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Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science show's poster

The Big & The Small

Physicist and best-selling author Alan Lightman investigates how key findings of modern science help us find our bearings in the cosmos. What do these new discoveries tell us about ourselves, and how do we find meaning in them? Travel from the infinity of the small to the infinity of the large, meeting with the co-discoverer of one of the most distant galaxies yet known.

The Big & The Small

Season 1 Episode 102 | 56m 45s | CC

“The Big & The Small” dramatizes the fact that humans are almost exactly the same distance—in terms of powers of ten—between an atom and a star. But where do we fit in the moral universe? Alan Lightman speaks with an advanced android and then a rabbi, a bio-ethicist, and the Dalai Lama about whether such a being could achieve consciousness and whether we could unplug her without asking permission.

Distributed nationally by American Public Television