Download 1 VERSION 21A Cosmos+ A big bang family performance about the

VERSION 21A
Cosmos+
A big bang family performance about the wonders of the universe
Start: The Moon
A Sun – nuclear power
A1 Equation rain
B Gravity - controlling, destroying
C Solar system – symmetry versus chaos
D Dark Matter – Dark Energy
E Quantum physics – underlying presence
F Red Giant – transformation, connectivity
G1 Twin paradox
G2 Space time – the grid
H Galaxies - light-guide-points
I Big Bang
What is it about?
All that we do not know about the universe
All that we do know about the universe
The attraction of the universe
The research of the mystery of the cosmos
The colossal dimensions, scale, time
The infinite darkness and the unknown
The transitions of mass
The connectedness of mass and energy
Keep looking up!
Cast
1 Astronomer
1 Mathematician
2 Philosophers
2 Physicists
2 Operators
1 Moon girl
1 TOM7
1
MOON
Participants: Moon girl, Operators 1 and 2, Tom7
TOM7
Checklist: Photons, bosons, gluons, atoms, protons, neutrons, quarks, cosmological constant,
gravity, galaxies, planets, dark energy, dark matter, event horizon, black hole, white dwarf, red
giant, supernova, nuclear power, comets, meteor, vacuum, Big Bang, space-time, plasma…
OPERATOR 2
Do not believe everything you see. The Moon is not a white disc on the dark night sky.
OPERATOR 1
The Moon is made of lava stone. Lava stone as black as coal.
The Moon is just a rock the Sun shines its light on.
TOM7
Bacteria can live in the most incredible places. On the Moon there is a bacteria that is called a
streptococcal. It lives on a measuring device that came with the Apollo 11 spaceship.
TOM7
Did you know that Earth is travelling through space at 300 km per second?
OPERATOR 2
I cannot feel that at all.
OPERATOR 1
I can feel it when I see the Sunset and the Moonrise.
TOM7
If I take a chunk of my arm and place it under a microscope I would see atoms that were forged in
the center of a star a long, long time ago.
The atoms in my right hand come from one star, and the atoms in my left hand come from another
star. Write that down.
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A SUN
Participants: Astronomer, Physicists 1+2, Philosophers 1+2, Operators 1+2, Tom7
ASTRONOMER
The Sun is a star, a regular medium sized star, but it is much closer to Earth than any other star.
That is why it shines much brighter that any other star we can see.
OPERATOR 1
The Sun is King. The Sun is the center of the Solar System. Everything else rotates around it.
OPERATOR 2
The Sun is not King. It is the gravity of the Sun that is King.
OPERATOR 1
But it is the Sun that gives us life here on Earth. I love the Sun.
PHYSICIST 1
The Sun is a star that produces 400 million million million million million joules of energy per
second. Every second.
PHYSICIST 1
That is the equivalent to the amount of energy all us use in a year to turn on the lights, cook dinner,
play computer games and use the hair dryer, the toaster, a refrigerator, a coffee machine.
ASTRONOMER
In the core of the Sun it is 15 million degrees C. The surface of the Sun is 5,500 degrees C. The
Sun is 150 million kilometers away from Earth. It takes 8 minutes for the light from the Sun to travel
down to Earth. 8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1.
PHYSICIST 2
The Sun is a gigantic power plant.
ASTRONOMER
All stars are power plants. Stars are enormous balls of gas. In their scorching center nuclear
reactions take place, fusing atoms and releasing energy. It is this energy that makes the stars hot
and emits light.
OPERATOR 2
When my brother was born my parents named him after a star. I am considering changing my
name to the name of a star. For instance Hercules, Crater, Draco, Taurus or Lupus.
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OPERATOR 1
I would rather have a name of an asteroid, like Icaros, Amor, Apollo or just 2004AS1.
TOM7
I always have to pay close attention to the raw materials for my inventions. It was very expensive
to build my first robot SBQ1000 for the Mars expedition. Humans would be a lot cheaper to
produce as they are primarily made from water, coal, chalk, air and rust. It would be cheaper to
produce humans than robots. Interesting thought. That would be my next project. I will call it
WCCAR.
