Neil deGrasse Tyson reboots Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"

[Gunslinger08]

I enjoyed it. I think the first episode was really just an introduction and general summary. He's going to dive a lot deeper into the subject matter in coming weeks. I think the idea of this episode was to create awe and inspire questions/curiosity that will be resolved by coming episodes.

 

[theknight571]

I enjoyed it. NDT's first episode kind of mirrors the original's first episode.

I also enjoyed that NatGeo played the original series on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

 

[KB]

That was fun to watch and a good beginning. The heartfelt look back to Carl Sagan was a nice touch, although hearing Brian Griffin as Bruno was weird.

Maybe I enjoyed it because I imagined thousands of Fox news watchers, their heads exploding at every reference to a 5 billion year old earth. Their screams of outrage at NDT calling him a heritic and calling forth the lord to smote him. They were probebly forbidden to watch it though... sad.

 

[zinfamous]

first 20 minutes is kinda boring, sad to say.

it feels like he's talking to us, assuming we have an 8th grade education.

Uh, that's the point.

 

[zinfamous]

Jesus turddancing Christ folks--Cosmos is meant for the general public, not egghead bench scientists like us that dabble in this stuff on a daily basis.

It's the perfect level of language to convey the information. It's to educate the general public, but far more importantly, encourage the young generation to become utterly fascinated in this stuff. I'm sorry that isn't stroking your nerd lust with high math, but that would be an outright failure.

The church stuff was perfectly fine. This is the history of science, these are the people that became so completely fascinated with these questions that despite the environment around them, it was the curiosity that drove them to continually question. The concept that science is first and foremost about questioning the things you see is the first lesson one must learn.

It is fine. get over yourselves.

 

[Ichinisan]

Jesus turddancing Christ folks--Cosmos is meant for the general public, not egghead bench scientists like us that dabble in this stuff on a daily basis.

It's the perfect level of language to convey the information. It's to educate the general public, but far more importantly, encourage the young generation to become utterly fascinated in this stuff. I'm sorry that isn't stroking your nerd lust with high math, but that would be an outright failure.

The church stuff was perfectly fine. This is the history of science, these are the people that became so completely fascinated with these questions that despite the environment around them, it was the curiosity that drove them to continually question. The concept that science is first and foremost about questioning the things you see is the first lesson one must learn.

It is fine. get over yourselves.

:thumbsup:

 

[NFS4]

Jesus turddancing Christ folks--Cosmos is meant for the general public, not egghead bench scientists like us that dabble in this stuff on a daily basis.

It's the perfect level of language to convey the information. It's to educate the general public, but far more importantly, encourage the young generation to become utterly fascinated in this stuff. I'm sorry that isn't stroking your nerd lust with high math, but that would be an outright failure.

The church stuff was perfectly fine. This is the history of science, these are the people that became so completely fascinated with these questions that despite the environment around them, it was the curiosity that drove them to continually question. The concept that science is first and foremost about questioning the things you see is the first lesson one must learn.

It is fine. get over yourselves.

Someone that gets it. Thank you!

 

[waggy]

Jesus turddancing Christ folks--Cosmos is meant for the general public, not egghead bench scientists like us that dabble in this stuff on a daily basis.

It's the perfect level of language to convey the information. It's to educate the general public, but far more importantly, encourage the young generation to become utterly fascinated in this stuff. I'm sorry that isn't stroking your nerd lust with high math, but that would be an outright failure.

The church stuff was perfectly fine. This is the history of science, these are the people that became so completely fascinated with these questions that despite the environment around them, it was the curiosity that drove them to continually question. The concept that science is first and foremost about questioning the things you see is the first lesson one must learn.

It is fine. get over yourselves.

/this

i thought it was pretty good.

 

[Retro Rob]

/this

i thought it was pretty good.

Yeah, me too. We obviously have too many idiots willing to talk over people's heads to show how 'smart' they are -- I'm glad the show didn't reflect that sort of arrogance.

 

[darkewaffle]

I am familiar with jesus tapdancing christ but I was not aware he is also a turddancer.

 

[brandonb]

I wasn't interested when seeing the commercial for the program.

I'm pretty open to science, but everything the commercial talked about was just theory.

"The entire universe was packed down into a space smaller than a single atom."

(Speculation, no truth to it.)

 

[Ichinisan]

The original Cosmos series used to be available on Hulu. Where can I watch it now?

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Jesus turddancing Christ folks--Cosmos is meant for the general public, not egghead bench scientists like us that dabble in this stuff on a daily basis.

