Film: Seeing the Beginning of Time
Where to Watch: Free with Amazon Prime
Length: 48 minutes (great for kids!)
Rated: For ALL ages (also great for kids!)
My latest weekend fun included checking out the documentary Seeing the Beginning of Time. Wouldn’t it be nuts to actually see the beginning of time? Well, it turns out there are many scientists and astronomers working together globally trying to do just that!
Delving into galaxy evolution, this film is filled with many impressive graphics of the universe, including the Cosmic Microwave Background and Filaments of Super Clusters, and simulations of cosmic events, like galaxy formations. I was only 4 minutes in before my feeling of being insignificantly human set in.
The best aspect of this film was how it focused on interviews with real astronomers about their current work, while featuring various telescopes around the world and in space.
Some parts were a bit technical, for example, there was an assumption that viewers would know what “red shift” means. So perhaps it isn’t ideal for space beginners, but my kids took the opportunity to learn some new phrases to go research.
I was thrilled (yes, I am the Chief Space Nut here) to get to see astronomers “in action” - looking at real data and actually working at telescopes and computers!
They discussed combining data from the Dark Energy Survey and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to form a ”grand cosmic census” showing a record of the universe’s earliest moments and evolution over time. This will inform our theories about how our galaxy and even our sun were born, and will allow astronomers to further theories on dark energy and dark matter.
Best Film Quote:
“If you’re a physicist, you know, you have a lab, and in your lab you can change your parameters of your experiment and keep testing it. When you are an astronomer, you cannot create stars. You cannot create galaxies. The Universe is your lab and you are a humble collector of light.” —Felipe Menanteau, NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I’ll admit, the narrator’s delivery wasn’t fantastic but the content and visuals in this film are stellar!
Note to Astronomers & Astronomy students, this film’s credits ran like a huge mailing list of where you should probably be sending your resume.
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