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B1 Intermediário Inglês 17:41 Educational

The history of our world in 18 minutes | David Christian | TED

TED · 8,925,178 visualizações · Adicionado há 4 dias

Estatísticas de aprendizado

B1

Nível CEFR

5/10

Dificuldade

Legendas (359 segmentos)

00:16

First, a video.

00:24

Yes, it is a scrambled egg.

00:29

But as you look at it,

00:30

I hope you'll begin to feel just slightly uneasy.

00:36

Because you may notice that what's actually happening

00:40

is that the egg is unscrambling itself.

00:42

And you'll now see the yolk and the white have separated.

00:44

And now they're going to be poured back into the egg.

00:48

And we all know in our heart of hearts

00:50

that this is not the way the universe works.

00:54

A scrambled egg is mush -- tasty mush -- but it's mush.

00:57

An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing

01:00

that can create even more sophisticated things,

01:02

such as chickens.

01:04

And we know in our heart of hearts

01:06

that the universe does not travel from mush to complexity.

01:10

In fact, this gut instinct

01:12

is reflected in one of the most fundamental laws of physics,

01:15

the second law of thermodynamics, or the law of entropy.

01:19

What that says basically

01:20

is that the general tendency of the universe

01:24

is to move from order and structure

01:27

to lack of order, lack of structure --

01:30

in fact, to mush.

01:31

And that's why that video feels a bit strange.

01:35

And yet, look around us.

01:39

What we see around us is staggering complexity.

01:43

Eric Beinhocker estimates that in New York City alone,

01:46

there are some 10 billion SKUs, or distinct commodities, being traded.

01:50

That's hundreds of times as many species as there are on Earth.

01:55

And they're being traded by a species of almost seven billion individuals,

01:59

who are linked by trade, travel, and the Internet

02:02

into a global system of stupendous complexity.

02:07

So here's a great puzzle:

02:10

in a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics,

02:14

how is it possible

02:16

to generate the sort of complexity I've described,

02:19

the sort of complexity represented by you and me

02:23

and the convention center?

02:26

Well, the answer seems to be,

02:28

the universe can create complexity,

02:31

but with great difficulty.

02:33

In pockets,

02:34

there appear what my colleague, Fred Spier,

02:37

calls "Goldilocks conditions" --

02:39

not too hot, not too cold,

02:41

just right for the creation of complexity.

02:44

And slightly more complex things appear.

02:46

And where you have slightly more complex things,

02:48

you can get slightly more complex things.

02:51

And in this way, complexity builds stage by stage.

02:56

Each stage is magical

02:58

because it creates the impression of something utterly new

03:02

appearing almost out of nowhere in the universe.

03:04

We refer in big history to these moments as threshold moments.

03:09

And at each threshold, the going gets tougher.

03:12

The complex things get more fragile,

03:15

more vulnerable;

03:17

the Goldilocks conditions get more stringent,

03:20

and it's more difficult to create complexity.

03:24

Now, we, as extremely complex creatures,

03:28

desperately need to know this story

03:30

of how the universe creates complexity despite the second law,

03:34

and why complexity means vulnerability and fragility.

03:40

And that's the story that we tell in big history.

03:43

But to do it, you have do something

03:45

that may, at first sight, seem completely impossible.

03:48

You have to survey the whole history of the universe.

03:52

So let's do it.

03:54

(Laughter)

03:56

Let's begin by winding the timeline back

03:59

13.7 billion years,

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