How Big is the Universe? (2012)

Here is everything that is wrong with the first 5 minutes of the "documentary":

00:01 "the most ambitious map in history". I guess they are talking about the cosmic background radiation? That's quite a stretch. I hope they are not just meaning any scientist making any map of the universe, but that's probably it actually.

00:08 Shows irrelevant scifi effects, implying it has anything todo with science.

00:13 "Scientists are heading for the edge" - Cringe

00:20 One short glimpse of the cosmic background radiation map, again tons of scifi looking irrelevant images.

00:52: what the fuck is he doing? Is he manipulating a ball of some sort of energy with his hands? Are we still even pretending this is a science documentary?

00:58: Yes, there are no monsters in real life. I assume he means black holes, but we of course cut away from his explanation to keep it all dramatic.

1.03: whats with this stupid globe we see all the time? it is presented as if it was based on scientific observations, but its just special effects. Show us some actual scientific maps instead of special effects please.

1:18 "this is a map of everything we know", while looking at the irrelevant globe special effect again. Very VERY misleading.

01:36 "The universe is so big, we may never find the edge". We know where the edge of the observable universe is, so its not about finding it. Again very misleading at best.

3:35 "Our galaxy has nearly half a trillion stars" Even though you could have been a bit more precise and said 200-400 billion, this is still the first sentence that isn't nonsense or misleading in this documentary.

5:00 He has taken pictures of the milky way, not mapped it. Knowing position in three dimensional space requires measuring depth, not just taking photos in 2D.

I will stop here, but I will admit the intro was a lot worse than what the rest of the documentary seemed to be. But whether or not the rest of the documentary is sensible I don't have time to check, but I am skeptical, since they prioritized effect over fact in the intro. Don't get me wrong though, I am not saying you can't be entertained watching this, you just can't really take anything they say or show as fact. In general I really dislike these sensationalist documentaries, because they really mislead and confused me when I started out learning and I think many others must have had the same experience.

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