Another Earth (2011)

Richard Berendzen: Dr. Richard Berendzen

Quotes 

• Richard Berendzen : Within our lifetimes, we've marveled as biologists have managed to look at ever smaller and smaller things. And astronomers have looked further and further into the dark night sky, back in time and out in space. But maybe the most mysterious of all is neither the small nor the large: it's us, up close. Could we even recognize ourselves, and if we did, would we know ourselves? What would we say to ourselves? What would we learn from ourselves? What would we really like to see if we could stand outside ourselves and look at us?

• Richard Berendzen : It would be very hard to think "I am over there" and "Can I go meet me?" and "Is that me better than this me?" "Can I learn from the other me?" "Has the other me made the same mistakes I've made?" Or, "Can I sit down and have a conversation with me?" Wouldn't that be an interesting thing? The truth is, we do that all day long every day. People don't admit it and they don't think about it too much, but they do. Every day, they're talking in their own head. "What's he doing?" "Why'd he do that?" "What did she think?" "Did I say the right thing?" In this case, there's another you out there.

• Richard Berendzen : In the grand history of the cosmos, more than thirteen thousand million years old, our Earth is replicated elsewhere. But maybe there is another way of seeing this world. If any small variation arises-they look this way, you look that way-suddenly maybe everything changes and now you begin to wonder, what else is different? Well, one might say that you have an exact mirror image that is suddenly shattered and there's a new reality. And therein lies the opportunity and the mystery. What else? What new? What now?