13.8 billion years in the making - Cosmos 2014

Taylor365

stoneill wrote: »

Neil deGrasse Tyson is hosting a new version called "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey,"
Ann Druyan and Brannon Braga are also on board for production.


http://www.space.com/24243-cosmos-tv-series-neil-degrasse-tyson.html

I hope it inspires as many youngsters as the original Carl Sagan's personal voyage.

...this is what the thread is about....?

pauldla

Taylor365 wrote: »

...this is what the thread is about....?

Merged thread, perhaps?

Taylor365

pauldla wrote: »

Merged thread, perhaps?

Ah....

Me no scientist..

Neil deGrasse on the other hand...

JupiterKid

Looking forward to this show.

If it's even a fraction as good as Carl Sagan's original Cosmos then it will be worth a watch.

slade_x

USA: Airing Sunday March 9th 9PM

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey/

Episode: Standing Up in the Milky Way

Next Airing: SUN MAR 9 9PM ETSUN MAR 9 8PM CTSUN MAR 9 10PM MTSUN MAR 9 9PM PTSUN MAR 9 8PM ATSUN MAR 9 10PM HT

The Ship of the Imagination, unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size, drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies, can take us anywhere in space and time. It has been idling for more than three decades, and yet it has never been overtaken. Its global legacy remains vibrant. Now, it's time once again to set sail for the stars.

http://natgeotv.com/uk/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey

UK: Sunday March 16th 7PM

ankaragucu

Is this liable to be shown on terrestrial tv at some point?(pardon the pun)

Nerro

Anyone seen first episode?is it worth watching?

Duggy747

I saw it, it's very flashy and the CGI is really quite good, very good for a TV show actually. It's about 40 minutes long so it is trying hard to squeeze everything in but it doesn't feel like it rushes by anything too much. The ad breaks are jarring considering they break the flow and momentum of the show and it did spend a large chunk of it's runtime on an animated telling of Giordano Bruno.

To be honest, I found it quite cheesy in parts as I was so used to watching Tyson candidly in interviews and speeches for years beforehand. Here he sounds like he's doing a voice-over for a trailer in some parts and feels like I'm watching a sort of watered down version of him, considering how animated he does be when explaining things.

That being said, he is good and I still think he was the right choice for the show. It had a good start and I'm looking forward to next week's show which will be on evolution.

Plus, it had a nice tribute to Carl Sagan with Tyson telling his personal story of him.

Nolars

Getting this now forgot all about it, 1080p plz

bogwalrus

I liked it. Not as good as original. Loved the story about Carl and Tyson. Nearly cried. Need to dig out my Carl sagan poster and put it up somewhere in my man cave.

pauldla

It's being shown here on Sat at 10:00 pm on Nat Geo. I've told the eldest (9) that he can stay up late to watch it if he's good. I hope he gets as much from it as I got from the original all those years ago!

Beeker

pauldla wrote: »

It's being shown here on Sat at 10:00 pm on Nat Geo. I've told the eldest (9) that he can stay up late to watch it if he's good. I hope he gets as much from it as I got from the original all those years ago!

Its not on Saturday by the way, its Sunday at 7pm on National Grographic, National Goegraphic Wild, Fox and Sky 1 plus repeated many times over the next few hours and days. 13 episodes in total like the Original. Hope your Son enjoys it. I watched the original myself with Carl Sagan as a 13 year old and it changed my life. Fantastic stuff

pauldla

Beeker wrote: »

Its not on Saturday by the way, its Sunday at 7pm on National Grographic, National Goegraphic Wild, Fox and Sky 1 plus repeated many times over the next few hours and days. 13 episodes in total like the Original. Hope your Son enjoys it. I watched the original myself with Carl Sagan as a 13 year old and it changed my life. Fantastic stuff

Thanks! It's interesting to see the number of people who remember watching then they were young; I was ten at the time. Are you sure about the time of the show? I checked the Nat Geo Asia site and they're listing as 22:00 on the 15th. I'd hate to miss it....I might just have to spend the whole weekend camped out in front of the TV...

Beeker

pauldla wrote: »

Thanks! It's interesting to see the number of people who remember watching then they were young; I was ten at the time. Are you sure about the time of the show? I checked the Nat Geo Asia site and they're listing as 22:00 on the 15th. I'd hate to miss it....I might just have to spend the whole weekend camped out in front of the TV...

