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Featuring riveting immersive imagery, this animation from the YouTube channel ScienceClic brings to life the invisible gravitational currents that shape, distort and govern our universe. Visualising the fabric of spacetime as a vast grid governed by abiding principles, the short features examples ranging from the familiar (the swell of ocean tides) to the nearly unfathomable (the meeting of two black holes) to illustrate how gravitational dynamics operate. The piece also draws out the limits of our understanding, and breaks down the fascinating process by which gravitational waves were discovered in 2015, birthing an entirely new branch of astronomy.
Video by ScienceClic
Director, writer and composer: Alessandro Roussel
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History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
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Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes