Last night's Horizon on BBC2 looked at the current state of cosmological theory. How refreshing to have a prime time TV prog that managed to deal with real science of the most mind-boggling sort without either dumbing down or being unintelligible. Mind you, it would have been better as a radio programme. How do you portray a Big Bang lasting a quadrillionth of a second followed by a ballooning of the universe over billions of years.
One thing you shouldn't do is make the Big Bang go 'bang!' - since it would happen in total silence. Sound does not travel in the vacuum of space. This always irritates me in spacey-type films; especially since vast power being released in total silence would be a far more powerful image.
The mind-bending concepts of 'dark matter' (we can't detect >75% of the matter in our universe), 'dark energy' and, even more creepily, 'dark flow' (suggesting that our universe is not the only one) fill me with awe. Like the Psalmist said "When I look up at your heavens, the work of your fingers, at the moon and the stars you have set in place, what is a frail mortal, that you should be mindful of him, a human being, that you should take notice of him?" (Psalm 8 : 3 - 4). The truth of the universe, majestic and incomprehensible to the 5th Century BC poet is actually far more wonderful than s/he could remotely begin to imagine.
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