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Bang! Goes the Universe
This is a podcast tracing the history of human exploration and learning that led to the discovery of the expanding universe. The pod is available wherever you listen to podcasts. This page highlights the episodes from Season one.
Season 1: Back to the Future
In our first season we first worked through the timeline from the first moments after the Big Bang to the birth of our home planet. In the remaining episodes we explored the timeline of human evolution in thought from 100,000 years of pagan ritual to the advent of scientific philosophy in the 3rd century BCE.
Episode 1: One Mississippi, Two Mississippi
The Time Line
This chart shows 8 stages of universal evolution from the mysterious Planck Era through to the present day.
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
In the early universe the four basic forces of nature combined to form subatomic particles that combined to form larger particles. Until about 380,000 years after the bang, the temperature of the universe drops to a point that free electrons combine with nuclei in the colossal of the atomic universe.
Early Galaxies
Proto galaxies begin to develop from the accretion of atomic fuel colliding and merging with one another. Population III stars, massive hot stars with short lives that explode in supernovas adding different elements to the ever expanding universe.
Galaxy and Star Formation
For billions of years galaxies form and merge in massive star burst events. Until hundreds of billions of galaxies each housing billions of stars have formed.
Earth Evolutionary Cycle
This chart shows the evolution of Earth from its formation some 4.6 billion years ago, the formation of the Moon, and the many stages of Earth's growth through glaciation (snowball Earth's) to beginnings of land mammals and the first human ancestors.
Home
Creating what we know today as Planet Earth - the only home anyone living today or for the foreseeable future will know.
Episode 2: Ancient Stories of Creation
78,000 yo intentional burial in Africa
The skeleton appears to be that of a 3 yo child laid in the fetal position in a shallow grave. The body was wrapped and the head propped up as if by a pillow. There is some evidence that ritual burial was a part of human life much earlier.
Scenes of Agriculture from the tomb of Nakht
Nakht was a scribe and astronomer during the 18th Dynasty in Egypt around the 14th century BCE. These scenes were likely a tribute to his work in serving his community.
Nun raises Ra to the Sky ca. 1100 BCE
Nun - god of the primeval waters and chaos raises Ra (the Sun) to the sky. Nut - sky goddess hangs upside down holding Osiris who holds the Sun symbolizing the union between body and soul. The scarab beetle was often depicted pushing the Sun across the sky.
Marduk vs. Tiamat
According to Babylonian legend, Marduk defeated Tiamat in a great battle and created the heaven and the earth from her torn body. When the Persian emperor Cyrus conquered Babylon in the 6th century BCE, he worshipped at the temple of Marduk, whose ziggurat was thought to be the model for the Tower of Babel.
Prometheus in purgatory - Greek mythology
In this painting by Gustave Moreau, Prometheus sits tied to a rock where a buzzard eats at his liver. It is his punishment for stealing fire from the Zeus and the gods and lending it to humans.
The Birth of Venus - William Adolphe
The planet Venus was known to the ancient civilization long before it was named for the Roman goddess of love and fertility. Known as Ishtar to the Akkadian people and Inanna to the Sumerians, her purity was the reason she could lower herself to the underworld and live to rise again above her people. The greeks called her Aphrodite.
Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE - 50 CE)
The philosopher was born in Egypt during the Roman Empire, spoke and wrote in Greek and followed the mitzvot - the 613 Commandments set out in the Torah. His goal was to harmonize Judaism and Platonic philosophy.
Episode 3: The Milesians
Milesian architecture
The remains of the Ionic stoa that lined the Sacred Way in Miletus during its time as one of the 12 great Ionian city-states of ancient Anatolia or Asia Minor in present day Turkey.
Thales of Miletus
The image of Thales, one of the Seven Sages, founders of Ancient Greece, and known to be the first natural or scientific philosopher. Thales believed that water was the primordial arche or bringer of all life and the universe, and that the Earth floated on a bed of water.
Urania - the Muse of Astronomy - Reveals to Thales the Secrets of the Skies
This depiction by Antonio Canova shows Thales communing and learning from the goddess, a powerful sign of his earthly wisdom. Thales believed the Earth was a flat disc floating on water and the stars were burning balls of dirt. He is thought to have made some of the earliest calculations of the solstices and equinoxes as well as the position of Ursa Minor, which he believed could be used in navigation.
Anaximander by Pietro Bellotti.
The second head of the Milesian school, Anaximander believed the universe was ruled by a great unknown substance or essence. A view that was in line with the notion of the Greek "logos" or divine essence, although his arche was not of a divine nature. He was one of the first to create a map of the world, and he believed the Earth was suspended in space. He also suggested that rain was caused by the evaporation and dispersal of water and built a mechanical model of the cosmos.
Anaximander's mechanics
This late illustration depicts Anaximander's interpretation of the heavens. The Earth is centrally located with the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in orbit around it, followed by the constellations of the Zodiac.
Anaximenes - The last of the Milesian school of natural philosophy.
Anaximenes' arche was air which he believed was responsible for the condensation and dispersal of all things in the material world. The Earth he suggested floated on air, the rippling of which caused earthquakes and storms.
Anaximenes' Mechanics
Like his predecessors, Anaximenes believed the Earth, Sun and Moon were flat and that the Sun orbited the Earth which caused it to be obfuscated by the land, causing night.
Episode 4: The Presocratics
Xenophanes of Colophon (560-478 BCE)
Perhaps the most traveled of any of the Presocratic philosophers, Xenophanes described the paganism of his day as a human construct and differentiated between fact and conjecture. He believed that earth and water were the universal underlying arche and postulated a physical rather than a supernatural cause for the phenomenon known as St. Elmo's Fire: the electric sparks caused by ionization of air at the top of the masts of ships.
