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A Big History of Everything - H2
A Big History of Everything - H2
This episode of Big History from H2 covers the entire story of Big History in a single episode. Now that you’ve completed the course, let’s revisit this episode and see if your perspective has changed at all.
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Key Ideas
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
What has to happen for an event to be considered a threshold in Big History?
What are some of the possibilities for the future suggested in the video?
What does the narrator mean when he says that on an astronomical scale (over billions of years) our fate is much clearer?
: These hubs appear throughout space and time
: in stars that forge elements,
: ancient seas that produce life...
: and even in cities on Earth.
: >> Giant cities form with huge amounts of activity,
: and then there are, of course, these great expanses
: and not much activity.
: All these things come about as a result
: of just repeated interactions of particles
: obeying the laws of physics, and there's just a few laws of physics.
: >> So what is the next threshold?
: >> So what is the next threshold?
: Will life,
: complexity, and thresholds go on forever?
: Or does Big History foresee new moments
: where mankind, life itself,
: even the entire universe come to an end?
: even the entire universe come to an end?
: >> Big History has revealed
: how a series of eight giant thresholds
: ultimately lead to the advanced civilization
: that surrounds us today.
: But what thresholds lie in the future?
: To be considered a threshold in Big History,
: an event has to alter things fundamentally,
: irreversibly changing our modern world.
: irreversibly changing our modern world.
: So what thresholds lie ahead?
: What will the ninth be?
: One possible candidate--
: the point when humans begin to live on other planets,
: like Mars.
: Another possibility,
: the moment our own technology overtakes us.
: Still another possible threshold
: would be discovering intelligent creatures from other planets...
: or being discovered by them.
: But we've also seen that threshold moments can occur
: in the aftermath of catastrophe...
: like a cosmic collision.
: >> There are still sort of rogue asteroids
: wandering around our Earth.
: >> Scientists calculate that an asteroid six miles wide
: could wipe out humanity
: just as a similar impact wiped out the dinosaurs
: 65 million years ago.
: The explosion of a nearby star
: The explosion of a nearby star
: could also cause a planet-wide cataclysm.
: But disaster doesn't only come from space.
: Here on Earth,
: the next threshold might follow a worldwide natural disaster,
: like the dawn of a new Ice Age
: like the dawn of a new Ice Age
: or the toxic blast of a supermassive volcano,
: and even a cataclysm of our own invention,
: from thermonuclear war to environmental destruction.
: >> But on the other hand,
: the story of human innovation is fantastically creative.
: I mean, we are staggeringly creative.
: We are so clever as a result of collective learning,
: that if our species can't solve these problems,
: I have no idea who can.
: >> Big History is about looking at our world
: and our future in different ways.
: On an astronomical scale across billions of years,
: our fate is much more clear.
: Our story of moving from simplicity to complexity
: is only temporary.
: Billions of years from now,
: the Sun will expand and sterilize the Earth.
: >> All the seas will boil away. Then the Sun will shrink and contract
: and then end up as a white dwarf and then a black dwarf, no energy,
: just this dead, lifeless object floating in space.
: >> Out in the universe, already today,
: 90% of the material to make new stars has been used up,
: so fewer will be formed. The story of the universe,
: the series of thresholds that led to our world today...
: will begin to reverse.
: Instead of becoming more complex, things will become more simple.
: >> Stars will stop forming. They will stop creating new elements.
: >> Eventually, if the universe expands forever,
: it'll cool down to essentially absolute zero everywhere.
: >> The story of Big History will come to an end
: in a darkened cosmos where nothing will be created.
: >> And in the far distant future,
: the universe is going to be extraordinarily simple again,
: and it will cease to be able to create complex things.
: So that means something quite magical about the time we live in.
: We live in the springtime of our universe. That's a time when our universe