A Perth astrophysicist says he is surprised but delighted to find a video he made four years ago has suddenly gone viral online, clocking up 36 millions views in a week.

Cosmic Eye is a three-minute video that zooms out from a woman's face to eventually reveal a view of the universe one billion light years from Earth.

Danail Obreschkow — a University of Western Australia (UWA) astrophysicist who specialises in the creation of stars — is the man behind the video, which he created using a smartphone app.

He said the video was posted on Facebook by The Science World on April 11 and was quickly shared around cyberspace.

Dr Obreschkow said the video had been online for four years and until now had attracted little attention.



He said the video was initially created to use in a class at UWA.

"I was teaching an arts class ... a bunch of 200 non-scientists, and I thought I wanted to do something a bit nice and trendy to explain to them the different scales of the universe," he said.

He said attempts to share it with a wider audience at the time were fruitless.

"I even remember us paying a PR guy from the United States who spreads YouTube videos," he said.

"I paid a couple of hundred dollars and nothing really came out of it apart from a few hundred views."

From little things, big things grow

Dr Obreschkow said The Science World team were equally surprised by the video's success; their Facebook page has more than 700,000 followers.

"I think they post a science video every day and normally they get between 10,000 and 13,000 views," he said.

"This time they got 1,000 times more."

He said he thought the appeal of the video was its simplicity.

"You don't really need to know anything about science or anything about the universe," he said.

"You just watch the video and you get an appreciation for how big things can be and how small things can be.

"I think it triggers quite a lot of emotion with people."

A star is born

Dr Obreschkow is a member of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research and spends his days studying the rotation of galaxies and the ways stars form in galaxies.

"About one new star is born every year in the Milky Way," he said.

"Across the universe many stars are born every second.

"It's quite interesting to study how these stars come about, because every star weighs potentially millions of times the mass of Earth."

He said the creation of stars might be the subject of his next video.

"What you see in the current video is everything at the same time ... but you don't see how things change over time," he said.

"I could make a new video that shows you how all these things evolve in time.

"That would be quite fun."

Topics: astronomy-space, social-media, internet-culture, information-and-communication, science-and-technology, human-interest,university-of-western-australia-6009, perth-6000

 

Este Folleto de la secretario de Estado de Educación de EE.UU, orienta a los padres a guiar a los niños a desarrollar las cualidades de carácter que son estimadas por su familia y por las comunidades donde viven. Este folleto provee información acerca de los valores y las habilidades que forman el carácter y la ciudadanía, y lo que los padres pueden hacer para ayudar a su hijo a tener buen carácter. Sugiere actividades que los padres y sus hijos de edad escolar pueden hacer para usar estos valores en la vida cotidiana y dar ideas para trabajar con los maestros y las escuelas asegurándose de que todos estén fomentando los valores básicos que usted quiere que su hijo aprenda y use. 

Contenidos (leer)

1. Título 
2. Prólogo 
3. Introducción 
4. ¿Qué significa tener un "carácter firme?" I 
5.¿Qué significa tener un "carácter firme?" II 
6. ¿Cómo podemos ayudar a nuestros niños a aprender sobre el carácter? 
7.Actividades I 
8. Actividades II 
9. Actividades III 
10. Cómo enfrentar las presiones que imponen los medios de comunicación 
11. Cómo trabajar con los maestros y las escuelas para fortalecer el carácter 
12. Recursos I 
13. Recursos II 
14. Bibliografía 
15. Reconocimientos 
16. Que ningún niño se quede atrás