OPERATOR 2
All stars will burn out one day, also our Sun. It will become a White Dwarf.
OPERATOR 1
The Sun is half way through its life cycle and will last for another 5 billion years.
OPERATOR 2
Then there is still plenty of time to live your life.
A1 EQUATION RAIN
PHILOSOPHER 2
As a child I had a lot of wishes. Not simple wishes but big wishes. When I would see a shooting
star, my wishes were too long to be said while the star was falling. The star would disappear in the
sky while I would still be making my wish. I think that was the reason why only some of my wishes
came true.
PHILOSOPHER 1
So he realized that his wishes had to be shorter. It was better to wish for “a fishing rod“ than “a
fishing rod with a gold-coloured reel”, a soft holder and a green bob with an orange cap.“ Because
stars were falling so fast he had only enough time to say that he wanted “a fishing rod with a gold ...“
PHILOSOPHER 2
And once I received a birthday gift from my parents.
It was a fishing rod.
OPERATOR 1
When it starts to thunder I can feel it in the filling in my tooth.
OPERATOR 2
When it thunders I change my bed sheets.
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B GRAVITY
Participants: Astronomer, Physicist 2, Mathematician, Philosopher 1+2, Operator 1+2, Tom7, Moon
Girl
TOM7
If I go to the Moon I would only weigh one-sixth of what I weigh here on Earth because the gravity
on the Moon is much weaker than on Earth.
ASTRONOMER
Gravity is the force of attraction between all particles, which have mass, in the universe. Gravity
holds the planets in their orbit around the sun, and makes the apple fall onto the ground with a
bump. That’s why we think of gravity as a strong force, when in fact it is not. We can easily pick up
a rock from the ground, even though the entire Earth is pulling in the opposite direction.
PHYSICIST 2
It is the Sun’s gravity that makes the planets orbit around the Sun.
They fall in a straight line through the curved space-time around the Sun.
PHILOSOPHER 2
There is no up and down, up and down is everywhere. It is only because of the gravity here on
Earth that we began to use words like up and down.
PHILOSOPHER 1
Ergo, these definitions make no sense out there in free-floating space.
MATHEMATICIAN
We mathematicians just define what is up and down. Up is a normal vector that points outwards,
and down is a vector that points in the opposite direction.
TOM7
Out in space you cannot cry. If your eyes start to water every teardrop will just sit on top of the
eyeball. They will never become falling tears, as there is no gravity pulling them away from the eye.
ASTRONOMER
Gravity is a great creator and destroyer. It will crush everything into black holes. A black hole is an
area in the universe where the gravity is so dense that not even light can escape.
MATHEMATICIAN
A point is something that does not expand in any direction. A line is something that only expands in
one direction.
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ASTRONOMER
A black hole is something you cannot see, but you can detect it by looking at the stars around it.
Some of these stars disappear, when they get too close to the black hole that eats them.
MATHEMATICIAN
We mathematicians would describe a black hole as a tractrix. It has a curvature minus one.
We are constantly working with definitions.
OPERATOR 2
Without any hesitation I would choose a black hole for when I die. Not cremation or burial, but to be
torn into atoms by the gravity of the black hole.
OPERATOR 1
When I die I want to be burnt to ashes so that I can be mixed with gunpowder and turned into
fireworks.
PHYSICIST 2
Some black holes are as small as a grain of sand, but as heavy as the entire Earth.
PHYSICIST 2
If you fall into a black hole, your feet will fall faster than your head, and you will become spaghetti,
spaghetti, spaghettiiiiiii …..
---------------------ASTRONOMER
I once lived in a small house. Every morning my wife would stand out on our little balcony to
breathe in the fresh air until one day the balcony collapsed in the middle of a breath.
OPERATOR 1
Did you know that the universe smells like bacon, metal and burned dust?
OPERATOR 2
Did you know that the atmosphere is a poisonous blue jelly made from a mixture of carbon dioxide,
nitrogen, sulphur and methane?
