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In the first episode, Eric Lerner introduces the podcast series and

describes what will be discussed. What is the connection between the

cosmos and us?

A big part of the connection between cosmology and

society is that, over the centuries, people have generally projected

their ideas about society onto the structure and history of the

cosmos—and conversely have used ideas about the cosmos to understand

what is happening, or even what should happen in society. There is also a

real scientific connection. We ourselves are a product of cosmic

evolution—our sun and earth emerged from this process and biological and

social evolution are also part of the evolutionary processes occurring

in the universe. Learning in an accurate way about cosmic evolution can

help us understand the evolution of our own society in the here and now.

We’re not separate from the cosmos—we’re part of it.

Since we are part of the universe, the physical processes we observe in

the universe are the same ones that can occur here on earth on a much

smaller scale. In the hugely important effort to harness fusion energy

as the next source of energy for humanity, what we learn from cosmic

phenomena are the key to success. Indeed, the very existence of fusion

energy was first discovered in the search for the source of energy of

the sun and other stars.

The Big Bang theory tells a story of a universe that was “wound up” at

the beginning by a giant explosion and has been running down like an old

watch since then. A universe whose future is preordained as one of

expansion and cooling to nothingness, to a state of final equilibrium.

But once we realize that the Big Bang story is simply not true and not

supported by scientific evidence—which we detail in our video

series—then we are looking at a very different story. We are instead

looking at a universe that observations tell us is “running up”, a

universe characterized by accelerating evolution.