The mind-bending reality of the universe | Katie Mack

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this fascinating conversation, cosmologist and TED Fellow Katie Mack delves into everything from the Big Bang theory to what we see at the edge of the observable universe to a few ways the cosmos might end. Stay tuned to hear Mack recite an original poem on the wonder and marvel of existence. (This conversation, hosted by deputy director of the TED Fellows program, Lily James Olds, was part of a TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Today's talk is a fascinating dive into the cosmos and beyond.
0:11.2	In cosmologist Katie Max's conversation at a 2021 TED membership event, she answers audience questions about the wonder of the universe, the multiverse, something called dark energy,
0:22.7	and her best guess as to how the universe might end. Katie is in conversation with the deputy
0:28.8	director of Ted Fellows, Lily James Olds. Hi, Katie. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
0:39.2	So happy to have you. I would love if for those of us who are not astrophysicists, you could return
0:45.2	and help us give a little refresher on how the universe did begin and how we know that.
0:51.1	Right, right. Yeah. So we know actually quite a lot about the early universe,
0:56.1	about the beginning of the universe, because we can actually see it. And this is the wildest part of
1:02.2	astronomy that we can see the beginning of the universe. So the universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
1:09.0	And when we look out into the cosmos, we see distant galaxies.
1:13.7	And when we look at the distance ones, they're all moving away from us.
1:16.7	And so for a long time, there's been this idea that, well, if the galaxies are moving away
1:21.1	from us now, they must have been closer to us in the past.
1:24.1	The universe in the past must have been smaller in some sense.
1:27.9	The, you know, hotter and denser, everything packed into less space.
1:32.6	And that's the Big Bang Theory, the idea that the universe was smaller and denser and hotter
1:36.9	in the past. And we got really direct evidence of that in the 1960s when when we're able to actually see the light
1:47.1	from the very early universe. So, so let me take one more step back. When we look at a distant
1:52.5	galaxy, the light from that galaxy takes some time to reach us. So we see, you know, we see a galaxy
1:58.1	shining. That light might have taken a billion years to cross the space between
2:03.5	there and here. We can see galaxies that are so distant that the light took 10 billion years,
2:08.8	even 13 billion years, to reach us. And the universe is only 13.8 billion years old. So what happens
	...

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