The lyrical symmetry of how the cosmos was born, how it will die, and what to make of the mystery in between.
“Death,” wrote Rilke in a beautiful 1923 letter, “is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” The beloved poet may well have been a secret astrophysicist, for his immortal words contain the poetics of the universe’s birth, its eventual death, and the enchanting mystery of the cosmic blink between the two.
That poetic and enthralling science is what South African cosmologist and TED Fellow Renée Hložek explores in this fascinating animated short from TED-Ed:
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A love letter to the cosmos, in a cut-paper stop-motion musical animation.
“I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral,”Ptolemy marveled, “but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies … I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.” Eighteen centuries later, Neil deGrasse Tyson — Ptolemy’s contemporary counterpart — echoed the ancient astronomer as he reflected on the most astounding fact about the universe: “When I look up at the night sky and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe … the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up — many people feel small, because they’re small, the Universe is big — but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.”
When Portland-based jazz pianist, singer-songwriter, and children’s music composer Lori Henriques came upon Tyson’s words, she was stirred to set his sentiment to song, using the captivating melody of “Saint James Infirmary,” which she had always wanted to incorporate into children’s music. The result is the infinitely delightful “When I Look Into The Night Sky,” found on Henriques’s science album for children, The World Is a Curious Place to Live (iTunes).
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That central mystery of quantum mechanics is what particle physicist Chad Orzel, author of the illuminating and intelligently entertaining How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog (public library), explores in this animated primer from TED Ed.
Orzel writes in the book:
Classical physics is the physics of everyday objects — tennis balls and squeaky toys, stoves and ice cubes, magnets and electrical wiring… Modern physics describes the stranger world that we see when we go beyond the everyday… Modern physics is divided into two parts, each representing a radical departure from classical rules. One part, relativity, deals with objects that move very fast, or are in the presence of strong gravitational forces… The other part of modern physics is what I talk to my dog about.
He points out that quantum mechanics is woven into the very fabric of modern life:
Without an understanding of the quantum nature of the electron, it would be impossible to make the semiconductor chips that run our computers. Without an understanding of the quantum nature of light and atoms, it would be impossible to make the lasers we use to send messages over fiber-optic communication lines.
Quantum theory’s effect on science goes beyond the merely practical — it forces physicists to grapple with issues of philosophy. Quantum physics places limits on what we can know about the universe and the properties of objects in it. Quantum mechanics even changes our understanding of what it means to make a measurement. It requires a complete rethinking of the nature of reality at the most fundamental level.
Quantum mechanics describes an utterly bizarre world, where nothing is certain and objects don’t have definite properties until you measure them. It’s a world where distant objects are connected in strange ways, where there are entire universes with different histories right next to our own, and where “virtual particles” pop in and out of existence in otherwise empty space.
Quantum physics may sound like the stuff of fantasy fiction, but it’s science. The world described in quantum theory is our world, at a microscopic scale. The strange effects predicted by quantum physics are real, with real consequences and applications.
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Titled The John Lennon Sketchbook, the befittingly weird and wonderful film — a vibrant testament to our long cultural history of anthropomorphizing animals to illuminate the human experience — begins with Lennon’s iconic “Imagine,” features Ono’s song “The King of the Zoo,” and weaves in chillingly prophetic conversations from the limited-edition 1980 LP Heart Play: Unfinished Dialogue, the first interview album of Lennon and Ono’s interviews after the breakup of The Beatles and the second posthumously released Lennon record.
Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out — we’re pacifists, but I’m not sure what it means when you’re such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.
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In 1986, seventeen years after Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s 
