From a Big Boom to a TEDx speech | Samuel La Rondie | TEDxStGilgenInternationalSchool

Introduction to TEDx and the Speaker

• TEDx events are part of a global conversation that takes place every day in various locations, including schools, theaters, and workplaces, with over 3,000 events held annually in 7 countries (10s).
• TEDx events are self-organized under a license from TED, a nonprofit organization that discovers and shares powerful ideas in the form of TED Talks (32s).
• The local TEDx team of volunteers is responsible for organizing the event, including booking speakers and making the event possible (48s).
• The event aims to start an exciting conversation, encouraging curiosity, skepticism, inspiration, and action among the audience (1m6s).

The History of the Universe

• The annual TEDx event is hosted by Danny and Toby, who introduce the theme of chain reactions and announce a 15-minute intermission with food and drinks, live music, and a reminder to keep phones on silent mode (1m42s).
• The speaker, Sam, is introduced to present a talk about the history of the universe, using a metaphor of a 3-hour and 11-minute journey from the school gates to a house in Vienna (2m33s).
• Sam warns the audience that the talk may involve science and theory, which is supported by evidence, and encourages them to ask questions and engage in a conversation (2m56s).
• Sam aims to take the audience through the entire history of the universe, starting 13.8 billion years ago, using the metaphor of a journey from the school gates to the house in Vienna (4m17s).
• The universe's origins are uncertain, with some people attributing it to a God or higher being, but it is also possible that something existed before the Big Bang, even if it's not understood (4m54s).
• The universe began as a single point and expanded rapidly in a process known as Cosmic inflation, which explains the uniform distribution of heat and the flatness of the universe (5m39s).
• Cosmic inflation caused the universe to lose its curvature, similar to how the Earth appears flat when standing on it, despite being round (6m13s).
• When the inflation ended, the energy was released as light and matter in the Big Bang, and within a second, the universe was a hot, dense plasma (7m0s).
• The universe went dark due to loose electrons scattering light, but collisions between protons and neutrons continued, forming ions of hydrogen, helium, and lithium (7m29s).
• After 380,000 years, the universe cooled, and electrons combined with protons, forming the first complete atoms and releasing the cosmic background radiation, which is still detectable today (8m10s).
• The universe became dark again for 2 million years, but eventually, gas began to clump together, forming larger objects, and their gravitational fields grew, attracting more matter and becoming hotter (8m47s).
• This process led to the formation of the first stars, which marked the beginning of the universe as we know it today (9m14s).
• The universe's first stars, containing only hydrogen and helium, grew and gained mass with temperatures hot enough to fuel the process of nuclear fusion, combining elements to make bigger elements and releasing huge amounts of energy as a side product (9m22s).
• These first stars were massive, up to 300 times the size of the sun, and surrounded by thick clouds of gas and dust that made any of the light escaping impossible to see (9m31s).
• The universe began to take shape with denser regions of matter attracting to one another to form stars, nebulas, and modern-day celestial objects, including the Milky Way galaxy, which began to form 13 billion years ago (9m50s).
• The Milky Way initially consisted of chunks of stars and dark matter and would continue to expand until it became the home for our solar system (10m5s).
• The Sun and the Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, with the Earth forming through collisions of planetesimals, small objects created from a protoplanetary disc of materials gathering around the young Sun (10m56s).
• The planetesimals came together to form a small planet, which then collided with a similar-sized planet to form the Earth as we know it (11m31s).
• The moon is thought to have formed as a remnant of this collision, although theories differ (11m55s).
• The Earth's atmosphere was initially devoid of oxygen and high in methane, making it uninhabitable for anything except early microbes, but 2.4 billion years ago, the evolution of cyanobacteria, the Earth's first photosynthesizers, marked a significant change (13m20s).
• Although life had been detected to have evolved 1.3 billion years earlier, the Earth's atmosphere was not suitable for most life forms until the evolution of cyanobacteria (13m27s).
• The process of photosynthesis led to the Great Oxidation Event, which initially caused an environment where life could thrive, but oxygen levels eventually stabilized at lower levels, making the ocean uninhabitable for life (13m45s).
• Despite this, life found a way, and multicellular life forms began to form, with small life forms living in other microbes and providing specialized functions, leading to the formation of DNA and the first eukaryotic cells (14m17s).
• These developments were crucial steps for the formation of the first specialized cells, which existed as a system of cells providing specialized functions, and ultimately led to the emergence of the first animals, which appeared roughly 800 million years ago (14m54s).
• The first animals were sponges, and by about 580 million years ago, the earliest known period of complex organisms, the Ediacaran period, had begun, featuring various sea floor creatures alongside sponges (15m30s).
• However, these creatures suddenly died out about 541 million years ago, leading to a rise in oxygen levels and a change in the environment, which was monumental for human history (15m44s).
• Around 500 million years ago, an explosion of new life forms, including animals with hard body parts and unique hunting styles, occurred during the Cambrian Period, which represented a time of exposure of new life forms that would inevitably lead to human creation (15m59s).
• The earliest known human ancestor, Sahelanthropus, began to evolve from its ape-like counterparts around 6 million years ago, but humans as we recognize them today did not arrive until 5 million years later (16m38s).
• Human ancestors developed traits that influenced their behavior, such as using stone tools around 3.3 million years ago and chunky hand axes around 1.57 million years ago, which remained in fashion for the next 1.5 million years (17m14s).
• The human genome is believed to have arisen from Africa, and it is known with reasonable certainty that humans who left Africa around 50 to 60,000 years ago gave rise to the human genome (17m49s).
• Humans are 99.6% through their journey to Vienna, and their ancestors are just leaving Africa, marking a significant point in human history (18m5s).
• For a long time, humans lived with other human ancestors, such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, in the same region, but at some point, the other ancestors disappeared, leaving behind their DNA traces in modern human DNA (18m27s).
• Neanderthal DNA remains in modern human DNA, and Denisovans contribute 4% of Asian human DNA (18m46s).
• Homo sapiens eventually came out on top, and after a long and exhausting journey, humans have finally reached the present day (18m59s).
• The journey to the present day has excluded years of wars and technological advancements that define modern humans (19m8s).
• The universe will eventually undergo significant changes, including the collision of the Milky Way with Andromeda, the sun engulfing the Earth, and the eventual end of all stars as black holes (19m35s).
• The universe may end in different ways, including a big rip, a big crunch, or expanding to the point where it won't matter, but this is an existential crisis for another time (20m7s).
• For now, humans should enjoy the company of their family and leave the worries about the end of the universe to physicists (20m21s).