"Cosmos" is a series of documentaries that was recently introduced to Chinese video platforms for broadcast. The protagonist of this film is the universe, which tells the origin and development of the universe and predicts the future of the universe. Its image production process is unique, using not only CG technology, but also the images captured by astronomical telescopes, so it has extraordinary visual power. And it uses the natural landscape of The Earth to simulate certain physical events in outer space, either to make some kind of association, or as a metaphor, which is also a very special visual strategy. As a popular science documentary, how to visually transform the text content similar to Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" and how to create its space aesthetics is actually an extremely difficult problem, and it is not easy to do.
Stills from the documentary "The Universe"
In recent years, there has been an important trend in the field of humanities research, that is, the popularity of posthumanist thought, which has affected the field of film, including the field of film studies and the field of film creation. In the field of research, it was combined with the study of science fiction films, and a large number of academic discourses about posthumanism emerged. This documentary with the universe as the protagonist seems to be quite in line with the cultural atmosphere of the current era. The magnificent picture shown in "The Universe" can be contrasted with the scenes in science fiction films, and the acquisition of these physical principles and scientific knowledge can enhance our appreciation of science fiction films, so for the study of science fiction films, "Universe" has important academic value.
Of course, the understanding of the universe is not only about posthumanism and posthumanism, but also about humanism, because paying attention to the universe and celestial bodies has always had important reference value or guiding significance for human affairs. Ancient people looked up at the heavens and gave birth to systematic philosophical thoughts, such a path of thought, in fact, was once the same in both China and the West. When the Chinese ancients saw that the stars were in the wrong position, they predicted that there would be disasters in the human world, and according to the root of the Word Disaster in English, disasters came from the disorder or dis of the stars and celestial bodies (aster). It can be seen that both China and the West once had the idea of "heaven and man induction". Ancient Chinese philosophy is more developed in this regard, and it was an important lesson for ancient philosophers and writers at the time of the heavens.
An important idea of the documentary "Universe" is actually the time to investigate the heavens and the people. It consists of five episodes, named "The Origin of the Sun", "Alien World", "Galactic Exploration", "Black Hole Family", and "The Beginning of Everything". "The Origin of the Sun" tells how humans observe the sun, the birth and future demise of the sun, and the significance of the sun to the entire milky way and the earth in particular. The theme of Alien Worlds is "The Search for a Second Earth", and in 2009, the Kepler telescope searched for terrestrial planets outside the Milky Way, and finally discovered 20 billion terrestrial planets. Liquid water may exist on the surface of these planets, because in order for life to be conceived, liquid water must first be there. But from the point of view of this film, it is not optimistic about whether there is life on the terrestrial planet. Because Earth needs 4.6 billion years of stable environment to nurture life, while other planets are mostly full of turbulence. "4.6 billion years of stability, although there are things like the extinction of dinosaurs, but the earth can still find a complete chain of life." It allows us to see from another perspective the extreme contingency of the formation of human life, and thus raises in our hearts the gratitude for obtaining life.
"The sun projects the laws of nature onto earth and presents such a gorgeous expression as you and me, and everything around us." Our life is given by the universe, and the production and constant illumination of the sun allow life to develop. But the sun will also gradually become weaker after 5 billion years and eventually destroyed. And the Earth disappeared before the Sun disappeared.
The Earth will eventually disappear, what does this mean for humanity? Although the events of that time have nothing to do with the physical life of today's human beings, when we predict the inevitable disappearance of human beings as a whole, it still affects our belief in life. All this also makes us think about ourselves, which is the revelation of the Heavenly Tao for humanity. As the documentary's narrator puts it: "Stars don't last forever, they die either." But the stars have left meaning, that is, they have illuminated the darkness, produced human beings, and given human beings the opportunity to understand stars... This planet has produced great things such as science, literature, culture, art, music, etc., which are eternal, because human fragility makes all this more valuable. ”
Heavenly things can make people in the world think about it, have a detailed understanding of the way of human life as a whole, and thus affect our attitude towards life. At the end of The Beginning of All Things, the voice-over says: "The earth is a beautiful star floating in eternal loneliness, and we must see its true face." We want to see ourselves as riders with it, with this beautiful and lovely planet in the eternal cold space. And realize that all human beings are true brothers. We all have times of confusion, we all have dreams, and our consciousness soars freely. In the depths of our consciousness, we will understand that although human beings are small, they are closely related to the universe. We are all made of atoms, but this arrangement of atoms is extraordinary. We have the drive to understand the universe and explore the universe. We are also glad to be in this grand cosmic epic. ”
This is the "time of heaven and man" of modern people, and the cosmic picture is of great guiding value to personnel. Scientists acquire the mysteries of the ancient universe, mainly using light from interstellar space. "At the scale of the universe, the speed of light is very slow." The speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second, and it takes about 8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth. If it takes 4 years for light to reach Earth from an adjacent star, then the star we see is a star from 4 years ago. According to this principle, space telescopes allow us to see light deeper in the universe and see news of older times, so it can help us trace back to the source of the universe. The Hubble Space Telescope is the first high-performance optical telescope launched into space by humans, it is actually a time machine, it can shoot the oldest light in the depths of the universe, taking us to the beginning of time. The furthest target approached by the Hubble Space Telescope is the GN-Z11 galaxy, one of the most distant galaxies ever seen by mankind, and the light emitted by the earliest stars in the universe, the journey that began 400 million years after the Big Bang, took 13.4 billion years to reach us. "This light traveled through the entire universe, and it took 9 billion years for the Earth to form."
It is through the Hubble telescope that humans have calculated the age of the universe to be about 13.8 billion years, and it also allows us to see a shocking scene from the source of time. The documentary also talks about the most advanced Weber telescope, which on December 25, 2021, was successfully launched into space, a telescope that can probe more distant depths of space, which can see through dust clouds and see the process of star formation. It will continue to transcend our daily perceptions. Everything told in "The Universe" can allow us to transcend the vision of daily life and enter a new spiritual realm, so that we can break the inertia of daily life to a certain extent, so such viewing is a process of double flight of philosophy and science. (Editor-in-charge: Li Jing)