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The Linsenmaier Chrysididae collection at the Natur-Museum Luzern in Switzerland features some 250,000 insect species – a small slice of the roughly 10 million species that scientists believe currently exist across the planet. In While Darwin Sleeps… what begins as a droning tour of the collection transforms into a wild, vibrant display of dancing beetles, fluttering butterflies, fuzzy bees and a flurry of other insects. By rapidly cycling through some 3,500 photographs of various specimens, the UK filmmaker Paul Bush gives the effect of millions of years of evolution condensed into just a few minutes, almost as if pushing a single creature through a frenzied metamorphosis, or as Bush puts it: ‘like a mescaline vision dreamt by Charles Darwin’.
Director: Paul Bush
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Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
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Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes
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Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes
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Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes
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Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
13 minutes
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Engineering
A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations
9 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
What’s this buzz about bees having culture? Inside a groundbreaking experiment
8 minutes
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Earth science and climate
The only man permitted in Bhutan’s sacred mountains chronicles humanity’s impact
22 minutes
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Cosmology
The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge
13 minutes