Genius by Stephen Hawking

We all have questions.

Big questions.

Wow...

It's part of what it means to be human.

Oh, no!

My name is Stephen Hawking,

and I believe that anyone can answer big questions for themselves.

Ohh!

So with the help of 3 ordinary people

and a team of experts...

We have come to understand our origins.

And this is new.

We are going on the ultimate voyage...

Wow. That's impressive.

- Go! - A quest to answer

the greatest mysteries of the universe...

Go down. Oh, no!

Using the power of the human mind.

Wow...

It must have been so exciting to see that

for the very first time.

Whoo-hoo!

Because anyone

can think like a genius.

"Genius by Stephen Hawking"

was made possible in part by

contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

What are we?

Have you ever wondered what you really are?

Have you ever stopped to think how you got here?

A complex biological creature

living on a ball of rock, spinning through space.

If so, you are in good company.

"What are we?" Is a question that has been asked

for thousands of years,

contemplated by some of the greatest minds who ever lived.

But even today, far too few people know the answer.

So, let's see if we can put that right.

I have asked 3 curious minds

to join me on the journey of discovery.

A series of fun challenges awaits them.

They will be given tools and equipment.

Can they follow the greatest thinkers in history

and grasp what we really are?

The first step to finding out

is to ask "what is life itself?"

What is life? That's a...

That's a difficult question to, uh, answer, um...

What is life? It's a kind of...

Seems like a very simple question.

Something which is able to...

Which is born and can be... And can reproduce itself.

Receiving energy, giving energy, um...

Reproducing and reacting to the world around you.

That's a really tricky question to answer.

This machine illustrates the first key principle

behind what you are.

It has lots of moving parts that trigger each other in a chain reaction.

It's designed to reveal something that you may find disturbing.

Will my volunteers get the point of the machine?

Interesting. Yeah.

Ok.

First, they have to find out how to start it.

I wonder what happens over here, though.

Look at this arm.

Is that supposed to be like god-thing

you know, 'cause it's an arm out of the clouds or whatever.

I think you're probably right.

It's "beginning" up there. Shall we, uh...

Shall we give it a go and see if it'll work?

Yeah. Let's just go over there. Ok.

I think it starts up here, right?

Give me a countdown, guys.

Ok, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Ooh... Ok.

Oh.

Whoa.

Ah-ah.

Hits the dominoes. Yes?

- Keep going! - Nice!

- Ok. - I love that.

Oh!

Oh, I think he's got stuck.

The machine works by transferring an impulse

from one place to another

sustained by the input of energy.

There are lots of different moving parts,

each following the laws of physics.

And together, they keep the impulse moving.

Is it gonna be enough?

Yes! Ha ha ha!

"Stephen Hawking's machine of life."

So, what has this got to do with us?

What do you think, reset in in order?

Let's try and reset it, and maybe that'll help us figure out... Yeah.

One thing always leads to another.

So, one process has to happen before another process happens.

Like, certain circumstances have to occur

before something can move forward.

It helped to show me that everything is a cause and effect.

It reminded me all about chain reactions.

So I guess we had a cause and effect,

and everything has to build up and up and up.

Can we give it a go? Let's give it a go.

Go.

I think it might have broke it.

No, no. It's going. It's going.

It's filling up.

Whoop!

Ooh... Come on.

- Go! - Nice.

Did we reset it correctly?

It's a really powerful demonstration

of how all those processes work together.

Ooh... Yes!

I know!

You've got all these different things there

to create one result.

It's gone prematurely.

Well, that's ok. That's ok.

My machine is actually a very simple version

of what is going on inside your body.

This is what you look like on a microscopic scale,

and it really is quite incredible.

Where my machine features dominoes and pool balls,

your body has molecules,

chains of atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,

and other elements.

You are made of billions of tiny machines,

all triggering each other.

You are a giant chain reaction machine.

Discovering this has taken centuries of work by scientists.

It all began by looking at a drop of water.

People had always assumed

that what they could see with their own eyes

was the limit of the physical world,

but all that absolutely fundamentally changed

in the middle of the 17th century,

when a dutchman called antonie Van leeuwenhoek

made one of the greatest scientific discoveries

of all time, and yet he himself

was a cloth merchant, a draper.

It was his interest in microscopy, microscopes,

that he was using to examine the quality of cloth

that he then, with his innate curiosity

had applied to the world around him,

that literally opened up a whole new world of science.

This is a replica of his own handmade microscope.

And this, believe it or not, might not look like very much,

but this was the most powerful microscope around at that time.

Sandwiched between these 2 sheets of metal is a tiny glass sphere.

And whatever he would attach to this spike here

you could see magnified just over 200 times.

He took a droplet of water,

and when you held it up to your eye, like this...

He saw what no one had ever imagined...

This whole new world.

The water droplet was literally teeming with life.

He described them as little animals.

To us, we now know that they are microorganisms.

It must have been so exciting to... to... to see that for the very first time.

He looked at all sorts of things using his microscopes.

He looked at himself.

He looked at skin, and he looked at blood.

We are all fundamentally made of similar things.

The idea that we might be made up of invisibly tiny components

was something of a shock.

After all, nobody likes to think of themselves as a machine...

Not even me.

But let's go back to the contraption

because it has another feature.

It can be made to run round and round in a loop.

To do that, we need one more part.

This rather attractive plastic figure

drives the end of the machine back to the beginning.

Now the challenge is to keep it going.

We would have to put enough energy and be quick enough

to reset the pieces before they came round again.

Make running a loop?

I can try.

That's all I can do.

Making a chain reaction machine run in a loop

should help the team understand what we are.

We get 5 cycles, I'll buy the drinks.

Yes! Ok, let's do this.

3...3... 3...

2...2... 2...

1...1... 1... Go!

Yes!

Now the machine is also like the circle of life itself,

a cycle where...

Is passed from one living organism to the next.

I need help over here... - How's it looking?

Help over here, help over here.

As long as there is enough energy

and there is no great disaster,

this impulse will keep going.

And Hawking's reset.

All of a sudden, it felt like a lot of pressure.