by Thinus Ferreira
One day there will be a last star left shining in the universe. And the day will come, aeons from now, when it shines for a last day and die out. The new natural history series, Universe starting tonight on BBC Earth (DStv 184) at 19:00 with presenter Professor Brian Cox takes viewers on a sprawling adventure through space and time.
In the series with incredible special effects - a sequel to the 2019 series The Planets - viewers get a front-row seat to the greatest show in the universe as Brian Cox delves into the birth of a star in a stellar nursery, experience the power of a
supermassive black hole as it flings a star across space, and reveal the chaos as two galaxies
collide.
TVwithThinus sat down with the Universe executive producers Gideon Bradshaw and Andrew Cox to talk about their 5-episode space exploration series that is hugely ambitious in scale and where rogue planets, fossilised stars, and black holes more massive than a million suns, are all caught up in a Shakespearean saga that spans the cosmos.
Universe, a BBC Studios Science Unit production, reveals awe-inspiring wonders
and recreates dramatic moments in the Universe's history that defined Earth's –
and our own.
The series uses CGI,
the latest scientific research, and archival footage captured from a fleet of
space bourne telescopes, taking viewers on an expansive story of
the universe, from its moment of inception 13.8 billion years ago, to what
could be its ultimate fate, trillions upon trillions of years in the
future.
What is the challenge in creating a series like Universe for really people really interested in cosmology and big ideas, but to still be accessible to a viewer who's not familiar with astronomy and come into a series like this as an introduction?
Gideon Bradshaw: It's definitely our hope that it will be a broader audience than somebody who is fascinated in science or astronomy.
We work very hard to look for almost "little mini dramas" - little dramatic moments in the history of the universe that we hope will lead to a real spectacle on-screen with visual effects and knit together to tell a linear story that anyone can latch onto.
There are two modes in Universe - the one is where we look at the biography of an individual part of the universe - so an example is the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A-star that we deal with. We give a whole episode to that because it's so fascinating what we know about that black hole now.
We can chart its history from its birth all the way through to its death in the far-distant future.
The other way we do it is through this feeling of exploration - this wanderlust of going out into the universe exploring what's there.
In another episode we've got a story about exoplanets - these planets that exist outside of our solar system. In some ways that were one of our hardest episodes because there are so many of these planets now, we couldn't just pick one. We showcase maybe three or four planets that are very different.
Andrew Cox: The reason that this appeals to everyone is that Universe is a story, not a lecture and you are the main character in it. This is not an abstract experience for the audience, this is actually the story of how you as an individual got here across 30.8 billion years.
Often people talk about science being distant or cold but actually this is an incredibly emotional story and that's what we're driving through every one of the episodes.
Part of our challenge is to take people to some of the most complicated concepts in the universe. We enjoy taking the audience to some of the complex and extraordinary knowledge we have but we never want to just take them there in the head, we want to take them there in the heart as well.
Is there in Universe a message about or for humanity?
Gideon Bradshaw: At the heart of it is also the story of Earth. Why is Earth so special in the universe? We are here as living, breathing, conscious, sentient beings, able to try and make sense of this big thing we find ourselves in.
Andrew Cox: It's two "P's": Preciousness and privilege. We are incredibly precious - not just in the galaxy but perhaps in the universe. We're also incredibly privileged as a generation to be able to know that, and not just to know it but to tell the story of it.
Universe is about science but you're also creating art. It's so epic and beautiful to look at. Has it become easier, with advances in special effects, to create things we haven't yet seen with human eyes? What still remains challenging to create a show like Universe?
Gideon Bradshaw: I'm so proud of what we're able to create on what's definitely not a Hollywood VFX budget. We have two days of studio filming in Universe which you'd never know looking at it.
When you're looking at stars, for instance, some of the textures in those stars are actually filmed in a studio environment where we are actually doing some little water explosions and filming them at high-speed so that we composite them into the stars because we want them to feel as organic as possible.
What did you enjoy personally about the making of Universe and what did you learn yourself?
Andrew Cox: The cosmic web - this idea that there is a scaffold to the universe, that the universe is built on this scaffold and that it's been there since the beginning of time. It's something that's hugely complicated but also really understandable.
The other area in terms of content was just the material that took us to just before the Big Bang - that the human mind allows us to travel that far back in time and beyond to understand where the universe came from. I loved touching that concept in the making of this series.
Gideon Bradshaw: I enjoy where we use our imagination. In our first episode where we talk about the story of the stars we arrived at this idea that logically, as the stars go out one by one as the universe ages, there must come a time when there's just one star left.
Therefore there will be a last star in the universe. What an amazing thought that is. There must be a last star in the universe. It takes you somewhere just beyond the science. This thing will happen.
In the last episode we're calling "Before the Dawn" - this hunt for the day before yesterday, we keep rewinding the universe backwards until you get to the origin of the universe. You get to when the first planet arose around these very early stars.
Therefore there must have been a day when there was the first sunrise. That first dawn must have played out in the early universe. So let's visualise that first dawn. Let's visualise the last star.
Hopefully for the audience these steps into imagination open their hearts as well as their minds.
Universe is on BBC Earth (DStv 184) on Thursdays at 19:00, starting 18 November.
