BBC Atom 2 - The Key To The Cosmos (Full Version)

3 Part Series: part 2 of 3

BBC Atom - The Key To The Cosmos (Full Version)

As we gazed up at the heavens, we asked where we had come from

How old the stars were created. How many elements were made

even how the Universe itself had begun.

One of the mankind's greatest achievments is that we answered these questions

What is truly remarkable is that this understanding has come through the study

of the smallest building blocks of matter - atoms. As we peered inwards we realized

we could explain what we saw when we peered outwards.

The atom has helped us solved the greatest mysteries of existence

Everything in the world we see is made out of tiny objects called atoms

And yet we only proved their existence at the beginning of the 20th century

The first shock was to discover how small they were.

Less than the millionth of the millimetre across. There are trillions in a single grain of sand

Amazingly we now have a pretty good idea of the number of atoms in the known Universe

Now. Giving the vastness of the Universe and the minuteness of the atom

is not surprising that this is a mind - numbingly huge number.It's one following by over 70 zeros.

That's the trillion trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion atoms.

We don't only know the world number of atoms in a cosmos.

We also know that they come in 92 different flavours.

These are called the elements. And you will recognize many of them as familiar parts of the world around us : oxygen; iron, carbon

tin, gold and so on. Everything in the Universe: the stars, the planets, the mountains, the seas, the animals, you and me

We are all made of these atoms or combinations of them.

It's the astonishing human achievement that we now know not only how many atoms

there are in the Universe. And how many different types there are, why they exist at all

We can now explain how everyone of those trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion atoms

was created. It turns out that the answer to the mystery of creation itself lies within the heart of each and every atom in the Universe

The story of how we came to understand creation itself started over one hundred years ago

in a small laboratory in South-East Paris. This piece of paper is the remarkable artifact.

It's from the notebook of the woman who first studied radioactivity. The chemist: Mary Curie

It's incredible a hundred years later and this piece of paper is still sending out radioactive particles

This photograph on the left shows the concentration of radioactivity

You can actually see Mary Curie's thumbprints on it. It was really incredible is the sheer power, the energy given by radioactivity to this piece of paper.

is still sending out these articles one hundred years later.

Still stuck to the paper a tiny radioactive particles of the substance that Mary Curie discovered in

1898. A substance she called radium. It was a sensational discovery for one primary reason.

The radium looks like unremarkable grey metal. It contradicted all the well-known laws of science

Because radium pops out invisible yet powerful raise of energy, which could foke seeled fotographic paper

and burn human flash. They a little like radiowaves which is why Ciury called radium radioactive.

\\But the waves were millions if times more powerful in any radiowave pridesly accouted\\

Also radium appear to contain the vinet inexhaustible store of energy.

Cuire were tempere gram of radium a piece much smaller then a peny contains more energy then a hundred tonnes of coal.