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Life: A Cosmic Story
How did life on Earth begin? Starting with the Big Bang and ending with the boundless biodiversity on our planet today, Life: A Cosmic Story takes you on a high-speed tour of our ancient cosmic origins.
Narrated by Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster, Life invites audiences on a journey through space and time to witness key events since the Big Bang that set the stage for life on Earth. From the tiniest microbes to the mightiest stars, discover the building blocks shared by all matter in the Universe—and develop a deeper appreciation for how Earth’s incredible biodiversity evolved.
“The show's core concept is that all life on Earth is related, having evolved from a common ancestor,” says Ryan Wyatt, senior director of Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization. “Taking an even longer view, we see that life's origins begin with dark matter and the first stars—and that our pedigree is actually 13.7 billion years in the making.”
Life: A Cosmic Story premiered at the Academy on November 6, 2010. Watch the trailer!
The data’s in the details
The Academy’s Visualization Studio consulted with leading experts from NASA, SETI, Stanford, and UC Santa Cruz to produce the show’s complex digital imagery and ensure even the tiniest elements were scientifically accurate.
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Chloroplastic fantastic
In this excerpt from the film, shrink down to microscopic size to see the fascinating inner workings of a redwood tree leaf. Fly by familiar structures like the nucleus and mitochondria, and settle into the chloroplast to watch photosynthesis at work.
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Awards and honors
Life has captivated audiences and critics alike since its premiere, winning Best FullDome Program at the 2011 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and Best Integration of Scientific Data and Best in Narration at the 2012 Jena Fulldome Festival.
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License the show
Interested in licensing Life for commercial use? Please visit our Fulldome Show Licensing page to request a free, full-length preview and explore our other award-winning original shows.
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Experience the cosmos from the Academy's all-digital, 75-foot planetarium dome. Reservations required.
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Supercomputer simulations reveal how our solar system might look to astronomers around a distant star.