Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Allyn Gibson]

I think large chunks of tonight's episode were drawn from Sagan and Druyan' s Comet.

Well, that would explain it. I thought the focus was a little narrow for a Cosmos episode -- although a "narrow" focus on the foundations of modern astrophysics is not that narrow, admittedly.

Even the line about Halley becoming Newton's psychotherapist is in Comet. (I reread the third chapter, "Halley," this morning while eating breakfast.)

I wish, though, that we'd get an episode or two about scientists from somewhere other than Europe.

Perhaps we will, eventually.

It was nice to see a bit of live-action dramatization and more use of real-world settings like the coffee house, Cambridge, and the Champ de Mars. But I'm not fond of it when they do dialogue scenes in the animated sequences. Not only is the animation style not very expressive (so the "acting" is weak), but actually fictionalizing conversations when discussing real history in a documentary seems inappropriate.

Halley's dialogue was far too modern, but I don't know that I agree that it's entirely inappropriate to fictionalize a conversation in a documentary. If Cosmos were intended for a serious, scholarly audience, then, yes, I could agree. But it's clearly intended for a broader, pop audience, and if fictionalized dialogue helps the material reach that pop audience (whose expectations would be different than, say, members of the Royal Society) then I think it's justified.

And I'm not sure that galactic collision three billion years from now would be as harmless to life as Tyson said. There'd be few star collisions, true, but galaxies are made up of gas and dust too, and the collisions of gas clouds would trigger massive bursts of star formation and supernovae, which would be hazardous to life. Dense gas or dust clouds engulfing star systems can also potentially be devastating to life on their planets.

I wished Tyson had mentioned that humanity will be long extinct -- and no doubt long forgotten -- and the Earth uninhabitable by the time of the Milky Way/M-31 collision.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It honestly depresses me that I won't be alive to witness the approach of Andromeda and to see the collision over the span of a billion years. I bet it will be spectacular, the dance of the two spirals.

 

[Christopher]

Cosmos was an amazing episode tonight, learning about Edmund Halley and his comet (Which I've been pronouncing wrong all these years).

It's interesting how everyone learns how to pronounce "Halley" correctly for about a year or two around the comet's arrival, and then everyone but the astronomers forgets again for the next 70-odd years.

I do wonder when we will see another Comet.

The latest notable one was Comet ISON last November to December, preceded by Comet Lovejoy in 2011.

Here's a list of several hundred visual comets scheduled to arrive in the next five years, although most of those will only be noticed by astronomers. This list is more focused on ones likely to be noticeable to more casual observers.

I remember in the 90s we had the Hale-bopp comet which brought on various cults and the like and it's always fascinating seeing how people react to cosmic events. Some take the science perspective, some are very religious about it, and some see it as the second coming, for example. We really do live in an interesting and diverse world.

Yes, that's the sad thing that the episode overlooked. Newton and Halley's discoveries may have divorced our knowledge of the heavens from our fears, but many of us cling to ignorance and fear nonetheless.

 

[Timewalker]

Cosmos was an amazing episode tonight, learning about Edmund Halley and his comet (Which I've been pronouncing wrong all these years).

It's interesting how everyone learns how to pronounce "Halley" correctly for about a year or two around the comet's arrival, and then everyone but the astronomers forgets again for the next 70-odd years.

I remember in the 90s we had the Hale-bopp comet which brought on various cults and the like and it's always fascinating seeing how people react to cosmic events. Some take the science perspective, some are very religious about it, and some see it as the second coming, for example. We really do live in an interesting and diverse world.

Yes, that's the sad thing that the episode overlooked. Newton and Halley's discoveries may have divorced our knowledge of the heavens from our fears, but many of us cling to ignorance and fear nonetheless.

Fiction writers have an opportunity to educate people and they might not even realize they're being educated. Ben Bova took that opportunity in his novels about Jupiter when he was writing from the pov of Leviathan - one of the lifeforms swimming in the "ocean layer" of Jupiter's atmosphere. Leviathan was recalling the terrible events of the time when a comet smashed into Jupiter, causing much injury and death to its people (Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9).

 

[ThankQ]

Cosmos was an amazing episode tonight, learning about Edmund Halley and his comet (Which I've been pronouncing wrong all these years). I do wonder when we will see another Comet. I remember in the 90s we had the Hale-bopp comet which brought on various cults and the like and it's always fascinating seeing how people react to cosmic events. Some take the science perspective, some are very religious about it, and some see it as the second coming, for example. We really do live in an interesting and diverse world.

Of course it's pronounced "Hal-ley," and not "Hay-ley." Who would pronounce it like that? No one, that's who. Why are you asking? No one said anything.

I read somewhere years ago that it was likely pronounced HALL-ees, as in, rhymes with "Wally's".

Not HAL, not HALE, but HALL.

 

[Forbin]

Can I just call him Ed?

 

[davejames]

That episode was actually beautiful.

Agreed. I've been enjoying the show so far, but somehow this episode just seemed to work exceptionally well, and was especially inspiring.

The story of Newton and Halley (which I'm ashamed to say I was not fully aware of before) was brought alive really well, and hearing about the incredible array of discoveries that were made just by these two people was kind of mindblowing.

And I for one continue to have no problem with the animation. Even with the somewhat limited style, I find it to be much more interesting to watch than the traditional, stuffy "reenactments" we usually see in documentaries (not least because we actually get to see more of the city and world these people live in, instead of just having actors in period costumes walk around some anonymous grove or castle somewhere).

 

[ThankQ]

Can I just call him Ed?

WILL-BUR!

 

[RoJoHen]

Cosmos was an amazing episode tonight, learning about Edmund Halley and his comet (Which I've been pronouncing wrong all these years). I do wonder when we will see another Comet. I remember in the 90s we had the Hale-bopp comet which brought on various cults and the like and it's always fascinating seeing how people react to cosmic events. Some take the science perspective, some are very religious about it, and some see it as the second coming, for example. We really do live in an interesting and diverse world.

Of course it's pronounced "Hal-ley," and not "Hay-ley." Who would pronounce it like that? No one, that's who. Why are you asking? No one said anything.

I honestly don't think I'd ever heard it pronounced any way other than HAY-ley until recently.

 

[Christopher]

I honestly don't think I'd ever heard it pronounced any way other than HAY-ley until recently.

Were you around for its 1986 visit? Like I said, my recollection is that everyone learned the correct pronunciation at the time because all the media were talking about it constantly, and then everyone forgot again once it was no longer in the news.

I'm not sure why the "Hayley" pronunciation is so commonly used. I'm tempted to blame the '50s band Bill Haley and the Comets, but the fact that they chose that name at all proves that the mispronunciation was already common at the time. I guess it's probably just that Haley is a more common name in our era than Halley. There's Bill Haley, Jack Haley, Alex Haley, Arthur Hailey, Hayley Mills, Jackie Earle Haley, Haley Joel Osment, etc.

Then again, I get a ton of hits when I enter "Halley" into IMDb's search field, though nobody really famous as far as I can tell. But there is Halle Berry.

 

[publiusr]

1986. I just remember not seeing much in the way of comets--until 1997 that is.
That was a dimetrodon--I did a freeze frame from a repeat On Demand. I'm all idiot, no savant. The Red Spot on Jupiter I have heard called a high pressure cell--but would still be called a storm...oh well.

If the book COMET dictated this last episode, it looks like next week with be DEATH BY BLACK HOLE.

 

[Amaris]

Same here. I try to help overly religious people understand by suggesting that the Big Bang was the moment of Creation, and evolution is simply God's way of doing things. There's no reason to divorce faith from science. But we must discourage letting dogma displace science.

Agreed. Having faith doesn't mean denying scientific fact. They don't have to conflict.

I read somewhere years ago that it was likely pronounced HALL-ees, as in, rhymes with "Wally's".

Not HAL, not HALE, but HALL.

Really? I've never heard that before. You crazy people and your crazy pronunciations.

 

[Christopher]

"Holly's Comet?" Sounds like something discovered by the computer of the Red Dwarf.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

^ Or a really bad Christmas carol.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I was a little disappointed in the first episode in that it just seemed to be a recap of the original COSMOS, but the second episode was much better. I'll be watching the third episode in about an hour.

The really great thing about COSMOS is that Brannon Braga is finally learning how evolution works.

 

[RoJoHen]

I honestly don't think I'd ever heard it pronounced any way other than HAY-ley until recently.

Were you around for its 1986 visit?

Around? Yes. Able to comprehend language? Doubtful.

 

[Amaris]

I was 6, but never got the chance to see it.

 

[Christopher]

The really great thing about COSMOS is that Brannon Braga is finally learning how evolution works.

There's this thing called "fiction" in which people intentionally depict things that they know to be imaginary.

 

[1001001]

We thought Episode 3 was quite good. I didn't know any of that stuff about Hooke and Newton. A little human melodrama behind the history.

I thought they explained the ancient beliefs about the stars in a way that kids could understand, which wasn't condescending or mocking. It made sense at the time, given what they knew.

My son really got a great lesson in how math governs the universe, and why that matters.

 

[davejames]

Yeah apparently that's why some people think the universe could just be a computer simulation, because the math works almost too perfectly. Tyson was asked about that in a podcast I was listening to, but didn't seem to take the idea that seriously, as you would expect.

 

[RoJoHen]

Yeah apparently that's why some people think the universe could just be a computer simulation, because the math works almost too perfectly. Tyson was asked about that in a podcast I was listening to, but didn't seem to take the idea that seriously, as you would expect.

So the people who created the simulation live in a world where math doesn't work?