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Starts With A Bang

Mini-Movie Monday: Genesis Episode 1, Organic Molecules

The first part in a new series of where all this comes from.

“You may have heard the world is made up of atoms and molecules, but it’s really made up of stories. When you sit with an individual that’s been here, you can give quantitative data a qualitative overlay.” –William Turner

With our recent Messier Monday series having just come to an end, it’s time to try something new. And I can think of nothing either more ambitious — or more appropriate for what we’ve been doing — than to start telling the story of where all this comes from.

Image credit: B. Fugate (FASORtronics) / ESO, via http://www.eso.org/public/usa/images/epod-cc-rf18284/.

You’ve got to realize that when we speak about something like all this, we’re talking about the complex life we have here on our world in the context of the entire Universe.

Image credit: NASA / Ames Research Center, via http://www.astrochem.org/.

Yes, we have amazing biological organisms here, but they’re all powered by the biochemical processes of organic molecules, which are composed of links of all the different elements of the periodic table, which came about through the cosmic story of stars, galaxies, dark matter, gas, dust, radiation, the fundamental forces of nature, and time.

Image credit: Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, ESO / NRAO / NAOJ.

It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to get it right, but I’ve got a wonderful team of people helping to make this happen, and we’re calling the project Genesis: The Story Of Where All This Comes From.

For our first Mini-Movie Monday, I’m excited to reveal our debut episode, on organic molecules, from a cosmic point of view.

Special thanks to my collaborators Amir Assasnik, Adam Monteblanco, and Stephen Ellestad for all their help turning this vision into a reality. I hope you love it!


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