Episode 06: DEEPER, DEEPER, DEEPER, STILL
Neil dons a Cloak of Visibility and we see him purely
as a being composed of atoms. The Ship of the
Imagination journeys to micro space – to the bottom
of a dewdrop – as we view the strange life there, and
the struggle for life they are embroiled in.
Further still, Neil takes us on a journey traversing
the complex neural networks in our brains, jumping
synapses, from a molecule, to our memories of home.
The ultimate scientific truth is that we never truly
touch each other and this is shown in a tender love
story between a young boy and girl. We look around
and view the world differently as we’ve never seen it
before. The plants and trees breathe around us.
In an ancient Grecian evening, Democritus tells a
magnificent tale of reality’s true nature that has been
long since proven. Looking deep into his wine glass we
see the intoxicating effects of the carbon atoms in his
wine – and why carbon is essential to life on Earth. Neil
drives us deeper to the inner chambers of atoms, to
the cathedral of the nucleus and onward to the very
heart of our Sun itself as we understand fusion.
Voyaging deep into the Earth, to a place unseen by
human eyes, we discover the mystery of the neutrino.
Our onward path leads us back in time to the Egyptian
Temple of Ramses, where the nourishing rays from our
star always halt before the Lord of Creation named
Ptah. Deeper, deeper and deeper still into the mists of
time, we come to that place on the Cosmic Calendar
beyond which the unknown beckons – but a great
barrier lies between us and the beginning of time itself.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood,
the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing
stars. We are made of starstuff.”
– Carl Sagan, “Cosmos”
Episode 07: THE CLEAN ROOM
Unsung heroes of science come in all
forms, and this tale of a man from Iowa
goes back to before the Earth was formed.
Even to before the elements themselves
were formed in stars. Earth’s constantly
changing nature has all but erased this
origin tale but how do we know the true
age of the Earth?
This story to discover the true age of
our terran home spans centuries, until
we stumble upon a guy from Iowa who
develops an exacting but demanding
method to do this. However, in his efforts
to determine the truth, he finds a terrible
crime has been done. Committed to the
search for truth he will not stop, will not rest
until the killers are found. Yet as he battles
on, his efforts draw in an enemy, a man
practiced in the misuse of science…
This grand saga shows us the highs and
lows of science over the ages. It illuminates
how one person using science as a tool for
good can change the world for the better
for all of us.
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Image: Richard Foreman, Jr./FOX
www.RocketSTEM.org