Anyone Watch "The Universe" on the History Channel?
 

Fucking phenomenal show. It has a ton of information but isn't so advanced that the average person couldn't understand it. Middle of the second season right now but you can get the videos on iTunes or just buy the first on DVD. I highly recommned it to anyone who has an interest in space and such.

Just downloaded and watched the episode on how the Earth will end. Pretty fucking freaky and makes you feel real small in the grand scheme of things.

I think i saw an episode a little while ago. Highly interesting but often too much to really get a grip on it if you know what i mean. Its just too weird, too much to "understand" it.

Excellent show, and I agree, it's presented so that us (meaning me) non highly scientific minds can wrap around and understand the concepts.
I have really been enjoying it and would also give it a couple thumbs up.

Check it out :thumbsup

Good program. I usually watch it on TIVO after the ballgames and news programs are over when the only thing on the schedule is infomercials.

There are a few episodes that just fuck me up. The end of the universe scenarios are just mind boggling. Just to think of time and everything else as we know it ceasing to exist. Even the end of the planet which is inevitable is scary.

I know what you mean Dirty F, some of the episodes are just too much to really get into. I've kind of picked and choosed which topics I'm interested in and watched it. Probably not for everybody, but I'm a nerd when it comes to that stuff.

I do. "The Universe" rules.

havent heard of it but I will be sure to pick up the dvds.

Loved season one.!!

Season two isnt here yet but am looking forward to it for sure.

I love that series! I have a good bit of them on DVD, thanks to a kickass loder.

Get ready for the Milky Way/Andromeda collision, beeches!

After watching them, you realize that not only does energy and matter essentially get recycled on Earth, but it pretty much happens everywhere in the Universe. Nature loves patterns.

When I think about the recycling patterns of nature, the Big Bang theory starts to not make as much sense. The Universe and time created because an infinitely dense point in space exploded? I don't know, but with all the cyclic patterns around us, it just doesn't seem to fit. Here is an alternate theory to the big bang, it seems to fit a little better.

I love that show! One of my all time favorites!

I'm seriously addicted to it.

I am still with the big bang.

Me too. I still don't get what was before the big bang.

Hehe... The only bad thing about the whole situation, is that we will most likely never know for sure, in our lifetime.

Cyclic Patterns and Big Bang Theory are not mutually exclusive. :2 cents:

The way I, personally, conceptualize the whole thing involves a potentially infinite number of Big Bangs going back and forward into history. I'm sure I'm not the only one of that mind.

In fact... the last time I touched on the subject was in response to another one of your posts. :)

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Judging by how the weight of the universe itself causes it to bend and could possibly make it into a circle or globe. It also is ever expanding and building in speed and eventually everything will be ripped apart to its sub atomic particles. Maybe when they all amass at the other side of the loop they collide and create a new big bang.

But hell I sure in the fuck am not a theoretical physicist. I just nod my head and agree with the older asian guy on the show.

Exactly! The big bang seems almost like a creationist-type theory to me. What I mean by that, is that before the big bang, there is supposedly nothing in the universe, not even time. One day, that infinitely dense point explodes, and time, matter and energy are born.

Perhaps our universe is actually the molecular composition of a bigger object?

It's kind of a chicken/egg scenario when talking about the universe. No matter what scenario you build, there has to be something that caused it to happen. Even if you take a creationist approach, something had to create the creator. The stuff fascinates me, just not sure we'll ever get a true answer.

Well, I'm not so sure it's the weight of the universe that bends it into a globe-like shape. If the big bang is correct, then the matter, energy and other stuff would be ejected equally on all sides of the point of origin, giving the debris cloud a spherical shape.

I saw a portion where the expansion of the Universe was discussed. They mentioned that our vantage point might not be the best, considering that we are inside what they are trying to observe. Kinda like how our distant ancestors believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system.

I think I know which Asian guy you are referring to. Michio Kaku wroks!
http://www.genreonline.net/Genre_files/Kaku1Large.jpg

Yea man, I know what you are saying. When you mention chicken or the egg, my brain starts to liquefy.

I've got it on DVR.

Don't tell me how it ends!

Nothing. And not just a "lack of things", but nothing. No space, no time.