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C SOLAR SYSTEM
Participants: Astronomer, Mathematician, Philosopher 1+2, Operator 1+2, Tom7, Moon Girl
ASTRONOMER
The solar system is the Earth’s cosmic family. It consists of everything that is held in by the grip of
the Sun’s gravity: planets, dwarf planets, moons, comets, asteroids and other various small
objects, and bigger things that have yet to be discovered.
TOM7
The Sun and all the planets started out as dust, small specs of dust that slowly turned into bigger
lumps of dust, and later into planets. You should think about that the next time you vacuum.
ASTRONOMER
The solar system is like a giant clock, all the planets orbit around the Sun with a precise speed,
and we can predict where they will be many million years from now.
- No that is not true since the universe is chaotic therefore the mechanism of the solar system must
also be unstable.
TOM7
I soon plan to travel on the space station ISS around the Earth. I could also choose a satellite like
XMM, CHANDRA or INTEGRAL – or one of the other 8.000 satellites constantly circling around us
– but ISS is the largest one.
OPERATOR 2
It is a nightmare to work on Mars. The temperature differences are insufferable, -133 degrees C at
night and about 20 degrees C during the day. And it is very dusty, in fact it is so dusty that during a
massive storm on Mars, the dust blows all the way down to us.
OPERATOR 1
On Mars there is frozen water at the ice-covered poles. Perhaps there is still liquid water on Mars?
Maybe there is life on Mars?
OPERATOR 1
And then there is the planet with the beautiful name Venus.
OPERATOR 2
Yeah, but it is extremely hostile, its atmosphere is burning hot with toxic fumes and the air pressure
could crush a 100-storey skyscraper.
TOM7
I visited Venus. It stinks of rotten eggs.
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ASTRONOMER
Venus rotates so slowly on its axis that one day on Venus is longer than the Venus-year it takes to
orbit the Sun.
OPERATOR 2
Then you have plenty of time to watch a bunch of movies during the day.
OPERATOR 1
If I lived on Venus I would celebrate my birthday every day. But on the other hand there would be
some very long working days.
ASTRONOMER
On Jupiter there are hurricanes that have lasted for over 400 years. There is lightening 1000 times
as powerful as the lightening on Earth, and gusts of wind of 400 km per hour.
TOM7
I decided not to land on Jupiter with my spacecraft because there is no solid surface to land on and
there is constant bad weather. Everything is massive gas clouds, so I will probably end up landing
on one of the 67 moons orbiting Jupiter.
ASTRONOMER
The rings of Saturn are only 3 meters thick. They look like silver, but are only made of chunks of
ice and rock.
OPERATOR 2
The other day on the street an asteroid shot straight through my left foot and continued towards the
centre of the Earth. It was no bigger than a grain of sand.
OPERATOR 1
Well, when asteroids slam into the surface of the Earth and shatter into millions of pieces they are
called meteorites.
ASTRONOMER
Comets are leftovers from when the solar system was formed. They contain some of the dust that
the planets are made from, and they can tell us about the early stages of the solar system. They
are a kind of frozen time capsules.
PHILOSOPHER 1
Comets are the cosmic wanderers.
PHILOSOPHER 2
The word Comet comes from Greek and means ’long-haired star’.
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TOM7
A comet tail can be over a million kilometers.
You may call me a comet-tail detective. Some comets only pass by Earth once. Then I am ready to
observe them.
---------------------ASTRONOMER
When I go out at night, and the sky is clear, I always look up. It is a habit of mine and it is
something I wish more people would do. You might see something that will leave a big impression
on you. Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. A comet. The constellations.
There´s the Lithuanian Satellite passing by. It was launched this year in February.
If you never look up, you will miss all of that.
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D DARK MATTER, DARK ENERGY
Participants: Mathematician, Physicists 1+2, Philosophers 1+2, Tom7
PHYSICIST 1
Most of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy. We do not know what dark matter is,
but it functions as some sort of cosmic glue that binds the stars together in galaxies.
PHYSICIST 2
Dark energy is different from dark matter. Dark energy exists everywhere in the cosmos.
