Nothingness: It is the beginning and the end of all creation. But what is it? Is empty space really empty? Or is it filled with hidden forces? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s3e5: Can There Be Such a Thing as Nothing?
Something must be keeping nothing in check. ibid.
An idea known as super-symmetry: every particle has a mirror-image partner. ibid.
There’s something hiding in the shadows. A type of matter we can’t see or touch but it’s all around us. Scientists agree it has shaped our universe. But they have no idea what it is or what form it takes. Could this mysterious matter have produced stars and planets of its own? And could this dark cosmos one day come crashing into ours? Is there a shadow universe? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s5e6: Is There a Shadow Universe? Science 2014
Two forces of dark matter are moving toward one another: what happens when they collide? ibid.
What is the meaning of life? ... Are we architects of our own fate, or is life just a series of random accidents? Is our existence just a freak of Nature or are we here for a reason? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s6e3: Are We Here for a Reason? Science 2015
Did we humans also turn ourselves into a domestic species? ibid.
Life may not have one unifying purpose, but that shouldn’t stop us all searching for it. ibid.
Our universe certainly seems real. But what if it’s not? We may be nothing more than video game characters designed for someone else’s amusement. But how could a computer juggle every aspect of the cosmos? Maybe what looks random has already been programmed to happen. Can we discover some hidden glitch in the laws of the universe and uncover its hidden code? Do we live in the matrix? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s6e4: Do We Live in the Matrix?
According to Moore’s Law computer processing power will continue to double every two years. As that power increases, so does the realism of virtual reality systems. ibid.
Are we one of many simulated copies? ibid.
Space: A vast empty ocean where a planet like ours is a remote island. Alone in the void. Or is it? New research is beginning to unveil a hidden force, one that shapes the entire universe and penetrates space with trillions of invisible connections. Instantly linking every place in our world and joining our future with our past. Now we’re beginning to grasp these mystical powers. Is the force with us? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s7e5: Is the Force With Us? Science 2016
Until recently we believed that the space between the stars and planets was empty – a vacuum. We now know it is teeming with charged particles. We see glowing electric filaments spanning millions of light years. PSTV.tv - Thunderbolts of the Gods, Wallace Thornhill
It is possible the predominant force in the universe is not gravity, but something else ... A new theory is being proposed ... It is in fact a synthesis of the disciplines ... The Electric Model offers us a new interpretation of the workings of the universe. ibid.
The Electric universe on the other hand deals with the electric structure of matter at the atomic level and works its way up. ibid.
Magnetic fields are threaded through space in all dimensions. ibid.
And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something. Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies.
Rule number two: Everything lasts forever. Craig Ferguson, Between the Bridge and the River
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence. Alan Wilson Watts
It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Humour is just another defence against the universe. Mel Brooks
We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes – one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way. Stephen Jay Gould
Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies, all of which are in one universe among perhaps an infinite number of universes all nestled within a grand cosmic multiverse, is provincially insular and anthropocentrically blinkered. Which is more likely? That the universe was designed just for us, or that we see the universe as having been designed just for us? Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy. Andy Mulcahy
But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgements! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no-one to command, no-one to obey, no-one to transgress. Friedrich Nietzsche
They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past and go into the never-ending future, waiting themselves for death, at the foot of the dead, in a holy temple. – I get a vision of myself and the two little boys hung up in a great endless universe with nothing overhead and nothing under but the Infinite Nothingness, the Enormousness of it, the dead without number in all directions of existence whether inward into the atom-worlds of your own body or outward to the universe which may only be one atom in an infinity of atom-worlds and each atom-world only a figure of speech – inward, outward, up and down, nothing but emptiness and divine majesty and silence for the two little boys and me. Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler
It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us. Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit
Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself. Baron d’Holbach
We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements – particles – bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations. Timothy Leary, Chaos & Cyber Culture
All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster. Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
The supply of matter in the universe was never more tightly packed than it is now, or more widely spread out. For nothing is ever added to it or subtracted from it. It follows that the movement of atoms today is no different from what it was in bygone ages and always will be. So the things that have regularly come into being will continue to come into being in the same manner; they will be and grow and flourish so far as each is allowed by the laws of nature. Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things