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Life & Arts

Intelligent film looks at, well, everything

by AUSTIN HAVICAN 
The Daily Cougar 

If you don't have time to take professor Pinsky's mind-blowing astronomy courses and want to know more about the universe than what the absurdly inaccurate Star Wars series offers, Kultur International Films has recently published an interesting 51-minute film that may satisfy your curiosity.

God, the Universe and Everything Else is not actually a documentary in the traditional sense but a taped panel discussion between world-renowned physicist and professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge Stephen Hawking; Carl Sagan, a professor of astronomy and space sciences at Cornell and a major figure in the American space program; famed author of 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke; and host (with the coolest name ever) Magnus Magnusson.

After Magnusson introduces the panel, explains Hawking's speech mechanism and why Sagan is on a monitor and not present (he's being broadcast from the United States), the group congratulates Hawking for the recent publication of his most famous book, A Brief History of Time. Along with the obvious visual quality of tape, the book announcement immediately dates the discussion to the late 80s, or 1988, to be specific.

The conversation appropriately starts with a discussion on the beginning of the universe: the Big Bang theory and the concept of imaginary time. 

"One can show that all of the galaxies must have been on top of each other about 15 billion years ago," Hawking says. "It was the beginning of a universe and of time itself. Anything that happened before the Big Bang could not affect what happened after, so we can neglect events before the Big Bang and say that time began at the Big Bang. After the Big Bang, we believe that the universe expanded in a very rapid, inflationary manner."

Many of the statements that come from the panel are so profound that viewers may need to skip back a chapter and hear what the members said again. Every topic deserves further investigation and discussion, but the scientists move quickly to other topics of interest.

By using what looks like the first desktop computer ever made, Clarke introduces a visual representation of what he claims to be mathematical infinity. "(The Mandelbrot set) divides all possible numbers into two categories," Clarke said. "It's really a map … and you can tell your computer to go into any spot here, and say re-compute that area to a higher degree of precision and then blow it up on the screen. So you can use the computer as a microscope and continue that process forever." 

The computer graphic is pretty amazing and has become a recognizable image among mathematicians and artists since Clarke's introduction.

The panel moves on to discuss black holes and the concept of time travel and how the two may work together. Hawking offers a look-but-don't-touch approach to black holes, claiming there is evidence that a particle can enter a black hole and exit another one, but there is no way to predict where it will arrive. 

He also stresses that the gravitational pull from different points in the hole would rip a human (or any matter) apart.

After a polarized conversation about extraterrestrial intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy and Sagan's monologue about the importance and possibilities of Mars, the four men digress to a brief presentation of each person's belief about the presence of a god and the role it may or may not play in the design and function of the universe. Magnusson also questions the trust the different institutions of religion, politics and science put into each other, and each panel member provides his own suggestions.

For the curious who lack the time to read Hawking or learn the basic tenants of semi-modern astronomy, God, the Universe and Everything Else does its best to provide hypotheses from some of the greatest thinkers of our times.

Send comments to dcshobiz@mail.uh.edu