A poster series for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Each poster is inspired by the episode’s subject from which it is simplified into a single moment.
Cosmos: A Poster Odyssey
We are, each of us, a little universe.
Awards & Honors
- Featured in the London Loop 2018 Urban Gallery
Mankind ascends the peak of knowledge becoming self aware of its
place within the universe, aided by the ship of imagination.
The beginning of the chain reaction we call life, evolution can theoretically
be traced back to this single moment in time.
Chapter Three: When Knowledge Conquered Fear
A skill once used solely for survival: pattern recognition has evolved into a
fundamental attribute of science and the engine for intellectual progress.
Light is a universal constant and within it, clues about the universe's history
can be seen by simply looking to the sky.
One man dared to ask why; Even light must be made of something. This desire to understand why pushed him to create a process similar to what we now call the scientific method. "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Many, many years later, another scientist was compelled ask the same question, however this time, he revealed color in world thought to be black and white.
Greek philosophers Thales and Democritus postulated that all matter was made up of a combination of atoms in various configurations. Through scientific developments, we now know that even the atoms themselves have “building blocks”. With the quarks existence recently observed, we ask ourselves, how far do these subatomic layers go? Do these patterns repeat themselves outwardly at a cosmic scale?
Clair Cameron Patterson, a geochemist born in Mitchellville, Iowa, was determined to calculate the age of the earth. By taking the uranium dating method used by scientists before him, he discovered that he could more accurately pinpoint a timeline by testing lead, however, there was one problem. His tests were being contaminated, and he had no idea why. His persistence drove him to continue experimenting, eventually, creating the clean room. This room allowed him to conduct the test without contamination from the outside world and presenting the definitive age of the Earth at 4.550 billion years (give or take 70 million years).
