Now showing
The Size of the Universe (1957)
About this film
Light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles every second. Imagine how far it would travel in a year, or in one million years. But where would it come from across such a distance? Bart Bok (Director of the Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra, Australia; Professor of Astronomy, National University of Australia; formerly, Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy, Harvard University) shows the source: a galaxy of stars very like our own milky way whirling through space one million light years from earth. As Professor Bok demonstrates, to construct a model of this universe of galaxies, you could take a series of cardboard discs, each representing a galaxy with a diameter of 100,000 light years, then throw them out into space in such a way that the distance between each was a thousand times the width of each disc. There, in space, the real galaxies would recede from the earth at a rate of sixteen thousand miles in every second. By means of spectacular photographs, Bok charts this universe of galaxies and plots the size of the universe. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Directors & creators
WGBH Educational Foundation
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, Astronomy, Cosmology, Solar System, Speed of Light, Light Years, Light Minutes, Milky Way, Stars, Sun, Cygnus (Constellation), Deneb, Alberio, Astrophysics, Science Education, 1950s Science, Of Science and Scientists, Astronomical Distance, Stellar Systems, Cosmic Scale, Space Exploration, Universe, Scientific History
More from this pool