The Beginning and End of the Universe

The Beginning and End of the Universe
Genre	Cosmology
Created by	Laura Mulholland and Ben J Wilson
Directed by	Nigel Paterson and Ben J Wilson
Presented by	Jim Al-Khalili
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	2
Production
Executive producer	Jonathan Renouf
Producers	Nigel Paterson and Ben J Wilson
Running time	59 minutes
Production company	BBC Open University
Original release
Network	BBC Four
Release	22 March (2016-03-22) – 29 March 2016 (2016-03-29)

The Beginning and End of the Universe is a two-part British television series outlining the theory of the beginning of the universe and the theories about its ending.

Episodes

Episode One: The Beginning

This episode, exploring theories of how the universe came into being, outlines the realisation of Edwin Hubble that the universe is expanding, and the discovery of the residual radiation that gave weight to the Big Bang theory. It also highlights some lesser known theorists including Georges Lemaître, who first theorised that there was a big bang, Ralph Alpher, who stated that the light from this should be detectable, and Cecilia Payne, who calculated that hydrogen and helium were the dominant elements in the universe. The episode concludes at the Large Hadron Collider, where physicists create matter in a similar manner to the Big Bang.

Episode Two: The End

This episode explores the theories of the big crunch, the big rip and the big freeze, that are postulated by physicists as possible fates for the universe. Al-Khalili indicates that the difficulty in understanding this is our limited ability to comprehend something of such immensity both physically and philosophically. So, rather than suggesting an answer, he provides the historical background for how we came to know what we know, such as how elements are forged inside stars and how gravity provides the key to the fate of the universe, and what we don't know, such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Reception

Jack Seale, writing for The Guardian, commends the Al-Khalili for, "his usual mix of spectacular locations, clear explanations, a few gags and the stories of scientists who made crucial breakthroughs." Gary Rose, writing for RadioTimes however points out that while Al-Khalili is "as watchable as ever", this series, unlike his earlier series Atom, covers well-trodden ground and while there are "oodles of graphs and stats," which he explains, "with seemingly effortless lucidity," regular viewers of Horizon, "might be immune to the barrage of cosmic stats."

External links

• The Beginning and End of the Universe at BBC Online
• The Beginning and End of the Universe at OpenLearn
• The Beginning and End of the Universe at IMDb