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AWOLNATION - Passion (Lyric Video) [360p]

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Scientific Summary: 7
Passion, desire, parental care, and sexual choice are integral parts of the ongoing evolution of life. Animals exhibit and act upon a wide variety of courtship behaviors ranging from the dance of stickleback fish to the spider’s rhythmic plucking of the strings of its web. The process that Darwin called “sexual selection” is a complex one in which animals – and sometimes even plants – make reproductive choices by choosing partners and acting out courtship rituals.
Parental care, especially in species with a longer maturation period such as reptiles and mammals, is a term that ethnologists use to describe the acts of nourishing, protecting, and teaching that parents provide for their progeny. In mammals, females will often spend more time caring for their young than will males both in the actual pregnancy and after giving birth. This means that female mammals are often more selective in choosing their partners than males since they will invest significantly more time, energy, and matter in their offspring. The same can be said for many reptiles, some of which will incubate their eggs or protect their young from predators after they hatch. Paleontologists have even found fossil evidence that suggests dinosaurs were caring for their young as far back as one hundred million years ago. Reproduction, expressing passion, and caring for the next generation of offspring are activities that are woven into the very fabric of life. Trees devote massive amounts of time and energy to producing seeds, some fish remain near their fry to ward off predators,
and each and every organism cares for, and attempts to pass on, the genetic material found in its DNA.

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Scientific Summary: 6
Each living cell on Earth contains DNA. Composed of varying configurations of molecules such as sugars, proteins, and nucleotide, the patterns found in DNA are the coding that gives cells instructions for digesting food, for growth and repair, and for the myriad other functions necessary for an individual organism to live and reproduce.
Although relatively stable, DNA often undergoes random changes – which are frequently referred to as mutations. It is through these changes in DNA, as well as through the passing down of successful genes, that life is able to evolve and adapt to its environment at the sub-cellular level.
Organisms flourish and adapt by being aware of, and responsive to, their surroundings. The ability to see and to sense light is a trait with a long evolutionary path. Even simple forms of life, such as some kinds of bacteria developed sensitivity to light
that allowed them to react to their surroundings and increase their chances of survival.
The eye, one of the many ways in which living things are able to sense light, is part of a complex and ongoing evolutionary process. Ernst Mayr, the reknowned evolutionary biologist, estimates that the complex water-based eyes found in mammals, fish, and birds have been independently constructed at least forty times since life began. Other types of eyes, such as those of ancient trilobites, are formed from the mineral calcite. These
bundled, rod-like eyes were passed down to creatures such as the lobster and the common housefly. Although different from the water-based eyes used by humans, they are not necessarily inferior. Calcite based eyes supply unique advantages such as the ability to see in the violet and ultraviolet range.
Death and violence, although troubling to contemplate, are aspects of life that we must work to understand. Throughout the grandeur and complexity of the universe, death
and destruction are present. Stars explode in massive supernovas, elementary particles clash in bursts of devastating energy, and billions of sentient beings reach the end of their
lives with each passing day. However, as we have seen, death and destruction can also be moments of unparalleled creativity. The death of ancient stars, for instance, is the source
of all of the elements found in life on Earth. Even amongst living beings, predator-prey relationships can be creative moments of reciprocity and co-evolution.
Credit to Journey of the Universe Book

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http://www.chronozoom.com
https://school.bighistoryproject.com
http://journeyoftheuniverse.com/
Big History Institute - Macquarie University
https://www.space.com/

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Birth of Stars by Hawking
Audio file