PHYSICIST 1
The universe is expanding, but dark energy preserves the same density. The question of dark
energy is one of the most fundamental unsolved questions.
TOM7
The heavy particles in dark matter I call WIMPs and the larger objects I call MACHOs.
PHILOSOPHER 1
An atom consists of 99% nothing and the universe is made up of 75% dark energy, which no one
really knows what is. So no matter what we are discussing, we are either talking about Nothing or
about something no one really knows what is.
PHILOSOPHER 2
If we talk about nothing, nothing becomes something. Then nothing is a thing. The moment we talk
about it we have made it into something other than what it is.
And if we do not understand any of it then we are on the right track.
MATHEMATICIAN
A person can have no money, no car, no food, no ideas and so on. But a person cannot have
nothing, for if you were to have that thought, you would at least have that thought.
TOM7
If I add up everything there is in the world and subtract the cross sum, and the cross sum of the
cross sum, I am left with the feeling that zero is the highest number.
MATHEMATICIAN
The number 0 describes the abstract concept of nothing. When 5 cows are not the same as 5
apples, 0 cows and 0 apples will be the same – no cows and no apples.
PHYSICIST 1
The empty space is not empty. Empty space does not exist. It is filled with quantum fluctuations.
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PHYSICIST 2
Some physicists believe that the universe came from such a quantum fluctuation – a small
simmering irregularity in the emptiness of space. This simmering state was probably the physical
reality before the Big Bang set everything into motion.
TOM7
When something can come from nothing, everything is possible.
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E QUANTUM PHYSICS
Participants: Physicists 1+2, Tom7, Moon Girl
TOM7
I cannot predict when something will happen to a particular atom, and afterwards it is not possible
to explain why a particular atom jumped to this exact state at that exact moment. That is just how it
is.
PHYSICIST 2
Quantum physics contradicts the most central principles of classical physics, namely the principle
of cause and effect – the notion that everything happens for a reason.
TOM7
Electrons show fundamentally different properties in different scenarios. Like I do things differently
during the day and at night.
PHYSICIST 1
Atomic processes can happen in jumps.
PHYSICIST 2
The atomic world cannot be predicted.
PHYSICIST 1
Light can both be described as waves and particles.
PHYSICIST 2
There is a fundamental limit to what we can measure.
PHYSICIST 1
We cannot measure an electron’s position and speed at the same time.
PHYSICIST 2
You cannot say that an atom exists independently without measuring it.
MOON GIRL
It happened again. You came to visit me, and the universe divided itself in two. In one universe you
came to visit me, and in another you did not come to visit me. Afterwards we sat for a while in my
kitchen while we talked about the wonderous fact that the universe multiplies, and we drank a cup
of tea in the universe where you came to see me.
(hi hi hi hi hi....)
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----------------------------------TOM7
Let me just repeat:
The atoms in my right hand came from one star, and the atoms in my left hand came from another
star.
PHILOSOPHERS 1 + 2
We are all made of stardust.
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F RED GIANT
Participants: Astronomer, Physicists 1+2, Philosophers 1+2, Tom7
ASTRONOMER
When an old star dies, it expands 250 times and becomes a Red Giant. In this short, explosive
period, it propels billions of tons of dust and gas out into space. Here is enough building material to
create 12,000 new planets the size of Earth.
PHYSICIST 1
When a Red Giant collapses in a massive explosion, its outer layers become misty and foggy.
What is left in its center is a small, compact planet, roughly the size of planet Earth. That is a White
Dwarf. It uses the rest of its life to cool down.
OPERATOR 2
And it is still cooling down.
OPERATOR 1
The Sun will eventually end its days as a White Dwarf.
OPERATOR 2
There are also Brown Dwarves. The next will be Black Dwarves.
ASTRONOMER
A star is held together by its internal energy. But one day it will use up all its fuel and therefore
cannot produce more energy. It then collapses in a matter of seconds. And dies in a massive
explosion. It becomes a supernova. SUPERNOVA.
