Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, on FOX & National Geographic Channel
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In 1980, there was a 13-part series on PBS called "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage," hosted by astronomer/astrophysicist Carl Sagan. I don't recall if I saw any of that or not, being five years old at the time, but Sagan's name has been at least vaguely familiar to me for as long as I can remember. Anyway, in 2014, there was a new 13-part series, hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. (The director is Brannon Braga, who's previously worked on various Star Trek stuff, and other science fiction. One of the executive producers is Seth MacFarlane, best known for creating animated series like Family Guy.) So, anyway... the show teaches us scientific stuff. And there are some decent special effects. And some animation, which some people seem not to like, but which I think is done in a style that perfectly suits its purpose, in this show.

Episode 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way
Tyson teaches us about the creation of the universe and the solar system and shows us how small our world is in relation to the observable universe, and how there's probably lots of other universes, and how long it's been since the Big Bang (13.8 billion years), and stuff. Oh, there was quite a bit about a 16th century guy named Giordano Bruno, who was persecuted for suggesting the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. He believed God's creation is much more impressive if it's infinite, which seems like a pretty hard point to argue against, but of course the Church had an interest in people not, you know, thinking (which could lead to questioning their authoritah). I do want to say, I can imagine this series being a bit controversial with anyone who doesn't believe the universe is billions of years old. Personally, I'm perpetually on the fence about such things, and this show isn't likely to sway me. But I would say this: there are lots of things that the most devout Christians today believe to be true, scientifically, such as the Earth revolving around the Sun, and our sun just being one of billions of stars in a galaxy that's just one out of uncounted galaxies, and so forth. These are things that, had they lived five centuries ago, they would have been persecuted for believing... except they wouldn't have believed any of it, they'd be among the persecutors, not the persecuted. These things that, living today, some of them might think people would have to be stupid to disbelieve, they themselves would have disbelieved and called anyone like Bruno heretics. So, in that light, it kind of has to make any reasonable person wonder what else they could be wrong about. Because... you know... you can believe the universe is practically infinite, and that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and still believe God created it all. So I don't see why you can't believe other scientific principles without abandoning your faith in God.

Oh yes, and Tyson talks about the Cosmic Calendar, with January 1 being the Big Bang, our sun forming at the end of August, Earth forming in September, the most primitive life on Earth coming into existence on September 21 (my birthday! on the regular calendar, I mean), and humans not appearing until December 31. All of recorded history takes place in about the last 14 seconds of the last day of the year. I think that's supposed to make us seem pretty insignificant, but my take is the opposite: Like, holy crap, look at how much we've accomplished in 14 seconds! Seriously, man, the dinosaurs were around for like two or three days, I think, and they didn't come close to doing any of the stuff we've done in a quarter of a minute! I'd say that makes us pretty damn special.

Episode 2: Some of the Things That Molecules Do
Tyson talks about both artificial and natural selection (with dogs as an example of the former and polar bears of the latter). And about mutation, which can lead to evolution. None of that was really new to me, and while I don't doubt the reality of mutation or either kind of selection (or adaptation), I remain less than convinced of the reality of evolution, at least in humans (especially since it relies on the assumption that the world is billions of years old- as established in episode 1- of which I also remain less than convinced). I admit it's a fascinating and plausible theory, but it still rankles me a bit to hear people declare it a "fact." (But it doesn't rankle me so much as to actually offend me, as long as they don't think a person has to be stupid to doubt that it's a fact. I'm okay with people believing in either evolution or Creationism, as long as neither side insults the other.) Tyson also mentions five great "extinction events," and describes one, the Permian, which wiped out the trilobites, among other species. (I thought he said this was the first of the five, and while he said the dinosaurs came after this event, he didn't specify any of the other four events. Looking on Wikipedia now, I see the Permian event was actually the third of the major five. So, that's kind of odd.) He also talks about the possibility of life on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, and how it would be entirely different from any kind of life on Earth. And I guess he talks about some other stuff. Anyway, I didn't find this episode as interesting as the first one, but I guess it was alright.

Episode 3: When Knowledge Conquered Fear
Tyson talks about comets. And about Jan Oort (for whom the Oort Cloud was named). But most of the episode is about Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton. And Newton's laws of motion, and gravity. And eventually it comes back around to comets (in particular, Halley's comet). So, um, I guess it was all kind of interesting.

Episode 4: A Sky Full of Ghosts
Tyson talks about the speed of light, and how looking at stars is like looking into the past (or looking at ghosts), since the light we see originated a long time ago. The most distant objects we can observe are billions of lightyears away, which means the light we're seeing took billions of years to reach us. He also talks about gravity and black holes and stuff. Animated segments are about astronomer William Herschel (voiced by Patrick Stewart), and his son, John. It was a reasonably interesting episode, and it does seem like the fact that light traveling at, you know, the speed of light tends to prove the universe must be billions of years old. Although I do still question that... I mean, it seems to me the distant galaxies we can observe could have been closer to us at the time they generated the light we're seeing now, if space is expanding. Which would mean that light isn't as old as we think. But of course, I don't know enough to really speculate.... Oh, it was also nice to hear Tyson say no one knows what the inside of a black hole is like, which means even scientists can only speculate. But there could be whole other universes with whole other sets of physical laws inside black holes... and for all we know, our own universe could be inside a black hole that exists in another universe. Trippy. And of course, the way black holes bend spacetime could allow for faster-than-light travel. This ain't exactly news to me, but it's still a neat concept, which makes a lot of science fiction books/shows/movies seem more plausible....

Episode 5: Hiding in the Light
Tyson says a bunch of interesting things about light, and about a number of historical people who've made discoveries about light over the last couple thousand years. I reckon most of it was stuff I learned in grade school, but there were some things that were new to me... like electrons making quantum leaps as they orbit the nucleus of an atom. I don't recall having heard that before. Anyway, not sure what else to say about this episode.

Episode 6: Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still
This episode started out a bit boring in my opinion. I mean, as he sometimes does on this show, Tyson was talking about things I learned in grade school. But it did get more interesting soon, and it did have good visual effects. For example, I had no idea that photosynthesis worked deep inside plants' cells in a process that looks like it was cocreated by Henry Ford and Rube Goldberg. Anyway... the episode's all about really small stuff, like molecules and atoms and subatomic particles, protons and neutrinos and whatnot. And I dunno what else to say. (Except that I got the impression neutrinos are kind of like heffalumps and woozles.)

Episode 7: The Clean Room
This episode was mainly about a dude named Clair Patterson, who figured out the age of the Earth based on the radioactive decay of lead in a meteorite. Or something. And he went on to prove that the lead in gasoline was bad for humans and the environment, and stuff. So, um, it seemed more... focused, than most episodes.

Episode 8: Sisters of the Sun
Tyson talks about stars and constellations and supernovas and stuff. Animated scenes involved an astronomer named Annie Jump Cannon (voiced by Marlee Matlin) and one named Ceceilia Payne (whom Wikipedia says was voiced by Kirsten Dunst, but I find it odd that I recognized Matlin's voice but not hers). Anyway... I'm trying to write an entry for this episode a couple days after watching it, and already I've forgotten most of what happened in the episode. But I will say over the last few weeks or so, I've noticed a lot of sameness in the series. In fact when this episode started, it took me a minute to be completely certainly it wasn't a repeat (though I knew it wasn't supposed to be). Still, I suppose the episode was okay. The real trouble is my memory sucks, but I'm used to that.

Episode 9: The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
Tyson talks about different periods in the Earth's history, how the geology, atmosphere, and climate of the planet changed over millions of years, and how that affected life. Some species going extinct, others evolving, and whatnot. Continental drift breaking Pangaea up to form the continents. And how the world of the distant future will be as different as the worlds of the distant past, and our actions help determine what that future will be like. And... it all seemed kind of random to me. Maybe that's because I was too sleepy to follow it clearly, or maybe it's because it's hard to make sense of things that took millions of years in just an hour. Or a mix of both excuses.

Episode 10: The Electric Boy
The episode is all about Michael Faraday, someone I'd heard of, but didn't really know anything about. Basically, he figured out a lot about the connection between electricity and magnetic fields, which led to the creation of motors and generators and stuff, thereby revolutionizing the world in a very big way. And um... it seemed to me that this episode used more animation than any other. And I guess I don't know what else to say, but it was a good episode. Nice to have more focus than usual.

Episode 11: The Immortals
Tyson talks about ways of achieving metaphorical immortality, I guess. Such as writing stuff that people could read long after you're dead. Or being famous, like Gilgamesh. Or being a microbe stowing away on chunks of rock that get knocked into space by a meteorite crash or whatever, and millions of years later crashing into the Earth (or other planets) where your little microbial self reseeds the planet. Or whatever. And he talks about ways civilizations can die out, like super volcanic eruptions, or meteorite crashes (that's a mixed bag, eh?), or disease, or droughts, or wrecking up the environment like we do, what because of we're so short-sighted, and stuff. But we could change our ways, and save the Earth, and someday settle other worlds so the human race becomes immortal. (Also he made a cosmic joke about old people living in Florida.)

Episode 12: The World Set Free
Tyson starts off by talking about Venus, and how a long time ago a natural greenhouse effect changed it from a paradise to a kind of hell. This, of course, sets up a talk about how people on Earth are creating (or grossly exacerbating) our own greenhouse effect, which would be pretty darn easy for us to stop, but we don't. So, eventually our world could be virtually uninhabitable. He also talks about the difference between climate and weather, because a lot of people point to cold weather as proof that global warming isn't real, which is inaccurate because... globarl warming is about climate change, not weather. It's all fairly interesting and reasonable and scary as hell. Because, like... I don't really have faith that humanity is going to stop acting like frickin' idiots. But on the bright side, all this gave me an idea I might work into one of the later books in the series I've been planning. (And I could tie in another, seemingly unrelated idea from earlier in "Cosmos.")

Episode 13: Unafraid of the Dark
Tyson begins by talking about the Library of Alexandria, how utterly amazing it was in its time. And yet, it was used only by an elite few, and ultimately destroyed by a mob. But now, we have so much more knowledge available to us, and pretty much everyone has access to it. He ends the episode (and the series) by saying that science has sometimes been misused, but it's less likely to be if it belongs to all of us, and not just an elite few... so it kind of circles back to the original point. In between, he talks about various other things. Much of it sounds like an indictment of the arrogance of religion, and those who say they have all the answers, when in fact we know very little about the universe. And he talks about how scientists are happy to admit how little they know. (I tend to doubt that's really true of all scientists, but it certainly should be, as it is one of the fundamental tenets of science.) He doesn't specifically mention "religion," but it's obvious that's what he's talking about. Which troubles me slightly, but he's certainly right that many people of faith (whatever specific faith that might be) are closed-minded. (Though I know that's not true of all religious people.) Anyway, I don't think any of that is important. Tyson also spends some time talking about things like dark matter and dark energy, and cosmic rays, and the two Voyager space probes, and some other stuff. And near the end of the episode, we hear a speech by Carl Sagan concerning just how small Earth is, and how much blood has been spilled by people wishing to control just a fraction of this "pale blue dot."

And that about wraps things up. There'll be lots of extra material on the DVD of the series, which I won't be getting. I've sort of enjoyed watching the series these last few months, and I'm sort of glad it's done now. (Ending June 8, I feel like it's a good time to say school's out for the summer.) Parts of the series have been interesting, parts have been less so. Parts of it were news to me, parts of it weren't. I doubt I'll retain much of any of it, but it's good to know the internet makes all this information (and much more) readily available to me. But anyway, I've basically enjoyed Tyson's hosting skills, I guess. And I don't really know what else to say.

In 2020 there was another series, "Cosmos: Possible Worlds", but I didn't see it.