the Milky Way galaxy alone,
and there are 350 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
So the question is...
are we alone?
No - we're here with you.
LAUGHTER
No, what I mean is,
is intelligent life common in the universe?
It's not even common at the BBC!
LAUGHTER
Why are we here?
- Eric asked us to come. - Yeah.
To be honest, there's no way we'd come if you asked us!
LAUGHTER
Where do we come from?
- You've come from Peterborough. - Yeah.
Kentish Town.
No, we think that life started only once on this planet.
Do you know where?
- Oldham? - LAUGHTER
- No, 3.8 billion years ago. - Oh!
Manchester.
In the oceans.
And, here, it took 3.8 billion years
for first living things to become us.
And what's wonderful and, I think, at the same time a little bit scary,
is how frequently our own evolutionary path
came close to ending.
In the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, for example,
96% of all marine life became extinct.
The odds against our survival were huge.
The Earth has been a volcanic hell.
It's been a frozen ice ball.
It's been an ocean, free of land.
The Earth has been a target for meteorites.
30,000 objects a day burn up in our atmosphere
and, shortly after its formation,
a glancing blow from a planet-sized object smashing into our Earth
caused the formation of our moon.
Against all the odds,
there's an unbroken chain of life,
stretching back 3.8 billion years -
that's one third of the age of the universe -
to some primordial life form in an ancient ocean.
And those first living things have, over geological time,
assembled themselves into intelligent, conscious beings,
inside a superbly complex body,
that can replicate, evolve and pass on our genes,
with an enormous brain that's learned to communicate
with the finest of its peers, both past and present,
and leave a legacy into the far future
through language, writing, maths, science...
- Panto... - LAUGHTER
Shopping...
A hominid intelligence, staggering on the edge of space,
pondering the immensity, and our next steps.
The age of stars will close in 100 trillion years
and, with it, the window for life in the universe will close.
If we define the end of our universe
to be the time the last supermassive black hole evaporates,
that takes place in...when?
- Roughly? - Yeah, all right.
I've got this one.
10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion,
trillion, trillion years.
Correct.
Yes!
APPLAUSE
Don't leave me hanging.
That means that life will have been possible
for only one thousandth of a billion, billion,
billion, billion, billion,
billion, billion, billion, billionth of 1%
of the age of the universe.
Imagine that.
We live in a tiny, minute, golden, bright age -
the briefest of moments in cosmic time.
We don't know how the universe came into existence,
or why it came into existence,
but we do know where it is.
It's all around us.
It's in us.
It is us.
We are the means by which the universe understands itself.
But we may be effectively alone -
an isolated island of meaning
in an unimaginably vast and hostile universe.
Ugh.
That's a bit of a downer, isn't it?
Terribly depressing.
- That's a terrible ending, Brian. - Yeah.
Well, no, it isn't.
Cheer up.
You know what they say...
PING!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
# Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
# And revolving at 900 miles an hour
# That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned
# The sun that is the source of all our power
# The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
# Are moving at a million miles a day
# In an outer spiral arm at half a million miles an hour
# In a galaxy they call the Milky Way
- CHOIR: - # Ah ah ah
- CHOIR: - # Ah-ah
- STEPHEN HAWKING: - # Our galaxy itself contains 500 billion stars
# It's 100,000 light years side to side
# It bulges in the middle 6,000 light years thick
# But by us it's just 1,000 light years wide
# We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point
# We go round every 200 million years
# And our galaxy is only one of millions and billions
# In this amazing, expanding universe
- CHOIR: - # Ah ah ah
- CHOIR: - # Ah ah ah ah
# Ah ah ah
# Ah ah ah-ah
# Ah ah ah ah-ah
- ROBIN, JONTY AND IAN: - # The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
# In all of the directions it can whizz
# As fast as it can go At the speed of light, you know
# 12 million miles a minute That's the fastest speed there is
# So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
# How amazingly unlikely is your birth
# And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
- ALL: - # Cos there's bugger-all down here on Earth! #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The Entire Universe was brought to you by Rutland Weekend Television,
with John Du Prez and the Rutland Light Orchestra...
..with the Muriel Tritt School Of Music And Dance Ensemble...
CHEERING
..with Arlene Phillips as Muriel Tritt...
CHEERING
..special guest star Tim Peake...
CHEERING
..Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel as Morecambe and Wise...
CHEERING
..Robin Ince as Robin Ince...
CHEERING
..Hannah Waddingham...
CHEERING
..Noel Fielding...
CHEERING
..Warwick Davis...
CHEERING
..Eric Idle...
CHEERING
..and Professor Brian Cox.
CHEERING
Please join us again in another 41 years,
for another Rutland Weekend TV show.
Thank you and good night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE