All language subtitles for Cosmos.A.Space.Time.Odyssey.S01E03.HDTV.x264-LOL - When Knowledge Conquered Fear

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NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON:
We were born into a mystery,

one that has haunted us

since at least as long
as we've been human.

We awakened on this tiny world

beneath a blanket of stars,

like an abandoned baby
left on a doorstep

without a note to explain

where we came from, who we are,

how our universe came to be.

And with no idea how to end
our cosmic isolation.

We've had to figure it all out
for ourselves.

(fussing)

Best thing we had going for us

was our intelligence,

especially our gift
for pattern recognition,

sharpened over eons
of evolution.

The ones who were good at
spotting prey and predator,

telling poisonous plants
from the nourishing ones,

they had a better chance
to live and reproduce.

They survived
and passed on those genes

for pattern recognition

with its obvious advantages.

Cultures all over the planet

looked up at the same stars

and found
different pictures there.

We used this gift for
recognizing patterns in nature

to read the calendar
in the sky.

The messages written
in the stars

told our forefathers
and mothers

when to camp
and when to move on.

When the migratory herds

and when the rains
and the cold would come.

And when they would cease
for a time.

When they observed
the direct connection

between the motions
of the stars

and the seasonal cycles
of life on Earth,

they concluded, naturally,

that what happens up there

must be directed
at us down here.

It makes sense, right?

If the sky was a calendar

and somebody stuck
a Post-it note on top of it,

what else could it be
but a message?

And so, when the heavenly order
was suddenly violated

by the apparition of
a comet in the sky...

they took it personally.

Can we really blame them?

Back then, they had no other
logical explanation

for what was happening.

This was long before

anyone had yet to imagine Earth

as a spinning planet
with a tilted axis,

revolving around the Sun.

Every ancient human culture
made the same mistake,

a comet must be a message,

sent by the gods...
or one particular god.

And almost invariably,
our ancestors concluded

the news was not good.

It didn't matter if you were
an ancient Aztec,

Anglo-Saxon, Babylonian, Hindu.

Comets were portents of doom.

The only difference among them

was the precise nature
of the coming disaster.

"Dis-aster," as in the
Greek word for "bad star."

To the Masai of East Africa,

a comet meant famine.

To the Zulu in the south,

it meant war.

To the Eghap people
of the west,

it meant disease.

To the Djaga of Zaire,

specifically "smallpox."

To their neighbors, the Luba,

a comet foretold
the death of a leader.

The ancient Chinese
were remarkably systematic.

Starting in roughly 1400 BC,

they began recording
and cataloguing

the apparitions of comets.

A three-tailed comet

meant calamity for the state.

A four-tailed comet

signified an epidemic
was coming.

The human talent
for pattern recognition

is a two-edged sword.

We're especially good
at finding patterns,

even when they
aren't really there--

something known as
"false pattern recognition."

We hunger for significance,

for signs that
our personal existence

is of special meaning
to the universe.

To that end, we're all too eager

to deceive ourselves and others,

to discern a sacred image
in a grilled cheese sandwich

or find a divine warning
in a comet.

Today, we know exactly
where comets come from

and what they're made of.

Our Ship of the Imagination,

fueled by equal parts
of science and wonder,

can take us anywhere
in space and time.

It can travel faster than light

and render visible those things

that cannot be seen.

It's carrying us to
a mysterious realm

that lies one light-year
from the Sun.

What is this swarm of worlds?

Was it organized
by alien beings?

No.

Just gravity.

These are the snows
of yesteryear,

drifting mountains
of ice and rock,

the preserved remnants of
the birth of the solar system.

It's called the Oort Cloud,

after Jan Oort,
the Dutch astronomer

who foretold its existence

back in 1950.

He was trying to
solve a paradox.

There's so many ways
for comets to die.

Because they cross
the orbits of planets,

comets frequently
collide with them.

Comets are largely made of ice,

so every time they
come near the Sun,

they lose a part of themselves
through evaporation.

And after several
thousand trips,

their ice is all gone,

and what remains of the comet
is now an asteroid.

Comets can be gravitationally
ejected from the solar system

and exiled into space.

And yet, somehow,

the comets keep coming.

Oort and other
astronomers wondered,

"Where do all
the comets come from?"

Oort calculated the rate
at which new comets appear

and concluded
that there must be

a vast, spherical
swarm of them,

a few light-years across,

surrounding the Sun.

Oort's logic still holds up,

even after all the discoveries
we've made about comets

and the solar system in
the many decades since.

And yet, the Oort Cloud
is a sight

that no one has ever seen.

Nor could we.

It's dark out here.

And each comet is about as far
from its closest neighbor

as the Earth is from Saturn.

But science gives us
special powers of our own.

It gave Jan Oort

the gift of prophecy.

Oort was also the first
to correctly estimate

the distance between the Sun

and the center of our galaxy.

That's a big deal--

finding out where we are
in the Milky Way.

Our star is about

30,000 light-years
from the center.

Oort was also

the first guy to use
a radio telescope

to map the galaxy's
spiral structure.

And he discovered that
the center of our galaxy

was a place of
titanic explosions,

the first indication

that there might have been

a supermassive black hole
lurking there.

Does the fact that
most of us know

the names of mass murderers,

but never heard of Jan Oort,

say anything about us?

The Oort Cloud is so enormous

that it takes one of its comets
about a million years

to complete a single trip
around the Sun.

Out here, at the far edge
of the solar system,

even a little tug from
the gravity of a passing star

can liberate
some of these comets

from their gravitational
bondage to the Sun.

Some comets are flung
out of the solar system

to wander interstellar space.

But for others,
there's a different fate.

This one is plunging
towards the Sun,

gaining speed in
an unbroken free fall

that lasts hundreds
of thousands of years.

When Neptune's gravity
gives it another tug,

there's a small
change in course.

Mighty Jupiter,
the most massive

object in our solar system--

other than the Sun--
attracts the comet

with its powerful
gravitational pull,

bending its path.

When our comet reaches
the inner solar system...

heat from the Sun bakes it.

A beautiful
transformation begins.

The barren, sooty iceberg

now sports a glowing halo...

and a tail.

These layers tell the story

of how the comet was made,

some four billion years ago.

During the 40,000 generations
of humanity,

there must have been
roughly 100,000 apparitions

of a bright comet.

For all that time,

the best we could do was
look up in helpless wonder,

prisoners of Earth with
nowhere to turn

for an explanation beyond
our guilt and our fears.

But then a friendship began
between two men that led

to a permanent revolution
in human thought.

Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley
could not know it,

but their collaboration would
ultimately set us free

from our long confinement
on this tiny world.

DEGRASSE TYSON:
The Comet of 1664

sent shivers of dread
throughout Europe,

and the terror seemed justified
when the Plague

and the Great Fire of London
followed soon after.

WOMAN:
There, with long bloody hair,

a blazing star
threatens the world

with famine, plague and war.

To princes, it spells death...

to kingdoms, many crosses...

to all estates,
inevitable losses...

to herdsmen, rot,

to plowmen, hapless seasons,

to sailors, it brings storms,

to cities, civil treasons.

DEGRASSE TYSON:
But for one child,

the comet was not the least bit
frightening.

For him,
it was a thing of wonder.

Like all of us,
Edmond Halley was born curious.

Hell's bells!

He was lucky to have
a father who encouraged

and nurtured his curiosity,

buying him the best
scientific instruments

and even funding his expedition

to make the first accurate star
map of the Southern Hemisphere.

Halley dropped out of Oxford
when he was 20,

and sailed to St. Helena,

an island below the equator,
off the west coast of Africa.

Hell's bells.

DEGRASSE TYSON: The problem was,
nobody told Halley

that the weather on St. Helena

was generally lousy; it took
him 12 frustrating months

to observe enough southern
stars to make a complete map.

The gods and heroes of ancient
Greece were now joined

by the mythic figures
of a new world and age,

a toucan, a compass,
a bird of paradise.

When Halley came home
with the other half of the sky,

his map created a sensation.

Now merchants and explorers
could navigate by the stars

visible anywhere on Earth.

At the time,
the World Society of London

was the world's clearinghouse
of scientific discovery.

Its motto, "Nullius in verba,"

sums up the heart
of the scientific method.

It's Latin for
"see for yourself."

In other words,
"question authority."

Halley's star maps caught
the attention

of the Society's Curator
of Experiments.

I'd show him to you if I could,

but no portrait of Robert Hooke
exists from his time,

only the verbal descriptions
of his contemporaries.

They called him
"lean, bent, ugly."

He was possibly the most
inventive person who ever lived.

And despite his appearance,

he was the most sought-after
party guest in all of London.

Why?

Hooke's insatiable curiosity

encompassed
absolutely everything.

Hooke discovered
a little cosmos,

and we still call it by
the name he gave it, the cell.

