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‘Even if you’re a tough person you can’t avoid becoming a child again…’
In this video composed of time-lapse imagery recorded from the International Space Station, four veteran astronauts – Helen Sharman, Michael Barratt, Jean-François Clervoy and Daniel Tani – describe the singular, life-changing experience of looking down at Earth. In providing context for these images of our planet (the station orbits Earth every 92 minutes, for instance) and trying to find words for the profound sense of wonder that has come to be known as ‘the overview effect’, the astronauts strive valiantly to share their rarified perspective, giving us just a glimmer of an experience that many people think is just around the corner for a much greater number of us.
Producer and Editor: Ed Prosser
Website: The Royal Institution
video
Ageing and death
Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences
9 minutes
video
The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
10 minutes
video
Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice
6 minutes
video
Music
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds
6 minutes
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Biology
In the jungle of Suriname, Maria Sibylla Merian discovered insect metamorphosis
4 minutes
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Neuroscience
The brain repurposed our sense of physical distance to understand social closeness
5 minutes
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Physics
Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface
4 minutes