The New Universe and the Human Future

There's a scientific revolution occurring today in the branch of astrophysics called cosmology, and it's revealing our true cosmic context.  The meaning of this earthshaking discovery could transform our minds and thus our world.

Two cutting-edge thinkers - one a cultural philosopher and the other a leading astrophysicist - combine their abilities to present a new picture of the universe with relevance for our time.  Primack and Abrams present the new scientific picture of the universe, through stunning visuals of key aspects of the evolving universe, many based on supercomputer simulations.  They then venture beyond science and suggest what accepting this new picture might mean for our lives.

Scientific cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, has made remarkable progress since the end of the twentieth century in figuring out how the universe works, even though the universe is almost entirely invisible. Everything we can see with all our instruments is less than 1 percent of what's actually out there. Most of the matter in the universe is invisible dark matter. This and other fundamental discoveries may make it possible to figure out how the universe operates on all size and time scales, including our own.

From this new understanding we are coming to see how we humans fit into the scientific big picture, what our significance is within that context, and why our current actions here on Earth matter far beyond most people's imagination.

Speakers: Nancy Ellen Abrams, Esq., Author, and Dr. Joel R. Primack, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz