Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Amaris]

I love the animated pieces. Mom does too, and she's hoping (along with myself), that my niece and nephew will want to watch these with us, so we're saving them for when they come back over to visit.

I like the animated segments too.

Just to add, the first time I watched it, when William Herschel first said his son's name, I answered very quietly, "Yes, Patrick?"

I've found myself tearing up quite a lot when I watch Cosmos. I'm not sure whether it's due to the wonderful complexity of history that they establish, or just whether it makes me feel like a kid again. Maybe neither. Maybe both. Who knows? All I know is that I will own this series once they release it on DVD.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

All I know is that I will own this series once they release it on DVD.

Same here. And I just purchased Vol. 1 of the soundtrack from iTunes (it's also available on Amazon for $2 less). Really enjoying it so far. Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released April 6.

 

[tighr]

All I know is that I will own this series once they release it on DVD.

Same here. And I just purchased Vol. 1 of the soundtrack from iTunes (it's also available on Amazon for $2 less). Really enjoying it so far. Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released April 6.

The theme song has some composition issues for me... it goes up when it should go down, goes quiet when it should get louder. Something just doesn't sit right with me when listening to it. It's beautiful, but I'm having a hard time getting attached to it.

 

[Amaris]

All I know is that I will own this series once they release it on DVD.

Same here. And I just purchased Vol. 1 of the soundtrack from iTunes (it's also available on Amazon for $2 less). Really enjoying it so far. Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released April 6.

Ooh, I definitely want the soundtrack, but I'll have to wait until I can get it used or discounted.

All I know is that I will own this series once they release it on DVD.

Same here. And I just purchased Vol. 1 of the soundtrack from iTunes (it's also available on Amazon for $2 less). Really enjoying it so far. Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released April 6.

The theme song has some composition issues for me... it goes up when it should go down, goes quiet when it should get louder. Something just doesn't sit right with me when listening to it. It's beautiful, but I'm having a hard time getting attached to it.

Really? I think it's damn near flawless, myself. To each their own, though.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

All I know is that I will own this series once they release it on DVD.

Same here. And I just purchased Vol. 1 of the soundtrack from iTunes (it's also available on Amazon for $2 less). Really enjoying it so far. Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released April 6.

Ooh, I definitely want the soundtrack, but I'll have to wait until I can get it used or discounted.

Same here. And I just purchased Vol. 1 of the soundtrack from iTunes (it's also available on Amazon for $2 less). Really enjoying it so far. Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released April 6.

The theme song has some composition issues for me... it goes up when it should go down, goes quiet when it should get louder. Something just doesn't sit right with me when listening to it. It's beautiful, but I'm having a hard time getting attached to it.

Really? I think it's damn near flawless, myself. To each their own, though.

As of right now both soundtracks are available only in digital form. Given the fact that volume 1 is from the first episode (and the fact that they are only releasing music to the second episode tomorrow, despite the concurrent airing of episode 5), my guess is that TPTB are testing the waters, seeing what kind of market there is for the soundtracks. I'm not sure they'll be released as CDs. Amazon's price for download is currently $7.99.

As for the theme song ... it doesn't quite reach me the way Vangelis' "Heaven & Hell" did ... but it's still beautiful. And the rest of the score is, I'd say, even better.

 

[publiusr]

You might also like Oldfield's SONGS FROM DISTANT EARTH or Patrick O'Hearn's INDIGO

 

[Professor Zoom]

I'm gonna say it: I miss Carl Sagan.

While I like this version of Cosmos, I miss the lyricism of Sagan. His writing--and those of his partners, was beautiful. Moving.

This version is a little less inspiring. Less moving. While I'm glad, thrilled even, there's a science show on TV, NETWORK TV no less, there's something missing from this.

It's weird to think, but, honestly, I would rather rematch Sagan's version than this one--even though the science is, obviously, more up to date.

 

[Lonemagpie]

I love the animated pieces. Mom does too, and she's hoping (along with myself), that my niece and nephew will want to watch these with us, so we're saving them for when they come back over to visit.

I like the animated segments too.

Just to add, the first time I watched it, when William Herschel first said his son's name, I answered very quietly, "Yes, Patrick?"
.

Heh, we just had this episode tonight in the UK...

I'm not mad on the animation style, I have to say - but it could be worse.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Tonight's episode didn't do a lot for me.

I liked that we got a more multicultural perspective on history than we've had in other episodes. However, what Tyson was building to -- the discovery of absorption lines -- seemed like an inside baseball kind of discovery; it's interesting, but to a very narrow set of people.

They can't all be winners. This week, not a winner.

 

[Christopher]

But there's nothing minor about the discovery of spectroscopy. As they said in the episode, it was the key to discovering practically all of astrophysics -- the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the visible, the ability to discern the chemistry and composition of other worlds and stars, the Doppler effect revealing the expansion of the universe (leading to the Big Bang theory and dark energy) and the existence of unseen gravity sources (leading to dark matter)... it even helped point us toward atomic theory and quantum physics. Whole huge swaths of science, encompassing everything from the largest to the tiniest scales of the universe, were made possible by that one crucial discovery.

I mean, he said it right at the top of the episode -- everything we know about the universe beyond our own Solar System, we know only because of light and spectroscopy. We can't detect anything out there by sound or scent or touch -- all we have is light. And yet studying that light has totally transformed our knowledge of the universe and continues to do so to this day. I think that's pretty amazing to realize.

I agree, though, that it was great to get a focus on some non-Western history for a change -- although it was still in the spirit of the show's commentary on modern anti-intellectualism.

The gimmick about "Hey, what was that noise?" didn't work very well -- I'm still not convinced it really came together at the end. But I kind of liked the conceit that the Fraunhofer cartoon flashback was happening "live" and Tyson was showing us other stuff while we "waited."

And I suppose someone has to make the pedantic point that Sagan never actually said "billions and billions" -- that was coined by impersonators and caricaturists. But I guess it's part of his image now and they were playing with that.

 

[Amaris]

I loved this episode. It's almost understated in its presentation, but the discovery was monumental to the development of modern physics. Brilliant.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

The UK Guardian even ran an article called Cosmos and Giordano Bruno: the problem with scientific heroes, which links to lots of other articles about why Cosmos screwed up with the pick.

I would love to believe the Guardian on this, except for one thing; the paper usually only likes science when it promotes anything environmental. So that invalidates anything it has to say on Cosmos (past and present) in my eyes.

 

[Green Shirt]

I had no clue it was Stewart, myself. I was concentrating on what was being said.

Yeah, same here.

 

[Forbin]

I thought this ep was brilliant (no pun intended). Almost had me in tears.

I miss my old Carl Sagan T-Shirt. It had him in cartoon profile, looking up to the stars. Below his image, it just said "Billions."

 

[intrinsical]

Another amazing episode. This is the very first time I've ever seen the modern conception of a hydrogen atom visualized on screen, complete with quantum mechanical effects of electrons as a wave-particle and how the atom interacts with a single photon.

I do have to wonder how many people actually understood what was shown.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, what they showed was only a metaphor, a slightly dressed-up version of the old Bohr "orbit" model. The "wave" of an electron isn't a wiggly line, but a probability distribution. A more accurate rendering would've looked kind of like this, with the electron smeared out through a volume around the nucleus, though that would've been too confusing to the uninitiated.

 

[intrinsical]

Yeah I know the velocity and position of an electron in orbit around a nucleus can only be described by a probabilistic distribution, but most of the public don't even think of electrons as a duality wave-particle. So as far as I'm concerned, its still a huge step forward in how the public views the atom.

 

[tighr]

I liked that we got a more multicultural perspective on history than we've had in other episodes. However, what Tyson was building to -- the discovery of absorption lines -- seemed like an inside baseball kind of discovery; it's interesting, but to a very narrow set of people.

As an Electrical Engineer, I wanted the episode to focus more on the electromagnetic spectrum. He touched on it in the final two minutes, but I wanted him to spend more time on the fact that visible light, X-Ray, Gamma ray, Infrared, Radio, etc are all part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

When I was learning about it, it was an eye-opening experience to learn how exactly radio waves worked and that if our eyes were different, we could "see" them. When we "listen" to the radio, we're not even listening to radio waves, we're listening to the modulation of those waves. Same with TV.

 

[gturner]

The UK Guardian even ran an article called Cosmos and Giordano Bruno: the problem with scientific heroes, which links to lots of other articles about why Cosmos screwed up with the pick.

I would love to believe the Guardian on this, except for one thing; the paper usually only likes science when it promotes anything environmental. So that invalidates anything it has to say on Cosmos (past and present) in my eyes.

Well, that's very true.

Here's a better critique of Cosmos and mythologizing science so that it morphs into dogma that casts aside the scientific method.

 

[Timewalker]

I'm gonna say it: I miss Carl Sagan.

While I like this version of Cosmos, I miss the lyricism of Sagan. His writing--and those of his partners, was beautiful. Moving.

This version is a little less inspiring. Less moving. While I'm glad, thrilled even, there's a science show on TV, NETWORK TV no less, there's something missing from this.

It's weird to think, but, honestly, I would rather rematch Sagan's version than this one--even though the science is, obviously, more up to date.

I've been rewatching the original episodes, as well as this version.

Tonight's episode didn't do a lot for me.

I liked that we got a more multicultural perspective on history than we've had in other episodes. However, what Tyson was building to -- the discovery of absorption lines -- seemed like an inside baseball kind of discovery; it's interesting, but to a very narrow set of people.

They can't all be winners. This week, not a winner.

This episode was one that I did not feel was dumbed down. I learned things I hadn't known before, and that's the main reason I watch documentaries.