big bang, big smile: happy moment in sharing knowledge

In TOK, we speak of the natural sciences as shared knowledge — as knowledge built collectively as scientists publish their work and others use it toward their own.  But rarely is scientific knowledge shared with quite such a personal touch as in this video.  In it, Chao-Lin Kuo of Stanford delivers the news to Stanford physicist Andrei Linde, proponent of the theory of cosmic inflation, that his team of astronomers has just found evidence in support of Linde’s theory.  Their discovery of the “signature of primordial gravitational waves” provides the so-called “smoking gun” for the Big Bang.  It’s a tremendously significant breakthrough. But what moves me in this video is Chao-Lin Kuo’s gesture of delivering the news personally, with champagne, and Linde’s choked-up response as it sinks in.