Hooke discovered
the cell by looking

at a piece of cork
with one of his own inventions,

the compound microscope.

He anticipated aspects of
Darwin's theory of evolution

by almost 200 years.

Hooke also improved
the telescope.

The drawings he made of the
astronomical bodies he observed

attest
to his uncanny precision.

After the Great Fire destroyed
central London in 1666,

Hooke partnered with the
architect Christopher Wren

to redesign and rebuild
the city.

Hooke was the foremost
experimentalist of his age.

Using coiled springs,

he derived the
"law of elasticity,"

known today as Hooke's Law.

He perfected the air pump,

the height of technology
in its time,

and used it to experiment
on respiration and sound.

And he experimented
with cannabis.

He reported to a meeting
of the Royal Society

that a sea captain friend
of his

"had so often experimented
with it,

that there is no cause of fear,

though possibly there may be
of laughter."

But coffee was the drug
of choice for England

in the 17th century.

Coffeehouses sprang up
all over London.

This is where people came
to get news,

to launch new ventures,
and to debate ideas.

The coffeehouse
was an oasis of equality

in a class-obsessed society.

Here, a poor man
needn't give up his seat

to a rich man,
nor submit to his opinion.

It was a kind of laboratory
of democracy.

In this highly caffeinated
atmosphere,

Halley and Hooke met Christopher
Wren to discuss a deep mystery.

Why do the planets move
as they do?

The astronomer Johannes Kepler
had demonstrated,

some 80 years before,

that the orbits of the
planets around the Sun

were not perfect circles,
but actually ellipses,

and that the closer a planet
was to the Sun,

the faster it moved.

Why?

Could some invisible force
from the Sun be responsible

for this change in motion?

If so, how did it work?

Could there be a simple
mathematical law to describe it?

Maybe something like Hooke's Law
of Elasticity?

Perhaps.

But try as he might,

Christopher Wren couldn't
figure it out.

(Wren sighs)

Damned if I haven't tried.

It's beyond me.

I'll wager a book
worth 40 shillings

to the man who can solve it!

That book is
mine, Mr. Wren.

I've already done
the calculation.

DEGRASSE TYSON:
Halley was delighted.

Show us, Mr. Hooke.

But months passed,
and Hooke failed to deliver.

He couldn't do the math.

None of them could.

Finally, Halley had enough
of Hooke's excuses.

Halley knew there must be
someone, somewhere,

up to the challenge.

What about that mathematician
at Cambridge?

Clever fellow.

He had solved central questions
about the nature of light

years before,
when he was still only 22.

And he invented
the reflecting telescope.

Odd bird.

Dropped out of sight
a while back;

some squabble over Hooke
and his discovery about light.

Went completely
to pieces over it

and has been hiding out
in Cambridge ever since.

Halley wondered if this strange,
and by all accounts,

exceedingly difficult man,
might succeed

where Hooke and others
had failed.

What he couldn't know,

what no one could possibly
imagine at the time,

were the countless ways

the world would be forever
changed by this meeting

on an August day in 1684.

DEGRASSE TYSON: Isaac Newton
was born in England

on Christmas Day in 1642.

(baby cries)

Before he even opened his eyes,
his father was already dead.

His mother left him
when he was only three

and did not return
until he was 11.

When she did, it was
with a new family and husband,

a stepfather
who Isaac Newton despised.

Newton's refuge
from his miserable family life

was his passion to understand
how things worked,

especially nature itself.

In 1661, the talented young
Isaac entered Trinity College

at Cambridge University

where he was a consistently
lousy student,

one without friends
or a loving family

to provide any warmth
or encouragement.

Newton mostly kept to himself,
sequestered in his room,

studying ancient Greek
philosophers,

geometry and languages,

and pondering deep questions

on the nature of matter,
space, time, and motion.

This budding scientist
was also a passionate mystic.

Newton believed
that a secret knowledge

called alchemy,
known only to a small group

of ancient philosophers,
was waiting to be rediscovered.

He hoped to learn how
to change ordinary metals

into silver and gold,

and maybe even cook up
the elixir of life,

the key to to immortality.

He was also obsessed

with finding hidden messages
in the words of the Bible.

He combed through translations
in several different languages,

hoping to decipher coded
instructions from God.

He made elaborate calculations
in an effort

to discover the date
of the Second Coming.

His lifelong research
in alchemy

and biblical chronology
never led anywhere.

When Halley found Newton
that fateful day,

he was living
as a virtual recluse.

Newton had gone into hiding
13 years earlier,

after Robert Hooke had publicly
accused Newton of stealing

his groundbreaking work
on light and color.

In fact, it was Isaac Newton

who solved the mystery
of the spectrum of light,

not Robert Hooke.

This wound was painful
and deep,

and Newton resolved to never
expose himself to that kind

of public humiliation
ever again.

Sir, I don't suppose you recall

our meeting a few years ago?

Yes, Mr. Halley.

I'm sorry to bother you.

Never mind the formalities,
get to your point.

I've been talking with our
friends, Mr. Wren and Mr. Hooke.

That scoundrel Hooke's
no friend of mine.

Yes, I understand, sir.

But the thing is
we've been debating

the puzzling question
of planetary motion.

We all agree that
some force of attraction

from the Sun governs
the motions of the planets.

We suspect there must be
a mathematical law

to describe how this force

changes with distance.

And knowing of your skill...

Yes, yes,
the attraction of gravity

weakens with the square
of the distance.

That's why the planets
move in ellipses.

But, sir, how can you know this?

Why, I have calculated it
some five years ago.

I beg you, show it to me.

The calculation is here...

somewhere.

Well, no matter.

I shall redo it and be sure

to send it on to you.

This is stupendous!

Why have we not
had word of it before?

DEGRASSE TYSON:
Newton remembered all too well

what Hooke had done to him

the last time
he put forth an idea.

Just when Halley
may have begun to wonder

if Newton was bluffing
as Hooke had done earlier,

a messenger arrived
with an envelope from Newton.

Here are the opening pages
of modern science

with its all-embracing
vision of nature...

universal laws
of motion, gravity...

not just for the Earth,

but for the cosmos.

Halley raced back to Cambridge.

Mr. Newton, I beseech you
to work all of this

into a book
as soon as possible.

I can assure you the Royal
Society will publish it.

DEGRASSE TYSON: But there was
one little problem.

We are in agreement

that Mr. Newton has produced
a masterpiece.

However, I'm afraid
the Royal Society has...

well, regrettably sales
for the History of Fish...

have not lived up
to our financial expectations.

DEGRASSE TYSON:
It's an impressive book.

Extremely comprehensive.

Really.

It's filled with lavish
illustrations of...

well, fish.

The disappointing sales led
to a bigger problem.

The Royal Society
pretty much blew

its total annual budget
on the History of Fish.

In fact, they were
so strapped for cash,

they had to pay
poor Halley's salary

with copies
of their worst-selling book.

With no money to print
Newton's Principia,

the scientific revolution
hung in the balance.

Without Halley's heroic efforts,

the reclusive Newton's
masterwork

might never have seen
the light of day.

But Halley was
a man on a mission,

absolutely determined to bring
Newton's genius to the world.

That pre-scientific world,

the world ruled by fear,

was poised at the edge
of a revolution.

Everything depended
on whether or not Edmond Halley

could get Newton's book out
to the wider world.

Halley resolved not only
to edit Newton's book,

but to publish it
at his own expense.

Newton completed
the first two volumes,

laying the mathematical
framework

for the physics of motion.

The third volume
would settle once and for all

who won the coffeehouse wager.

Newton applied
his principles to explain

all the known motions
of the Earth,

the Moon and the planets.

Unfortunately,
there was this problem.

Now Halley also took on the role

of Newton's psychotherapist.

Isaac, I'm afraid
that Mr. Hooke requires

an acknowledgment in the preface
of your third volume.

But I have done so.

Thanking him,
Mr. Wren and yourself

for prodding me to think again
on astronomical matters.

Mr. Hooke has been going
about London saying

that you got
the Law of Gravity from him.

Why, that litigious little...

Never!

I would sooner
burn the third volume

than deface it with such a lie.

To hell with Hooke.

He will be long forgotten

when your ideas
are still being celebrated.

More copies of
that dreadful book?

Wherever shall we put them all?

We talked about this,
Mary, dear.

This is my salary
from the Society.

They have nothing else
with which to pay me.

If only Mr. Hooke
and Mr. Newton

were more like you.

DEGRASSE TYSON: Halley and Wren
decided to confront Hooke

about his false claims.

That law is mine, I tell you!

I proved it first.

Then fetch your proof here
at once.

Let us see it.

Surely we have waited
on it long enough.

You'll simply have to
take my word for it.

Empty claims
may persuade elsewhere,

but not here.

Put up or shut up, Mr. Hooke.

Blasted Newton.
I'll make him pay.

DEGRASSE TYSON:
If it wasn't for Edmond Halley,

Newton's great book would've
never been conceived,

nor written, nor printed.

Okay. So what?

What difference does
that make to us?

What's the big deal?

When Isaac Newton was born
in this house

in 1642,
the world was very different.

Everyone looked
at the perfection

of the clockwork motions
of the planets in the sky

and could only understand it
as the work

of a master clock maker.

How else to explain it?

There was only one way
such a thing could come about

in their imagination;

only one answer for them--

God.

For reasons beyond
our understanding,

God just created
the solar system that way.

But this explanation is
the closing of a door.

It doesn't lead
to other questions.

Along came Newton,

a God-loving man
who's also a genius.

He could write
the laws of nature

in perfect
mathematical sentences--

formulas
that applied universally

to apples, moons, planets

and so much more.

With one foot still
in the Middle Ages,

Isaac Newton imagined
the whole solar system.

Newton's laws of gravity
and motion

revealed how the Sun held
distant worlds captive.

His laws swept away the need

for a master clock maker

to explain the precision
and beauty of the solar system.

Gravity is the clock maker.

Matter obeyed commandments
we could discover,

laws the Bible hadn't mentioned.

Newton's answer to why the
solar system is the way it is

opened the way to an infinite
number of questions.

Principia also happened
to include

the invention of calculus,

and the first
sound theoretical basis

for an end to our imprisonment
on Earth--

space travel.

Newton envisioned
the firing of a cannonball...

(cannon fires)

with increasingly greater
explosive thrust.

He reasoned
that with enough velocity,

the bounds of gravity
could be broken,

and the cannonball could escape

to orbit the Earth.

This changed everything.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Newton's Principia Mathematica
set us free in another way.

By finding the natural laws

governing the comings
and goings of comets,

he decoupled the motions
of the heavens

from their ancient connections
to our fears.

If Halley hadn't been standing
next to Newton for all those years,

perhaps the world would remember him
for his own accomplishments and discoveries.

But the only thing that comes
to mind for most people

is the comet,
the irony is that discovering a comet

is actually one of the
few things that Halley never did.

Mountain of ice to starboard!

- Come about!
- Aye, aye, Captain Halley!

(indistinct shouting)

After the publication
of the Principia

Halley was commanded by
his king to lead three ocean voyages,

scientific expeditions to solve
navigational problems for the British navy.

Halley used this opportunity to make
the first map of the Earth's magnetic field

And he was also a businessman.

Halley perfected
the diving bell...

...and used his invention
to start

a flourishing commercial
salvage operation.

Mmm, ah, Dr. Halley's gone
and done it this time.

I reckon he's been down
there at least three hours.

DEGRASSE TYSON: Not one to
risk the lives of others,

Halley personally tested
his own invention.

I make it exactly four hours
since our descent.

Not at all bad for ten fathoms.

DEGRASSE TYSON:
He invented the weather map.

And the symbols he devised
for indicating prevailing winds

are still in use today.

Halley laid the groundwork

for the science
of population statistics.

How?

He compared the birth,
marriage, death,

and population densities
of London and Paris.

He actually had to pace off

the entire perimeter
of Paris, on foot,

to learn its true dimensions.

He came to the conclusion

that since roughly half
of all adults fail

to reproduce children,

who themselves survive
to reproduce,

every married couple must have
four children

in order to maintain
the population.

And it was Edmond Halley
who gave us

the actual scale
of the solar system.

He figured out a clever way
to find the distance

from Earth to the Sun.

It involved precisely measuring
the time it took

for the planet Venus
to cross the Sun's disc.

27 years after Halley's death,

Captain James Cook made
his first voyage to Tahiti

for the express purpose
of testing Halley's method

during a transit of Venus
across the Sun.

Using a special filter
to protect his vision

from being destroyed
by looking directly at the Sun,

Cook and his men made it
possible for us to know

that the Sun
is 93 million miles from Earth.

And Halley was the first
to realize

that the so-called "fixed" stars
were not fixed at all.

How'd he do it?

He pored over
the observations made

by the ancient Greek astronomers
of the brightest stars.

And he compared their
observations with the ones

he himself made of the same
stars 1,800 years later.

Why hadn't anyone noticed
this before?

Halley figured out that it would
only become apparent

if you waited long enough
between observations.

It's hard to perceive
the motions of things

that are far away.

And the stars
are so very far away,

that you would need
to track them for many centuries

before you could detect
that they moved at all.

Halley discovered the first
clue to a magnificent reality,

all the stars are in motion,
streaming past each other,

rising and falling like
merry-go-round horses

in their Newtonian dance around
the center of our galaxy.

And, oh, yes, there was that
thing about the comet.

What were those strange and
beautiful celestial visitors

that appeared without warning
from time to time?

Halley set out to solve this
mystery as a detective would,

by gathering all credible
eyewitness testimony.

The earliest precise
observations of a comet

that Halley could find
were made in Constantinople

by Nikephoros Gregoras,
a Byzantine astronomer and monk

in June 1337.

Halley hunted down
every astronomical observation

of a comet recorded in Europe
between 1472 and 1698.

And remember,
there was no such thing

as a search engine
or a computer.

All Halley had
were his books and his mind.

Now here comes the hard part,

Halley had to take the
observations made for each comet

and find the shape of its
actual path through space.

No one else but Newton
had yet attempted

to apply his new set of laws
to an astronomical question.

In an arduous tour de force
of mathematical brilliance,

Halley discovered that comets
were bound to the Sun

in long elliptical orbits.

And he was the first to know
that the comets seen in 1531,

1607, and 1682...

were one and the same--

a single comet that returned
every 76 years.

In a stunning example
of true pattern recognition,

he predicted
it would be seen again

more than 50 years
in the future.

For millennia, comets had been
props for mystics,

who considered them to be
merely omens of human events.

Halley shattered their monopoly,

beating them at their own game,

a game that no scientist
had ever played before...

prophecy.

And he did not hedge his bet.

Like Babe Ruth predicting

where his next home run
would land in the stands,

Halley stated flatly
that the comet would return

at the end of 1758, from
a particular part of the sky,

following a specific path.

There is hardly a prophecy
attempted by the mystics

that ever even strives
for comparable precision.

That's Halley's Comet.

Out here at the edge
of the solar system,

it doesn't look like much.

Just a big hunk of ice
and rock in space.

That's because beyond
the orbit of Neptune,

nearly five billion kilometers
from the Sun,

comets lead very quiet lives.

As it reaches the far end
of its orbit,

it'll slow down till the Sun
allows it to go no farther.

Then it will begin its long fall
back to the inner solar system.

Halley's comet is in free fall
around the Sun.

Everything in our solar system--
the Earth, the Moon,

the other planets, comets,
asteroids,

all of them are falling
around the Sun.

Gravity pulls the planets
towards the Sun,

but because of
their orbital momentum,

they keep moving around the Sun,
never falling into it.

Robert Hooke had died
years before,

having ruined his health
with some bad habits...

daily doses of wormwood,
opium, mercury.

A few months later, Newton was
elected to replace him

as president
of the Royal Society.

It is said
that a portrait of Hooke

once hung on these walls.

Halley lived on to accomplish
many more astonishing feats.

He worked right up
to his death at age 85.

His final act was to call
for a glass of wine.

He downed it with pleasure...

and breathed his last breath.

(glass breaks)

Some believe that it was
on a night like this

that Isaac Newton finally
took his revenge

against Robert Hooke.

But Halley's prophecy
was not forgotten.

50 years later,

as the time of the predicted
return approached,

the world's astronomers vied

to be the first
to catch sight of his comet.

They weren't disappointed.

It's been welcomed back
every 76 years since.

When Halley's Comet returns
to our skies,

sunlight will warm up the ice
on its surface,

once again setting loose

the dust and gases
trapped within.

Halley's Comet most recently
visited our neighborhood

back in 1986.

And if you're
seeing this in 2061,

then you'll know it's back.

May you feel the wonder
of all those

who came before you...

and none of the fear.

Newton's laws made it possible
for Edmond Halley

to see some 50 years
into the future

and predict the behavior
of a single comet.

Scientists have been using
these laws ever since,

opening the way to the Moon

and even beyond
our solar system.

The baby in the basket
is learning to walk...

and to know the cosmos.

Which brings me

to one last prophecy.

Using nothing more than
Newton's laws of gravitation,

we astronomers
can confidently predict

that several billion years
from now,

our home galaxy, the Milky Way,

will merge with our neighboring
galaxy Andromeda.

Because the distances
between the stars

are so great
compared to their sizes,

few if any stars in either
galaxy will actually collide.

Any life on the worlds
of that far-off future

should be safe, but they would
be treated to an amazing,

billion-year-long light show...

a dance of
a half a trillion stars...

to music first heard
on one little world

by a man who had
but one true friend.

Sync and corrections by n17t01
www.addic7ed.com