St. Elmo's Fire explained
Xenophanes postulated that the phenomenon that was often seen on ships at sea during storms was likely caused by lightning reacting with tiny bits of clouds.
Heraclitus by Johannes Moreelse
Active in the 6th century BCE, Heraclitus' arche was fire - agreed by most Greeks to be central to life and cosmic beginnings. His notion that nature was always in flux likely influenced Parmenides' contrarian ideas on nature.
Empedocles (494 - 434 BCE)
One of the first to challenge the views of the Eleatic school, Empedocles appears to borrow from Anaxagoras and Heraclitus in forming his views on nature that themselves appear to anticipate the atomism of Democritus. His four universal elements: air, fire, earth and water, altered form to create the changes in environment and movement in the world catalyzed by the forces of Love and Strife.
Heraclitus and Democritus by Donato Bramante
Heraclitus "the weeping philosopher" is depicted beside the Democritus "the laughing philosopher" in this painting by the 15th century Italian artist.
Parmenides of Elea
Like his intellectual rival, Heraclitus, Parmenides made a distinction between fact and conjecture. But unlike Heraclitus, he postulated a unique form of material monism in which things either exist or do not exist and that the appearance of change or "flux" was merely an illusion. This idea formed the basis for the Parmenidean or Eleatic School of Philosophy.
Empedocles' Elements
The four elements: air, fire, earth and water, appear in a spherical universe in this depiction of a woodcut relief by Lucretius, published in 1472 by Tommaso Ferrando in Brescia.
The Death of Empedocles by Salvator Rosa
A suicidal Empedocles jumping into the mouth of Mt. Etna in this painting by the 17th century Baroque Italian artist.
Episode 5: Pythagoras
Pi and the glory of irrational numbers
Irrational numbers like pi (3.14) were known to be highly useful in determining things like the circumference of a circle (C=d x π), for instance. This math had been known to the Babylonians for centuries before the Pythagoreans discovered it.
Pythagoras in histories of philosophy
Pythagoras appears in this 17th century history of philosophy wearing the simple robes without further adornment. His policy of a life lived simply, and without excess probably anticipated Cynicism - a philosophy of the last 500 years before the Roman Empire to which many of his adherents were attracted.
Beans - the Forbidden Fruit
As part of his ethical and dietary discipline, Pythagoras demanded that his followers keep a strict vegetarian diet that may have been adopted due to his belief (learned during his time in Egypt) in metempsychosis, or reincarnation through the transmigration of the soul after death.
Pythagoras Advocating Vegetarianism by Peter Paul Rubens
In this depiction by the 17th century Flemish artist, Pythagoras sits idly as his followers appear to strip the apple tree bare. The pale naked woman in the center may be a reference to Eve who is busy wresting an apple from a branch. In the upper right a male deviant appears to relish the event while three men in the left side of the painting are apprehensive, perhaps representing the revulsion of the church. Rubens is calling our attention to the preference by Pythagoras for metempsychosis over the pagan and monotheistic philosophies of his day.
The Tetractys
This sacred symbol of Pythagoreanism was devised by Pythagoras to account for his numerological system in which numbers accounted for all nature. The number 1 represented the origin of life; 2 of matter; 3 - the ideal number with a beginning, a middle and an end, was also the fewest points needed to create a triangle. Four represented the elements and the seasons. Odd numbers were masculine while even numbers were feminine. The number 5 represented marriage since 2 + 3 equaled 5. Ten was considered the perfect number.
Pythagoreans Celebrate the Sunrise - Bronnikov
This is a depiction of Pythagoras leading his followers in welcoming the sunlight of a new day by the Russian-born painter Fyodor Bronnikov. Pythagoras stands at the edge of a high cliff while several members of his entourage play harps and lyre's. Pythagoras believed that the numbers coincided with musical notes in a scale and that these were in harmony with the universe. Note the number of followers is equal to 10. It has been said that Pythagoreans never met in groups larger than 10 in honor of the perfect number.
Canto Paradiso - Dante Alighieri
Dante was influenced greatly by Pythagoras' numerology and used it in the third part of his Divine Comedy series, Paradise.
Pythagoras and female students
Pythagoras did not appear to align intelligence with gender and had many female followers and mathematicians, some of whom worked on various problems including theorems for irrational numbers.
The square root of 2 paradox
This simple equation led to the disillusionment of the Pythagorean cult when they realized it couldn't be resolved as a rational number.
Episode 6: Anaxagoras
Episode 7: Philolaus
Episode 8: Leucippus and Democritus
Differences between atoms
Democritus believed atoms' shape, size and color accounted for the things of the natural world. Like water, which was blue and bright. And iron, which was spiked and a darker shade. Credit: historyofatomictheory.com
Leucippus the Original Atomist
An aging Leucippus is portrayed seated holding his work in this painting by the 17th century Italian Luca Giordano.
Democritus the Polymath
Democritus holds a compass as he sits beside a globe in front of a large atlas in this engraving by the 18th century Spanish artist Jusepe de Ribera.
Atoms and perception
Democritus said that sight happens when atoms from an object imprinted on the eye. Similar effects were responsible for the other sense: hearing, taste, touch and smell. Credit: BigThink.com
Democritus' thought experiment with clay
Democritus imagined dividing a piece of clay or rock into ever smaller halves until it was broken down to the atomic level. Credit: Sutori.com
Evolution of Atomic Theory
A brief timeline of growth in knowledge of atomic theory shows the more than 2000 year span between the lives of Leucippus and Democritus and the significant advances made starting in the early 1800's based, in part, on their work. Credit: theory.labster.com
Episode 9: Aristarchus of Samos
Episode 10: Eratosthenes of Cyrene
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