PHYSICIST 2
When a star dies, its inner heavy elements are flung out into space, and the leftovers form new
stars and planets. You could say that the stars are the element factories of the universe.
ASTRONOMER
A neutron star is what is left of a massive star in a supernova explosion. It is so compact and
heavy that a single cubic centimeter, the size of a sugar cube, weighs as much as Mount Everest.
PHYSICIST 1
A Pulsar is a rotating neutron star that rhythmically emits shots of radiation. The pulse of the Pulsar
can be measured from Earth. The Pulsar is a kind of galactic clock.
TOM7
I just looked at my Pulsar watch and saw a slight disturbance of a few seconds in time, due to a
wave of gravity passing by.
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---------------------ASTRONOMER
My grandpa read in some magazine about the Big Explosion and remained silent for the whole
day. In the evening he said: if the Big Explosion ever occured, the Small Explosion must have
occured too. According to my grandpa's theory, every moment hundreds of Small Explosions take
place in the world. For example, a flower starting to bloom – this is a Small Explosion. A dog
barking is a Small Explosion. As well as an apple falling off a tree, a gust of wind, an ant's step
forward. Small Explosions occur every time a man blinks. I used to sit with my mouth open and
listen to my grandpa. I would sit motionless. And if I moved just a little, the world would witness
another Small Explosion.
PHILOSOPHER 2
Half of the genetic material in my body I have in common with a tree.
PHILOSOPHER 1
Every human being is a grain of sand capable of stopping even the most well-oiled machine.
PHILOSOPHER 1
Every time we take a breath, there are at least two molecules that Plato exhaled – about 2.361
years ago.
PHILOSOPHER 2
Or that Ruta Meilutyte has inhaled.
PHILOSOPHER 1+2
Life is the way the universe understands itself.
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G1 TWIN PARADOX
Participants: Physicist 1 or 2, Moon girl 1 or 2
Two twins stand on planet earth. They are 10 years old. One twin takes off in a spaceship and
travel through space at almost the speed of light. The other one stays behind for the following 50
years. Then the first twin returns home and steps out of her spaceship. She says she has only
travelled for 5 years. Now she is 15 years old.
This is what Einstein’s theory of relativity explains. The age gap of the two twins depends on the
speed of which the spaceship has travelled through space.
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G2 SPACE-TIME
Participants: Mathematician, Physicist 1 or 2, Operators 1+2
PHYSICIST 1 or 2
The key to understanding gravity is that everything moves in a straight line through this warped
landscape of space-time. So what we see as a planet’s orbit around the sun is in fact the planet
’falling’ in a straight line through the curved space-time, a curvature that is created by the mass of
the sun.
MATHEMATICIAN
I remember my playpen was exactly 3 steps long.
There were 5.201 steps to my school.
If I hit the lines on the way to school, I had to start all over.
There are 27 steps from the kitchen to my desk.
There are 3.452 to the post office
and 46.642 to the soccer field by the highway.
I have to drop this habit of counting steps.
Life is not a long fall towards death,
but a series of complex steps in
unforeseen directions.
There are 39 steps up the stairs to my front door.
1.964 steps down to the café with the coffee and the newspaper.
There are 25.367 steps in one direction
and 25.369 in the other direction.
MATHEMATICIAN
That many times into the circle. That many times around the sun. It is the wild precision
of numbers in the midst of movement.
--------------------OPERATOR 1
Curtains are a completely unnecessary item. I want to see a tree, a dog and a child who is trying to
catch the dog’s tail. When I look out of the window through curtains, the view is slightly different.
And don’t you say that curtains can be pulled back. No. I used to have curtains at home that were
impossible to draw. So I took them off. Now I look out of the window and see everything as it is.
OPERATOR 2
This morning I got out of my bed and could not find one of my shoes. I always leave both of my
shoes next to the bed, and every morning I find them in the place where I have left them. But this
morning there was only one shoe by the bed. I looked around. Nothing. Empty. Which meant I had
only two options left: to start a day barefoot or to put on one shoe. I was sitting on the edge of my
bed considering the two possibilities. Then it occurred to me that I could try to look under the bed. I
looked and I saw that the second shoe was hiding there. I had no time to figure out how it got
there. I simply put on both shoes and went to my kitchen. To my kitchen there are 10 steps. I found
two apples there. I ate both of them for breakfast.
