The Principle

The Copernican principle,

named after Nicolaus Copernicus,

states that the Earth is not in any specially favored

or central location.

Welcome to The Principle.

- It only seems like we're the center of the universe.

But we're not.

There's nothing special about humans.

It's tremendous to be human.

So why wouldn't we want to be

in a special place in the universe made by a special god?

Then there's cosmology.

Then there are probably

100 billion solar systems in our galaxy alone.

The Copernican principle--

- The universe on large scales is extremely simple.

It's the same in all directions.

There's nothing special about the Earth.

In fact, our universe may be one among many universes.

- What our universe is really trying to tell us.

- If our Earth really turns out to be special,

then I would say, hey, God made a mistake.

God.

That's the only infinity.

- How're we gonna move into the next decade?

- Philosophically speaking, it's very uncomfortable.

Because if the Earth is in the center of the universe,

that means that somebody put it there.

- We've always believed that there was a Garden of Eden.

I believe in God.

I believe the universe was created by God.

- We've realized that maybe Earth is more special

than we thought after all, but for a different reason.

We live in a very special time.

Life is extremely special.

- This idea that we're not in any special place

in the universe,

there's something wrong with that.

All these things are rather strange,

and we don't know why they're occurring right now.

It's a mystery that's frustrating many of us.

There's all this stuff out there.

That must mean we're insignificant.

That must mean there's nothing special about this place.

- On the largest possible scales, the universe is uniform.

- So why would they expect to see anything special?

Just because we are smaller than a star

or the Andromeda Galaxy, we're somehow less significant.

For better or worse,

there's gonna be a debate over this matter,

and it's proper that the debate continue

until the resolution has been hit upon.

- Always question the scientists and their foundations.

At the moment, modern physics

is not making a lot of sense.

What is everything made of?

You, know, oops.

There is about 95% stuff we don't know.

And what have they discovered?

Absolutely nothing.

Zilch.

They've tried all the answers,

and none of the answers work.

We are in a special place.

I do believe that.

- I don't think that this is telling us that we humans

are in a particular, special place.

It seems to make it special,

but we don't like being special.

It's the moment of truth for science.

The principle is simple.

It tells us we're nothing special.

As Carl Sagan has put it,

"We live on an insignificant planet

"of a humdrum star

"lost in a galaxy tucked away

"in some forgotten corner of a universe,

"in which there are far more galaxies than people."

Whether we call it the Copernican principle

or the cosmological principle

or the mediocrity principle,

it all boils down to the same thing.

We're nothing special.

There are no special places or directions in the universe,

no center, no edges,

no up, no down, no left or right.

For almost 500 years,

as we have looked further and further out into the cosmos,

everything has seemed to confirm this principle

over and over again.

And yet,

we have never seen anything like Earth.

A baby's smile,

the finale of a great symphony,

the lights of all of the cities

of our Earth shining out into space.

We observe these things nowhere else in all this vastness.

We have yet to find evidence of other intelligent life,

or any other life, for that matter.

If we really are nothing special, then where is everybody?

Over the past decade or so,

we have seen out to the very limits

of the observable cosmos.

We've mapped its largest structure,

the cosmic microwave background,

the oldest light in the universe,

according to the standard big bang model of cosmology.

What we have discovered is shocking.

There is a crisis in cosmology.

It's an exciting time for cosmology

because everything has changed.

We are asking about ultimate things.

Seeing the fingerprint of God

or the hallmarks of the creator.

- You see, in some sense what is happening,

our concept of what the universe is has changed.

- The pendulum has kind of swung all the way over

and kind of a bit back again on the Copernican principle.

- Big bang cosmology assumes that the only thing

that exists is the physical world,

and there's nothing beyond that.

People want to save the existing models,

because there's a lot that's invested in them.

- The standard model is a really good model.

It fits the observations very, very well.

We have a conflict

between what is well-established, mainstream thought

and what is the testimony of experiments.

They've essentially run into dead ends.

This is the moment of truth,

because they have nowhere to go.

The colors we see here

in the cosmic microwave background map

are kind of like a weather map, showing hotter and colder,

showing how hot the radiation is that's

coming from different places.

This is just radio noise from our own Milky Way Galaxy.

We're supposed to see the same number

and types of hot and cold spots in all directions,

'cause there is no up in the universe that's special.

And that is sort of what we see, except not quite.

This map here can be decomposed

into what we call multipoles.

You blur out all the little spots

and you still have the bigger ones remain.

Like here is an area with a lot of blue.

So when you smudge it, this will be one single,

big blue spot.

Whereas when I smudge this,

where there's a lot of red and yellow,

it'll be one big, blurry hot spot.

On the very largest scales,

we see a pattern of really big hot and cold spots,

which line up around a special axis,

which has been dubbed the Axis of Evil.

And it's quite puzzling.

Why is there a special direction in space?

- Our most recent large-scale observations

challenge the basic assumption

upon which our modern scientific worldview rests,

the Copernican principle.

If the principle is wrong,

it could mean that everything we think we know

about our universe is wrong.

All of us are born with an innate need,

in fact, it's hardwired into us,

to answer the question, who are we?

Where did we come from?

What does it all mean?

Was there a beginning?

And if there was a beginning, was there a creator?

- Cosmology used to be a very flaky subject,

somewhere out there between philosophy and metaphysics.

In the early days,

cosmology was really very much a matter of almost

speculating about the universe without the data.

There weren't any empirical proofs

for what they were finding.

There were theories.

Cosmology,

the study of the origins, structures,

laws and ultimate fate of the universe.

Now the remarkable thing about cosmology

is that we have the data.

What counts as science and what doesn't?

Traditionally, people have said,

well, once you get to the big bang itself,

you're in the domain of philosophy or even theology.

And so it doesn't make sense to ask the question,

you know, what happened at the big bang,

let alone what happened before the big bang.

- Philosophy was useful before we had natural science,

namely, you can speculate about the origin of the universe,

you can speculate till the cows come home,

but until you measure things and predict things,

you don't know if they happen.

But today, we think we have it.

We think we have the theory of all creation,

the theory of everything.

The theory of everything,