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Our Solar System

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Scientific Summary:5
The first simple cells to emerge on planet Earth came into being approximately
three and a half to four billion years ago when the Earth was still in a state of great
upheaval and creativity. It is from these earliest cells, and from their ancestors, that all
forms of life on earth descended. After roughly two billion years, these simple life forms  evolved into more complex cells with nuclei and differentiated organelles.
Living cells today exist in a great diversity, but we can generally classify living
cells into two groups: eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Cells with nuclei are referred to as
eukaryotes. Complex multi-cellular creatures such as humans, the tomato plant, or the
red-tailed hawk have eukaryotic cells. Those cells without nuclei, such as bacteria, are
called prokaryotes. Though usually unicellular and invisible to the human eye,
prokaryotes make up the bulk of life on planet earth.
Although they are very simple in comparison to multi-cellular creatures living on
Earth today such as the crow or the Asian elephant, even the simplest of cells have a
sense of awareness regarding their surroundings. This awareness allows them to interact with their environment and to make intelligent choices as to how to respond to it. All cells and all unicellular organisms have a cell membrane that surrounds them like a skin.
Embedded within each membrane is a series of proteins, two of which are called receptor proteins and channel proteins. When the cell membrane comes into contact with something, say a bit of mineral or water, the receptor protein reacts. If it is something desirable to the cell, for example something it can use as food, then the cell membrane will attach itself to the material that it wants to ingest. Next, a channel protein causes a brief opening on the surface of the membrane in order to allow that material to pass through the membrane into the interior of the cell. More often than not, however, the receptor cells do not come into contact with desirable material and thus the cell stays closed. What is critical to note here is that the cell is making a discernment; it is choosing what to ingest and what to block out.
Photosynthesis is another key component of life on Earth. It allows a great
transformation and transportation of energy to occur, and is also yet another way in
which life as we know it is linked directly to the Sun. Plants, and some other organisms
such as some forms of bacteria, contain within them organelles (i.e. small specialized
organs) called chloroplasts. Within each chloroplast is a biomolecule called chlorophyll.
While chlorophyll molecules give many plants their green color, they also begin a
conversion process whereby sunlight is used to transition electrons to a higher energy
state. When struck by photons (small units of light), chlorophyll sets off a chemical
cascade that eventually results in the creation of powerhouse molecules in the cell. These powerhouse molecules are what enable the plant to grow and develop, even to live. By the power of photosynthesis, every plant on Earth is suffused with energy coming directly from a nearby star, our Sun.
Credit to Journey of the Universe Book

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Scientific Summary: 4
Our own solar system formed 5 billion years ago. The star that we call the Sun, as well as our eight planets and many asteroids, emerged from a vast cloud of matter made from the remnants of supernovas. While we might tend to think of the creative processes that shaped our solar system as being over, our solar system is still in process. Drawn together in a vast play of gravity, collisions, and shared energy from the Sun, our solar system is an ongoing flow of creativity that we have only recently begun to gather detailed knowledge of.
Even in its very first days, a massive cloud of simple elements such as hydrogen,
carbon, and silicon surrounded our Sun. Relatively homogenous at first, the cloud contained small amounts of matter that were slowly drawn together by gravity. These small groupings of elements coalesced into tiny lumps of dust that grew larger and large with time. Occasionally, these tiny collections of elements collided violently and broke apart, but eventually most of the matter in this vast cloud collected into the small planetsized chunks called “planetesimals.” These, in turn would eventually gather more matter and become our eight planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) and the many asteroids and dwarf planets that, along with the Sun, make up the solar system that we call home.
The Earth, the third planet from the sun, is currently in a state that is both fluid
and solid. When it first formed, the Earth was a roiling ball of molten rock and swirling elements Just as a heavier liquid, such as water, will sink to the bottom of a container that contains both water and vegetable oil, the heavier elements in the Earth sank towards the Earth’s center. The heavier metals, such as iron and nickel were drawn by the force of gravity past less dense matter into the core of the Earth. Iron-rich silicates and magnesium piled up on top of this dense, molten core to form the mantle of the Earth.
Finally, a crust that ranges from approximately 10-100 miles think formed on the surface. This crust is made from felsic rock such as granite as well as massive areas of oceanic crust that consists primarily of basaltic rocks. Over all of this, after a great deal of time, a fragile atmospheric shell enveloped the Earth’s surface. An important and ongoing feature of the Earth is the slow movement of its crust. Driven by a convection cycle where rising matter floats up to the surface, which sometimes breaks through as lava and volcanic eruptions, the matter in the Earth’s interior is in constant motion. Upon nearing the crust, much of the matter cools and drops back down towards the Earth’s core. The solid crust, which is composed of massive plates, floats upon this churning mass in a process referred to as plate tectonics. This process of recycling has been going on for billions of years and has resulted in the creation of several thousand new minerals and polymers in the Earths interior and on its surface.
During its earliest days, the Earth had no moon. However, over three billion years
ago a large planetesimal the size of Mars collided with the Earth and the formation of the Moon began. Still largely molten in its early state, the Earth absorbed much of the planetesimal in this dramatic impact. However, the force of the collision was so great that a portion of both planetary bodies were blasted into a ring of lava around the Earth. This ring of lava began clumping together and formed a ball of floating magma that rapidly circled the Earth. Eventually, it cooled into the round shape of the Moon that we see today. At this point in time, the Earth and the Moon were quite close, but over the course of the last four billion years, the Moon has been drifting further and further from the Earth.
The early days of the Earth were a frenetic time of great change and upheaval.
Over the course of millions of years the Earth cooled and the surface hardened.
Meanwhile, volcanic processes released lava and huge clouds of gases and dust into the atmosphere. Large planetesimals and asteroids regularly struck the earth adding to its mass, its water, and contributing other elements and compounds. Temperatures were high on the early Earth and any water quickly boiled into steam and vapor. This steam then cooled and fell as rain only to be quickly heated up and to repeat the cycle again. In this early formative period, the Earth rotated rapidly with the day being just five hours long.
The Moon, which was close to the surface of the Earth, caused massive waves to roll over the face of the Earth’s brown oceans. The sky, rich with hydrogen-sulfide, was a pinkishorange. Millions of years passed until the earth became more stable, the oceans calmed down and a thin layer of atmosphere persisted. In these conditions, at a very early point in time in the history of the Earth, the first cell could form.
Credit to Journey of the Universe Book
Video Link: https://school.bighistoryproject.com/pages/console#units/Unit-1
Note:You need 9 minutes to watch the formation of solar system. This animation video is a good one for teaching aid.

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Scientific Summary: 3
Stars are formed when clouds of hydrogen and helium implode from the gravitational pull of their own mass. As the atoms draw closer and closer together, they collide and vibrate energetically. The dual increase in density and collisions causes conditions to become hotter and hotter. After reaching temperatures of several thousand degrees, the atoms of helium and hydrogen in these collapsing clouds of gas begin to break apart into their constituent elementary particles – protons and electrons. At this point in time, this hot dense cloud of interacting elementary particles is called a protostar.
Once temperatures reach approximately ten million degrees, the protons and neutrons begin to fuse into new stable relationships in a process called thermonuclear fusion. The nuclei of hydrogen atoms repel each other. However, when the power of the
gravitational attraction is strong enough within the interior of stars, the individual nuclei of hydrogen atoms can fuse into more complex formations such as helium. A massive amount of energy is released in the center of the star through this process. The release of this energy is a force of expansion by which stars resist further collapse. As long as this expansive energy and gravitational attraction are kept in creative tension, the star can
exist for billions of years. Once one of the powers becomes more powerful than the other, the star comes to an end.
Once all of the hydrogen has been converted to helium, this fusion process comes to a halt. Without the force of thermonuclear fusion pushing out from its interior, the star
collapses further until the temperature escalates to a high enough level for helium to begin fusing into carbon. This process continues to repeat itself as each element is used up through fusion. For instance, once all of the helium in a star has been converted to carbon, the core of the star shrinks in upon itself and the temperature rises dramatically until carbon begins to fuse into oxygen. Next, oxygen is fused into silicon and this
process continues through the heavier elements up until only iron remains in the core of the star. At this point, the star can only implode in upon itself.When a large star collapses in upon itself, all of the atoms and nuclei in the star are dismantled as the star precipitously shrinks to a tiny speck. The energy of the
implosion is so great in this collapse that the protons and electrons join together to form neutrons. However, the massive amount of energetic neutrinos released in this process
causes the collapse to reverse so violently that the star is blasted apart. The resulting shockwave throws all of the star’s matter out in a massive explosion called a supernova.
This explosion is so powerful, in fact, that supernovas observed from Earth often outshine all of the hundreds of billions of stars in their own galaxy. During this expansion stage of supernovas, a new round of stellar nucleosynthesis takes place. All of the nuclei of all of the elements in the universe are created in these moments. Every atom of carbon, oxygen, gold, calcium, phosphorous, and the many other elements found on Earth and in our bodies are created in the death of stars.
Credit to Journey of the Universe Book

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Scientific Summary: 2
Approximately 13 billion years ago, less than a billion years after the beginning of
our observable universe, vast clouds of atoms began to coalesce into the first galaxies. Expansive density waves, which are fluctuations in the density of matter that emerged out of the great flaring forth, helped to shape the early galaxies from the billowing clouds of matter.
Within a billion years of the formation of the first galaxies, more than 100 billion
had been formed. While they come in many configurations, the vast majority of the
known galaxies in the universe take the shape of either spiral or elliptical galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy. The spiral shape allows for a great deal of new stars to be born from the continued action of density waves on the matter present in the spiral arms. These interactions are largely absent in elliptical galaxies. Most of the stars in non-spiral galaxies will eventually die out without being replaced by newly formed stars.
When we look into the night sky or when we utilize powerful telescopes such as
the Spitzer Space Telescope or the Chandra X-ray Observatory, much of what we are
able to see is the light and energy created by the billions of stars contained in each of the billions of galaxies. But there is more out there than meets the eye. Held together by gravitational forces, approximately ninety percent of the mass of galaxies is composed of what scientists commonly refer to as dark matter. The remaining ten percept of the mass of each galaxy is composed of stars, gas, stellar remnants, and dust. Many galaxies, such as our own Milky Way, bulge in the center. Within this
central bulge one can frequently find a black hole. While they cannot be observed with the naked eye, black holes are a common occurrence throughout the known universe.
Black holes can form in many different ways, but they are typically created when stars cannot maintain high enough levels of internal heat and pressure to resist the gravitational pull of their own mass. Literally imploded by their own weight, black holes are stars that have collapsed in upon themselves. When a black hole is formed, a boundary called an event horizon is reached in which matter and light can no longer travel outward from the singularity, or central mass, of the black hole. Since light cannot escape the gravitational pull of the black hole, we cannot “see” them in the traditional sense. Black holes are predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.
The Milky Way galaxy is one of several dozen galaxies revolving around one
another and these galaxies are a part of a larger group of galaxies called the Local Group. The Local Group is comprised of more than thirty galaxies including the three galaxies nearest us: the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Andromeda Galaxy. The Local Group, as well as many other clusters of galaxies, is part of an even larger system called the Virgo Supercluster.
Each galaxy and larger cluster of galaxies is in a state of constant motion and
change. Collisions between galaxies are not uncommon. Only recently, after the a
number of remarkable 20th century discoveries such as the first observation of galaxies outside of our own Milky Way by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s, did we learn that we live in an expanding universe. Over the course of 14 billion years, the observable universe has
expanded from a size smaller than a grain of sand into the vastness of a trillion galaxies
spread out over many billions of light-years.
Credit to Journey of the Universe Book

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Scientific Summary:
The universe emerged 13.7 billion years ago in a moment that is commonly called “the Big Bang,” but which we refer to as a “great flaring forth.” In the earliest moment of the great flaring forth, all of the matter, energy, space, and time of the observable universe rushed out from a single, dense point. It was a moment of great heat, reaching trillions of degrees, in which boundless amounts of light and heat expanded quickly outwards.
While our universe is certainly expanding, as was observed by Edwin Hubble in
the 1920s, there were also strong powers of attraction at play in the early development of the universe. From the very first moments, gravitational, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and electromagnetic interactions played a role in shaping the unfolding of the universe Within the first few microseconds of the beginning of the universe, tiny elementary particles called quarks and leptons were brought forth. The quarks quickly combined into protons and neutrons. Energetically churning about and colliding with one another, these first particles formed a dense, gluey form of matter called plasma.
After a few minutes, the protons and neutrons began to combine together in small clusters, called nuclei. These nuclei were constantly torn apart by the violent collisions caused by the vast energy of the early universe. A great deal of energy was expended in these collisions and breakages, some of which took the form of intense flashes of light. Due to the rapidity of these interactions and the density of the early universe, if we could observe it at this point in its expansion it would appear to be a profoundly luminescent, smooth burst of light.
As the universe expanded, it cooled. Due to this rapid decrease in density and
temperature, conditions became hospitable to more complex formations of elementary particles called atoms. The hydrogen and helium atoms are the most common of the galaxy and they are, at least in some sense, the building blocks upon which the other atoms are built. In these early stages of the universe, hydrogen and helium were the first to atoms to form from the vast ocean of light and energy of the great flaring forth. While hydrogen and helium make up the vast bulk of atoms in the universe, small amounts of other atoms formed at this time such as lithium. The formation of these first atoms, theearly interactions between energy and matter, and the creative interaction between forces of attraction and repulsion set the stage for the formation of more complex structures including galaxies and stars.
Credit to Journey of the Universe Book