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--------------------ASTRONOMER
For over 20 years I could work on a theory that I think is the most beautiful, most brilliant and
elegant. But as soon as nature tells me that this theory is not correct, I must reject it immediately.
That is it. That is what is so great about science - you never stop exploring.
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H GALAXIES
Participants: Astronomer, Physicists 1+2, Mathematician, Philosophers 1+2, Operators 1+2, Tom7
MATHEMATICIAN
We mathematicians only measure things that can be measured with a measuring tape. Everything
else I just categorize as ’very far away’.
MATHEMATICIAN
If I measure the distance from me to the astronomer it would be the same as if I were to measure
the distance from the astronomer to me.
PHILOSOPHERS 1+ 2
Time is at the end of the light, and you cannot be in front of time.
This is the way the universe protects itself against time travel into the future.
PHYSICIST 2
To look out at the night sky is to look back in time. The light we see from the stars, planets and
distant galaxies are messengers from the past. The further away these objects are, the further
back in time we look.
ASTRONOMER
A galaxy is a massive collection of dust and gas, stars. All the stars we see here from Earth are
part of our Milky Way Galaxy. In the Milky Way there are a couple of billion stars.
OPERATOR 2
Who decided to call the Milky Way ’The Milky Way’? It would be cooler to live in the Sombrero
Galaxy.
OPERATOR 1
What about the Burger Galaxy, or the Cigar Galaxy M82, or the Comet Galaxy?
TOM7
Or the 2MASX J09442693+0429569 Galaxy?
ASTRONOMER
The universe is filled with galaxies. Every day our neighbour galaxy, Andromeda, moves closer to
us, and in about 2 billion years it will collide with our own Milky Way.
PHYSICIST 2
But all other galaxies are moving away from us. That is how we can see that the universe is
expanding. The galaxies are our luminous measuring points.
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PHYSICIST 1
At one point in the far future we will not be able to see the galaxies anymore. They will have
travelled away from us almost at the speed of light, and the universe as we know it will become
pitch black.
TOM7
It is infinitely boring to travel through space. You can travel for millions of years before you meet
something that emits light.
OPERATOR 1
It is kind of an unreasonable request that the matter in the universe should emit light just so that we
can see it. Anyway the universe is infinite.
MATHEMATICIAN
The interesting thing about infinity is that if you add one infinity to another infinity you would still get
the same infinity.
PHILOSOPHER 1
Life is long, as long as a shooting star and a light year.
PHILOSOPHER 2
No life is short, but you have to make it as wide as a Milky Way.
-------------------OPERATOR 2
When I was a kid I heard my parents talk about us flying to Crete for a holiday in two weeks’ time.
The fact that I could not fly made me nervous. How was I ever going to manage? Then they had to
explain to me how we were able to fly. I read everything I could about Crete and aviation and
practiced my flying skills down in the backyard. When finally the day of the flight arrived nothing
happened, and we never spoke of Crete again.
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I BIG BANG
Participants: Astronomer, Physicists 1+2, Philosophers 1+2, Tom7, Mathematician, Operators 1+2
TOM7
If you want to create a standard Big Bang Universe you will need to collect everything that exists –
every grain of dust and every particle – and squeeze them together, incredibly hard.
I would like to be able to watch that Big Bang when it happens, but there would be no place for me
to be. There is no space outside where it all happens. The Big Bang happens everywhere at the
same time.
EVERYONE
The universe was infinitely large from the moment it was created, but it was pressed very tightly
together.
The universe was incredible hot and dense. The universe started to expand. No one knows why.
And it still expands to this day…
TOM 7
What kind of small animal is that? I wonder where it is heading? Maybe it realized that it is living on
a round planet that rotates through space at 300 kilometers a second and that we all come from
the same pea soup.
TOM7
I am 13.8 years old. If you multiply that by one billion, you have the age of the universe.
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