Sorry I was giving the times for Europe but I see you are in China, so disregard the times I gave

expectationlost

seems they waste of lot of time showing him moving around in his stupid ship, they could have used the cgi budget to come up with better way to show the distances he was travelling

thecommander

Turned it off after 10 minutes. Really hate the CGI, much prefer him to talk through it rather than acting against a green screen.

The Hill Billy

Too heavy on the CGI, nothing new or no special perspectives given on current knowledge.

All told, I would have said that it was OK, but the extended church-bashing over matters long past was frankly very disappointing.

slade_x

The Hill Billy wrote: »

Too heavy on the CGI, nothing new or no special perspectives given on current knowledge.

All told, I would have said that it was OK, but the extended church-bashing over matters long past was frankly very disappointing.

I also found myself disappointed with the series so far but I should keep in mind it is not intended for me and the majority of regulars here. Its mandate was made clear from the start. to communicate these subjects to the public, the uninterested/ uninformed public.

The same vision Carl Sagan had, at the time when the vast majority of the scientific community didn't agree. It has become much easier to communicate science to the public in recent years, this series wont have the same polarizing affect the original had because Carl achieved what he set out to do and thus easily achieves the title of the Greatest Science Communicator of our time. Science is not just interesting, it is down right Cool. Thanks to Carl in part for showing us :cool:

This doesn't diminish the current re-imagining of the show however, it is just for a now young audience, and from what I can tell a young audience loves CG

Turtwig

I HATE the movie Armageddon. Absolutely HATE it. But when 7 or 8 year old me saw it I was blown away by the concepts of Asteroids, space shuttle's and gravitational sling shot. It's really odd because the movie that I now can't watch without cringing was the movie that sparked my interest in Space in a big way. I don't even know how terrible that sounds, owing something to Michael Bay. I really wish I'd seen Cosmos. It wasn't until somebody posted in a link in the A&A forum that I saw what the series was about and I was like 'meh' that's good but I know most of that stuff already. It's better to read up in detail and be able to do math with the things to gain some intuitive approximation to what they are.

Like Slade said, The series isn't aimed at us and I sure as hell prefer the ordinary Joe Soap getting their inspiration for science from shows like the Cosmos rather than CSI or Transformers. Many people here in this forum are looking for something that furthers their knowledge. You're not going to get that in a pop sci show for a mainstream audience. You need to go a little deeper.

bogwalrus

On the second episode that was on last night he was explaining natural selection in such a nice simple way. I must admit all those gaps I had in my mind were filled and it felt great. The whole thing about artificial selection and dogs was cool also. I think the show is aimed at me tbh.

Taylor365

bogwalrus wrote: »

On the second episode that was on last night he was explaining natural selection in such a nice simple way. I must admit all those gaps I had in my mind were filled and it felt great. The whole thing about artificial selection and dogs was cool also. I think the show is aimed at me tbh.

Sounds like you haven't watched the original :pac:

To compete with perfection is a hard task. It's never going to live up to the original.

Still great though :P

bogwalrus

Taylor365 wrote: »

Sounds like you haven't watched the original :pac:

To compete with perfection is a hard task. It's never going to live up to the original.

Still great though :P

Oh I have of course. Huge Carl fan. I am not making comparisons as it is still good knowledge being shared. No point in even trying to compare as you will just ruin it for yourself.

Duggy747

Much preferred the 2nd episode, still a bit cheesy but a stronger episode than the 1st.

Still nowhere near as good as Sagan's Cosmos but for the purpose of it being flashy to capture younger people's attention it seems to do that fine. It's nothing you haven't learnt before, especially when it comes to evolution, but it breaks it down pretty well to a certain extent for those not so well up on it.

The evolution of the eye segment was nicely done.

Beeker

As has been pointed out already this is not aimed at people like us who post here. We already have the interest and a lot of the knowledge. This show is aimed at the uninterested, uneducated or young minds out there with the hope of inspiring a future scientifically literate generation.
With this in mind I fully support it and indeed am enjoying the series.
We can never really compare it to the original as that was a unique and awe inspiring series which Sagan was perfect for. It changed my life and many others who became fascinated by science.

I would encourage everyone to recommend this series to as many young people as possible. I fear for the future as more and more people are embracing pseudoscience and the dummying down of knowledge by the popular media. As Tyson said in an interview many years ago "when you become scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you".

