Tue and Wed BBC2

[DaveS]

Tue BBC2 Jim al Khalili on the end of the universe, then on Wed Horizon on Dark Energy.

Should be fun.

[Gina]

Thanks - I'll try to remember to look out for those

[OneEyedSam]

Bbc4 for Jim al kalili

 

[laudropb]

Thanks for the heads up.

[sheeprug]

Looks good - thanks for the heads-up.

SR

[DaveS]

10 hours ago, OneEyedSam said:

Bbc4 for Jim al kalili

 

Yes, thanks for the correction comes from posting in a hurry and from memory.

To clarify, Tue BBC4 9 o/c Jim al Khalili, Wed BBC2 8 o/c Horizon.

[bish]

Thanks for the heads up

[martin_h]

Part one is on BBC Iplayer....BBC4

[bigrich]

Thanks for the info ?

[Davey-T]

Just starting 

Dave

[Gina]

BBC 4 programme about clocks and automata on now   Another of my interests

Edited March 29, 2016 by Gina

[saac]

You would have been in your element Gina during the heyday of automata.

 

Jim

[Ouroboros]

I thought Jim Al Khalili's two programmes on the beginning and (tonight's) end of the universe were excellent. So good to watch a science documentary with some pace. He covered an enormous amount of material in two hours. He didn't muck about.  Good to see some really complicated ideas  explained so well and so succinctly. Some of the details of who and how the main discoveries were made were new to me. It was almost like a foundation course in cosmology. Well done, Jim. 

[Cjg]

Thanks for the reminder, just seen the 2nd episode on the iPlayer...was a great series, I'd like to see more of Jim Al-Khalili, pitched at the right level.

[Gina]

Yes, I agree - very good

[SilverAstro]

Thumbs-up from me as well.

Good that he gave credit to Hoyle's great achievement of the "nuclear furnace", not something that is oft mentioned these days, Hoyle usually gets prtrayed as the great nay-sayer of the "Big Bang".

I shall have to go back to my books but I thought that the nuclear exothermic? synth stopped with iron, not carbon ? ( prob me/age related !) and he didnt follow up with the synth  of higher elements needing supernovae. Still,, cant cover the universe and everything in just two episodes I suppose

Anyone know where the Trees and H-R diagram sequence was shot ?

[Ouroboros]

Agree about Hoyle. His contribution is also a wonderful demonstration of how science works. People who don't understand it are often dismissive of theory, mistakingly saying  "It's just a theory". Yet there was Hoyle using his theoretical understanding of the processes to predict a process which was subsequently verified by experiment.  Brilliant! 

My recollection was that exoteric synthesis stops with iron in stars. I think Jim chose carbon because it's so essential to life.  The synthesis of carbon is a bottleneck in the process isn't it. It requires the energies to be absolutely right to work. It's been used as one of the key processes, like some physical constants, which if they were a gnat's whisker different we wouldn't be here.

Don't know where the trees were. Lovely looking place. I'm guessing the USA. 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2016 by Ouroboros