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The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

The microwaves of the CMB which we detect today are the redshifted form of the very "first light" that radiated in the universe. Astronomers date this "first light" to about 370,000 years after the big bang. In the immediate aftermath of the big bang, the universe consisted of an extremely hot dense plasma of ionized gas in which photons (light particles) were continually scattered by the free electrons in the plasma, trapped as in a fog, so that the universe was completely dark. Eventually the universe cooled to a temperature at which the positive ions and electrons were able to combine to form neutral atoms (called the "epoch of recombination"), so that photons no longer were scattered and light could travel freely through space. Cosmologists accordingly refer to this moment when the universe became transparent as both the "epoch of last scatter" and the "first light." The expansion of space caused this emitted cosmic radiation to gradually cool off from an original temperature of 3000K to today's 2.7K (-450 degrees F) as the radiation was increasingly redshifted to the microwave frequency -- the CMB.
The CMB radiation is not overall spatially uniform – the radiation coming from different points in the sky can have slightly different frequencies, and by association, different temperatures. If we were to map the differences compared to the average temperature of 2.7 K, we would get this picture of the fluctuations:

Image of full-sky map of CMB from WMAP 9-year data (2012) [NASA/WMAP]

The red and blue “spots” (also called  anisotropies) are the temperature fluctuations compared to the average. The anisotropies represent compressed and rarefacted regions in the otherwise uniform ionized gas of the early universe. The red hot spots (compressed) are regions with particles of slightly higher velocity (yielding slightly shorter wavelength radiation) and the cold blue spots (rarefacted) are regions with particles of slightly lower velocity (yielding radiation with slightly longer wavelength). These temperature fluctuations are tiny, of the order of a part per million.

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Accidental DiscoveryIn 1964, Bell Laboratory scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to detect sources of radiation that might potentially harm satellites. Their data, however, showed background noise from a microwave signal corresponding to a temperature of approximately 2.7 K that appeared to be emitted from every direction. This apparent aberration was recognized by scientists at Princeton as remnant radiation from the earliest observable moment in the evolution of the universe, now called the Cosmic Microwave Background. Their discovery was a tremendous one for astrophysics, providing a glimpse of the earliest observable moment in the evolution of the Universe. 

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Accidental DiscoveryIn 1964, Bell Laboratory scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to detect sources of radiation that might potentially harm satellites. Their data, however, showed background noise from a microwave signal corresponding to a temperature of approximately 2.7 K that appeared to be emitted from every direction. This apparent aberration was recognized by scientists at Princeton as remnant radiation from the earliest observable moment in the evolution of the universe, now called the Cosmic Microwave Background. Their discovery was a tremendous one for astrophysics, providing a glimpse of the earliest observable moment in the evolution of the Universe. 

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Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson with the Horn Antenna used to discover the Cosmic Microwave Background.

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What is the CMB?The Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, is ancient radiation leftover from a time roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the hot, dense plasma that permeated the Universe cooled with the expansion of space. At a nearly uniform temperature of 2.7 Kelvin, the CMB fills the entire Universe and can be detected everywhere we look. If the human eye could see microwaves, the entire sky would glow with nearly equal brightness in every direction. 

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What is the CMB?The Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, is ancient radiation leftover from a time roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the hot, dense plasma that permeated the Universe cooled with the expansion of space. At a nearly uniform temperature of 2.7 Kelvin, the CMB fills the entire Universe and can be detected everywhere we look. If the human eye could see microwaves, the entire sky would glow with nearly equal brightness in every direction. 

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A map of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The different spots of color correspond to different temperatures and in turn, different densities.