Wonders of the Universe

2011
8.8| 4h0m| en
Details

Who are we? Why are we here? Where do we come from? These are among the most enduring and profound questions we can ask, and it is an essential part of human nature to want to find the answers. We can trace our ancestry back hundreds of thousands of years to the dawn of humankind, but in reality our story extends much further back: it starts with the beginning of the universe. Professor Brian Cox tells the epic story of the universe and shows how its story is also our story.

Cast

Brian Cox

Director

Producted By

BBC

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Reviews

Alicia I love this movie so much
Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.
Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
SnoopyStyle Brian Cox opens the series by asking "Why are we here? Where do we come from?" This is a wide-ranging show of 4 hour-long episodes examining big fundamental concepts. The first "Destiny" examines time, entropy, and the eventual heat death of the universe. The second "Stardust" examines the creation and composition of material of the universe. The third "Falling" examines gravity and black holes. The fourth "Messengers" examines light and sound. The show can float from one subject to another. I like his explanation of entropy. The other concepts are fairly basic. The show can be jumpy. In general, the big concepts are compelling and understandable. The questions are so big that the answers can be uncontained.
sherylchilders82 This documentary will probably be more appreciated by a well-educated audience, especially if you've already seen more detailed documentaries on cosmology. It references larger scientific concepts in fields like anthropology, biology, chemistry and physics. But, what is best about it is the narrator himself, Brian Cox, who has such a unique way of communicating his perspective. For example, when describing space-time in relation to the theory of the "Big Freeze", he says that when the last energy has dissipated from the Universe, time will cease to exist. I had never thought of it that way before, and I even found myself talking about it to someone later. I studied Einstein's theory of relativity in college, and I've seen other detailed documentaries on theories of the end of the Universe, but never presented in this way. While this series is not particularly detailed or specific to one area of cosmology, I found that it was comprehensive if you already had some background knowledge to fill in the blanks. Good teachers, after all, don't simply recite facts that they assume you've read in your textbook. They review and expand on this knowledge by giving a fresh perspective, which is exactly what is done here.
schf A uncharismatic big toothed northern gentleman presents a show about the universe.But rather than use "cool" diagrams,cgi or the like to explain his "simplfied "concepts we have an endless series of exotic locales with our presenter gurning and babbling in the corner of the shot.He spends about two sentences in each part of the world for no good reason other than to waste wheel barrows full of the license payers money by shipping a film crew around the World just so he can say very little .Here a tip if your going to have a show called wonders of the universe try showing THE UNIVERSE rather than endless shots an overly enthusiastic aging hippy
kingdavidek Within the first twenty minutes we learn that the universe is very old, that you can't go back in time, that a year is when the earth revolves around the sun once, that the universe appears eternal and never changing(even though, spoilers, it isn't) and that time is irreversible and changes things. Brian Cox manages to repeat this last fact about ten times, seemingly challenging our notion of time and trying to make us believe we have been caught in some broken record of an alternate universe. For any person, whether you are physics graduate or you have simply completed one year of primary school, this is not news.The BBC seem satisfied with squandering an obviously large budget on admittedly impressive but ultimately useless shots of far away landscapes. This series simply looks for the money shots, whilst giving the writing job to a nine year old boy with adhd. Time is irreversible, now heres a turtle, time is irreversible, now heres a glacier, time is irreversible, now heres a cool simulation of an explosion! Though clearly trying to emulate the same wonder and respect for the universe that Carl Sagan had, Brian Cox's exhilaration seems completely artificial. This shows that today, documentaries are willing to sacrifice learning and wonder for special effects and plane tickets to anywhere that takes their fancy, no matter how relevant to the message it is.

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