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Science is the boring part: the same measurement, repeated until it becomes clear. Watching is already an experiment: a telescope reveals light that's thousands of years old. First comes control, then delight: do the same thing without matter. Ask "how was this measured?"—one question eliminates most of the big news.

A rule I never deviate from: if a picture can't be explained in words in a minute, it means I haven't understood it yet.

Between one hundred and four hundred billion, and our Sun is one of them. A fourfold difference is also part of the answer.

Twenty-six thousand years ago, the shields were four kilometers thick. Beneath them lay what you stand on now.

They will collide in four billion years. The stars will barely collide—the space between them is so empty that galaxies pass right through them.

Blue ones burn brightly and live for millions of years, red ones dimly and for billions. One photograph of the sleeve is a complete timeline of life.

In this golden clot, the stars are a million times denser than here. There's no night sky there—it's always bright.

The streak across the sky is the disk of the Milky Way, and we're looking at it from within. The dark streaks aren't empty space, but dust that obscures the light.

Water flows from beneath the ice year-round—it's just less in winter. The strength of this stream is used to determine how much the glacier has lost during the season.

Low tide reveals kilometers of seafloor twice a day. The water doesn't go "somewhere," but to the other side of the planet—the Moon pulls it there.

On the left is tundra, on the right is a wall of ice. A meter and a half separates them—a difference of thousands of years of accumulated snow.

The thickness of the ice absorbs the red portion of the light and lets the blue through. The deeper the crack, the bluer the light—it's not the color, but the length of the beam's path.

The thin blue arc is all the air we breathe. It's the size of a globe's varnish.

All over the world, at the same Greenwich Mean Time. Without these spheres, there would be no accurate forecasts—satellites don't see everything.

These were the jars with film seals: cold slows down the chemical reaction. It's the same principle by which medicines are kept cold, not "to prevent them from spoiling."

There's less precipitation here than in the Sahara. The snow doesn't melt for years, so it seems like there's a lot of it—but it falls almost as much.

If you collect it all at ground level, you'll get a layer the thickness of a coin. That's all the protection you need.

I love shooting in places where nothing is happening. An experience where "nothing is happening" is the control; without it, any conclusion is empty.

It's convenient to test your hearing and vision here: there's no echo, no point for the eye to focus on. In such silence, the brain begins to complete the work itself.

Bark feels warmer than stone, even though they're the same temperature. This is due to thermal conductivity: stone transfers heat from your hand faster than wood.

I'm collecting material: at least three sources, and at least one must argue with me.

My criterion is simple: if I can’t explain it to a schoolchild in two minutes, I need to figure it out some more.

The most honest part of filming is what's left between lines. That's where you can see whether I've understood the topic or am just retelling it.