There are billions of stars therefore trillions of planets. Carl Sagan
What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars? Christiaan Huygens, Cosmotheoros II
It is in these clumps of dark matter that galaxies like the Milky Way would have formed ... The dark matter is the skeleton of the universe. Carlos Frenk
Mathematics seem to permeate Nature ... almost as if God is a master mathematician who has constructed the universe in mathematical forms. Horizon: A Mathematical Problem, BBC 1984
This universe we live in: scientists have discovered some remarkably strange things about it. So strange they are having to use the most disturbing principles to describe what’s going on. Horizon: The Anthropic Principle, BBC 1987
The Anthropic Principle: The universe was anthropicentric – the hub of all creation was man. ibid.
Galileo’s masterstroke was to discover that what goes on around us depends on mathematical laws. ibid.
So what are we? A statistical accident. Where are we? Nowhere special. Where are we going? Into oblivion. A meaningless hiccup in the blank procession of matter through time. It’s a tatty destiny. ibid.
The Anthropic Principle seems well named – forget other intelligences; the universe may well have given rise to man alone. ibid.
Weak Anthropic Principle: A universe remarkably in sympathy with our existence. Strong Anthropic Principle: A universe that gave birth to man. Participatory Anthropic Principle: a universe that man helps to create by his observations and understanding. Final Anthropic Principle: A universe in while life will never die out and where knowledge will increase for ever. ibid.
A revolution in astronomy ... This is the Hubble Space Telescope. Horizon: The Sharpest Show of the Universe, BBC 1990
The Cosmic Background Explorer – Cobi – sent up by NASA a few months before Space Telescope was launched. Its mission to search for the earliest signs of structure in the echoes of the Big Bang. Horizon: Here Be Monsters, BBC 1993
In March 2000 two astronomers made an extraordinary discovery. One that is set to overturn our understanding of how the universe formed. What they discovered was a very simple relationship – a relationship between the galaxy we live in and the most destructive force in the universe – a super-massive black hole; it set the world of cosmology alight. Horizon: Super-Massive Black Holes, BBC 2000
Super-massive black holes could exist in two states: when it’s feeding, a giant black hole creates a bright burning gas disk around it. And then for some reason it stops feeding, leaving a dark deadly core lurking menacingly in the centre of the galaxy. ibid.
Perhaps black holes are an essential part of what galaxies are and how they work. ibid.
The size of the black hole in the end depends on how fast the stars are moving in the newly formed galaxy around it ... All giant black holes and their galaxies are connected from birth. ibid.
If our black hole has started feeding again, could this affect the Earth? ibid.
There’s something weird out there in the universe ... Something we can’t see is pulling the strings of the universe. The alien stuff, if it exists, needs to fill a very big hole because 96% of our universe is unaccounted for. Horizon: Most of our Universe is Missing, BBC 2006
[Fritz] Zwicky was a difficult man to get along with. So his scientific work had sometimes been overlooked. But his forgotten ideas about Dark Matter were a godsend for Ostriker and Peebles. ibid.
Science had uncovered a puzzle. There was something missing. There wasn’t enough mass in the universe to provide the gravity to hold it together. And yet there the universe was – obviously not falling apart. But science had also provided an answer. Peebles and Ostriker’s Dark Matter made everything work. And thanks to Vera [Rubin] it was suddenly very popular. ibid.
Dark Matter was headline news. There was only one small problem – no-one had actually found any Dark Matter. ibid.
The gas was orbiting just as fast as the stars. Even the hydrogen gas was being manipulated by a mysterious force. It seemed that Dark Matter would have to exist as a huge all-pervading halo surrounding a galaxy and everything in it including us here on Earth. All the evidence pointed towards one slightly unsettling thing: Dark Matter is not made of atoms like us and everything we know. ibid.
The amount of energy needed to cause the acceleration was hugely significant. Because energy is proportional to mass it accounted exactly for the missing 75% of the universe. ibid.
Finally none of the universe was missing. It was made of 4% atoms, the stuff we’re familiar with, 21% Dark Matter that no-one could find, and a whopping 75% made from brand-new whizzy Dark Energy that nobody could understand. Cosmology’s standard model was born. ibid.
The most ambitious map in history is taking shape before our eyes. And scientists are heading for the edge. It may be the strangest map you will ever see. And it’s bigger than you can believe. It’s a map of the entire universe. Horizon: How Big is the Universe? BBC 2012
The universe is so big we may never find the edge. ibid.
It’s called the Observable Universe. We can only map what’s inside ... The light hasn’t had time to reach us yet. ibid.
In the observable universe there are 170 billion galaxies just like it. ibid.
Dark matters outweighs it six to one. ibid.
A supernova only burns brightly for three weeks. ibid.
He [Perlmutter] was finally ready to measure the deceleration of the universe. But late in 1997 the team was getting some very weird results. ibid.
One of the biggest shocks in modern cosmology. This is a runaway universe. ibid.
The entire universe is defying gravity. ibid.
Cosmologists don’t know what Dark Energy is, they only know what it does. When gravity pulls, Dark Energy pushes. ibid.
Dark Matter is fighting a losing battle. ibid.
The entire observable universe is saturated in Dark Energy. ibid.
The universe is infinite. ibid.
Inflation may have started out as a mathematical theory but it has gained acceptance after successful testing against the evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background. ibid.
Eternal Inflation ... An infinite number of infinite universes. ibid.
Out there hidden from the naked eye is a universe we barely understand. There are stars being born, block holes, perhaps even new forms of life. But now astronomers are able to see the cosmos as never before. They are creating a new breed of super-telescope of unprecedented power and clarity. Horizon: Seeing Stars, BBC 2011
The Atacama Desert Chile ... To locate this black hole astronomers will be using one of the most powerful telescopes ever built: the VLT, the Very Large Telescope. ibid.
The VLT can capture vast amounts of infra-red from space. ibid.
Meet SOFIA ... The world’s largest mobile astronomical observatory with an infra-red telescope beneath the bulge. ibid.
SOFIA and her seventeen-ton telescope is heading for the stratosphere. ibid.
They are working on one of the most advanced telescopes ever – the James Webb Telescope. Possibly the ultimate exploration machine. ibid.
The latest infra-red telescopes are ushering in a golden age of astronomy. ibid.
This is extreme astronomy. ibid.
A giant array known as ALMA. When it is finished sixty-six dishes will operate as one, the equivalent of an antenna ten-miles across. ibid.
Nobody knows which objects in the universe produce cosmic rays. ibid.
Ever since the first humans stood in awe and wonder beneath the night sky we’ve wanted to know what’s out there. The Final Frontier: A Horizon Guide to the Universe, BBC 2012
Where did the universe come from? ibid.
Experimental evidence has proved that Einstein was right. ibid.
The Big Bang: a single moment of creation in which everything in the universe burst into existence. ibid.
The Hubble space telescope went on to produce the most magnificent images of the universe the world had ever seen. ibid.
On Earth whenever there is water, there is life. ibid.
In July 2012 the first glimpse of the Higgs Particle was announced. ibid.
What created the Big Bang? ibid.
NASA’s nothing has properties. ibid.