Nerro

Liked the show.But a bit disapointed with Neil.the way he slagged Titanic and other movies regarding all the science facts, and the way the asteroid belt was shown in first episode....it feels like he had no voice in production of the series.

ps200306

Sagan was the first science author I ever read. At nine years old I swapped a boxed set of John Wyndham novels for a paperback edition of The Cosmic Connection, which predated the Cosmos TV series by about seven years. That makes me an old fart, and just seven years younger than Neil deGrasse Tyson who got his copy of the book from Sagan himself about the same time as I read it.

From the perspective of forty years (and an astrophysics degree) later, I still remember the thrill of reading authors like Sagan, and am as enthused today as an adult as I was back then as a kid. Yet I also can't help seeing some of his writing and TV work as a bit pompous. I was quite excited enough by science without needing Sagan's "we are star stuff" quasi-mysticism. Neil deGrasse Tyson seems a fitting person to fill his shoes. He's clever, and well-spoken, and engaging. And he's pompous too. But this time around we have a lot more than "we are star stuff"...

What the hell is with devoting 25% of the first episode to Giordano Bruno? I mean, it would be out of place even if Bruno was the martyr to science that NdeGT said he was. What about Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton? I mean, what about, like ... actual scientists? What makes this truly awful is that the portrayal of Bruno is cackhandedly revisionist tripe, and wrong in practically all its elements. Lamentable as his execution was, it had nothing whatsoever to do with his dedication to science or opposition to geocentrism. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bruno was a proponent of sun worship, a dedicated follower of Thoth (an Egyptian deity), and -- far from being some unsung hero of the scientific cause -- was a big believer in magic. He was, in short, an off-the-rails religious nutcase. The pathetic Cosmos polemic takes some "ship of the imagination" alright, and I suspect betrays a particular underlying philosophy.

I've probably said enough, but I'll just mention that the subsequent bit about "eternal inflation" is another NdeGT foray into pushing his preferred metaphysics. Perhaps someone less pompous would have mentioned that it's no more science than Giordano Bruno's mystical imaginings. Please, TV execs, we can live with the CGI, but can't we just have straight science?

Akrasia

I watched these two episodes with my almost 5 year old son. The spaceship drew him in and the CGI held his attention and the cartoons helped to make him feel that it was not just for grown ups

The details are still beyond him, but the concepts of evolution and the scale of the universe are starting to sink in. Before he even starts junior infants in primary school, the little man will have a better understanding of science some adults I know and that's something that makes me smile

pauldla

Akrasia wrote: »

I watched these two episodes with my almost 5 year old son. The spaceship drew him in and the CGI held his attention and the cartoons helped to make him feel that it was not just for grown ups

The details are still beyond him, but the concepts of evolution and the scale of the universe are starting to sink in. Before he even starts junior infants in primary school, the little man will have a better understanding of science some adults I know and that's something that makes me smile

Similarly, my nine year old is enjoying them. The first episode didn't do much for him, despite the graphics, but he really enjoyed the second one, especially the dogs. As others have stated above, it was a good overview of evolution (and he was fascinted by the CGI DNA).

Jimmy Iovine

slade_x wrote: »

I also found myself disappointed with the series so far but I should keep in mind it is not intended for me and the majority of regulars here. Its mandate was made clear from the start. to communicate these subjects to the public, the uninterested/ uninformed public.

The same vision Carl Sagan had, at the time when the vast majority of the scientific community didn't agree. It has become much easier to communicate science to the public in recent years, this series wont have the same polarizing affect the original had because Carl achieved what he set out to do and thus easily achieves the title of the Greatest Science Communicator of our time. Science is not just interesting, it is down right Cool. Thanks to Carl in part for showing us :cool:

This doesn't diminish the current re-imagining of the show however, it is just for a now young audience, and from what I can tell a young audience loves CG

I would be part of the uninformed public (not the uninterested one, mind).

I stumbled upon it tonight. I saw the episode about Halley and Newton. I found it brilliant. It's pitched perfectly at the level of the ordinary punter.

Also, I'm a primary teacher and I may be teaching Space as part of my topic next year. I need to get to know more about it before then.

ps200306

Watched episode 3 last night. More NdeGT axe-grinding and religion bashing about ancient superstitions regarding comets. He really bangs on about this stuff, and it takes away from the amazing pre-Enlightenment history (that he could be discussing) of scientific development from the Babylonians through the Greeks and the medieval Islamic scholars. What about those cartoon portrayals of the ugly degenerate ignorants huddled on the ground below the comet? NdeGT might want to consider that most people nowadays are equally ignorant about "how the heavens go", to use the phrase Galileo borrowed from Cesare Baronio.