One of the theories I remember from 15 or so, maybe more, years ago was that the universe will eventually run out of steam and then collapse in on itself, so yah, i could see that being a possibility.

Jeez, I didn't even see that linked post before. I almost missed the posts in this thread, but I saw it quoted above.

I see what your saying though. I guess it's not specifically the big bang theory, itself, that I don't want to agree with. It's more so the thought that nothing existed before the big bang event that I don't find to be easily agreeable.

my stepsister got me hooked on the universe over the holidays, she brought the whole first season dvd set down and i watched through the entire thing. amazing program.

I think that's the Big Crunch. Isn't that less popular now because they found out the universe is growing at an accelerated rate?

Glad you finally caught it... woulda hate to think all that typing never hit its intended target. :)

Yeah... I'm not sure if anyone's saying that there was nothing - especially with any grade of certainty - I mean, after all... no one knows _what_ existed before everything went "BANG"... only that the idea is the "BANG" is what kicked off our modern cycle.

And, science - being the sum of knowledge gained through falsification, doesn't want to assume it knows something it doesn't know... so maybe that's where you got the idea that the theory includes that nothing existed before it - because nothing's explicitly stated before it - when, in fact, it's just an unknown, so it's not really a part of the theory.

At least ever since Parmenides in Ancient Greece helped refine the concepts of Love and Hate being the the great forces in the universe (Pure Love bringing everything together into one, and then Pure Hate pushing everything apart - leading to an eventual state of Pure Love once again = etc., etc., ad nauseam), it's been, at least philosophically, accepted that the universe is in a constant state of death and rebirth... and I don't think that idea was lost on any of the scientists who helped develop the theory.

Again, I think it's just an attempt to explain more 'recent' events backwards into infinity.

A lot of the development of that kind of thinking depends on whether we live in an open or closed universe, I think.

Once we figure that out, a lot of questions get answered.

Never seen it. Definitely want to watch it now tho.

There is significant evidence that the universe had an originator, it started from somewhere and the big bang is the only logical explination, so know how the universe got here just not what about before?

They say that time started with the big bang. I may be getting the wrong idea about the concept. Maybe matter and energy existed, but time didn't? But, I think I remember one of the astronomers, in an episode of The Universe, describing the big bang event and implying that that there was nothing before it had happened. I'm gonna have to try and find that episode and report back.

Ok. I found the show I was talking about. NGC's Naked Science Episode "Birth of the Universe". The narrator starts off with this, loosely transcribed:

"In the beginning, there was nothing. No space. No time. And then, there was light. Suddenly, a tiny speck of light appears. It was infinitely hot. Inside this tiny fireball was all of space. This was literally the beginning of time."

But then after that, they explain that the big bang isn't a theory of how the universe began, but rather how it evolved.

I guess I should listen to what the actual scientists say, instead of the narrator. hehe

I agree, the show is amazing

They have pretty much prooved that the universe is accellerating and will never slow down and thus that theory is dead in the water.

As for big bang from what I remember (I live on these types of shows) is that it only took 1 more electron than proton to get it all going. That and when you hear static on an empty tv station etc part of that static is the sound of the big bang itself.

I wouldn't phrase it that way. If it's shown that we live in a closed Universe, then it could be ascertained that we're accelerating toward our own crunch. In analogy, think of each of the galaxies as droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere... comprising clouds... all rushing outward from the same point... doomed to encircle the globe forever... that's, roughly, one of the suggested models of our universe.

And I'm not entirely sure that it's been proven that we're never to slow down - only generally accepted (due to the overwhelming evidence of red shift, etc) that we are currently in a state of acceleration... which contradicts what some thought beforehand.

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. :thumbsup

Probably the most supportive piece of evidence that there was some sort of "Big Bang."

Does anyone else get overwhelmed when they read/watch about the end of the universe? It's just so unimagineable that everything we know that has ever been created could cease to exist in a Big Rip (and probably will). Or that our planet will eventually be destroyed by the Sun.

I know none of us will be alive to see any of this, but it still overwhelms me to think of that possibility.

i really like "History Channel"... :)

Sounds Interesting I will have to download it.