It's the perfect level of language to convey the information. It's to educate the general public, but far more importantly, encourage the young generation to become utterly fascinated in this stuff. I'm sorry that isn't stroking your nerd lust with high math, but that would be an outright failure.

The church stuff was perfectly fine. This is the history of science, these are the people that became so completely fascinated with these questions that despite the environment around them, it was the curiosity that drove them to continually question. The concept that science is first and foremost about questioning the things you see is the first lesson one must learn.

It is fine. get over yourselves.

Well said. Some people just have no perspective.

 

[Ichinisan]

I wasn't interested when seeing the commercial for the program.

I'm pretty open to science, but everything the commercial talked about was just theory.

"The entire universe was packed down into a space smaller than a single atom."

(Speculation, no truth to it.)

You *really* don't think they've got reason to believe it's true? Math and confirmed hypotheses?

 

[BudAshes]

I liked it, but I forgot how much I can't stand these extensive commercial breaks. Felt like there were as many commercials as there was show.

 

[zinfamous]

I am familiar with jesus tapdancing christ but I was not aware he is also a turddancer.

I sawr it ins a museum once.

...that is to say I seen it.

 

[BudAshes]

I wasn't interested when seeing the commercial for the program.

I'm pretty open to science, but everything the commercial talked about was just theory.

"The entire universe was packed down into a space smaller than a single atom."

(Speculation, no truth to it.)

Ok, well get rid of that fancy computer you have. It's based on theory so it obviously doesn't work.

 

[zinfamous]

The original Cosmos series used to be available on Hulu. Where can I watch it now?

Netflix still has it streaming...well, they had it for a while.

 

[Thebobo]

I wasn't that impressed. It seemed to be more "Look what we can do with CGI!" than about the science they were trying to teach.
MAYBE that's to be expected with a cartoonist as the executive producer...

In all, tonight's episode was pretty boring to me. (and I fucking LOVE this kind of show)

Agree

Also I felt as if he was talking to a 2 year old.

 

[Retro Rob]

Agree

Also I felt as if he was talking to a 2 year old.

You didn't have to watch it.

 

[dr150]

Jesus turddancing Christ folks--Cosmos is meant for the general public, not egghead bench scientists like us that dabble in this stuff on a daily basis....

Exactly.

Which is why I prolly won't watch this show. Too much stuff that I know in detail already.

Thee egghead crowd should head over to the Science Channel as they have shows about the cosmos that's more detailed & theoretical.

 

[waggy]

Exactly.

Which is why I prolly won't watch this show. Too much stuff that I know in detail already.

Thee egghead crowd should head over to the Science Channel as they have shows about the cosmos that's more detailed & theoretical.

i watched it and enjoyed it. sure i didn't learn anything i already knew. but it was still worth the watch. IF nothing else more people watching it might get TV to do more stuff like it.

 

[Fritzo]

I wasn't interested when seeing the commercial for the program.

I'm pretty open to science, but everything the commercial talked about was just theory.

"The entire universe was packed down into a space smaller than a single atom."

(Speculation, no truth to it.)

Theory doesn't mean what you think it means.

When someone says "theory", you think it means an educated guess. In science, that's actually called a hypothesis. A scientific theory is an explanation that can be repeatedly confirmed through experimentation and observation. Theory is misused very often and causes a lot of misunderstandings.

Our GPS satellite network is calibrated using Einstein's Theory of relativity. The theory states that the faster an object moves relative to another object, the slower time will pass. Because of the extreme velocities of the GPS satellites in space, their internal clocks have compensate for time dilation. If they didn't, the directions they send would be 100's of feet off.

If it's called a theory, it means it's on pretty solid ground. If it's a hypothesis, then you can question it.

 

[Jeff7]

...

Carl Sagan was perhaps the best science spokesman to the general populace about scientific ideas and anyone else narrating a Cosmos remake would probably suffer by comparison. He died too early.

I am hopeful that subsequent episodes will go into more detail that the first episode.

.........

I'd love to have his speech to Congress about electrons shown around a few times.

Some guy was wasting time studying why waving a magnet past a wire caused a connected galvanometer to move.
Tiny electric charges, smaller than even these little atoms? What a useless endeavor.


And then we welcome forth the electrical age, thanks to that trivial little discovery: Moving magnetic fields can move electrical charges in a conductor.



Just part of the effort to quell the short-sighted cries of, "Why are we doing <research>? It doesn't have any applications!"


Or hell, here's another real big "oops": Written language. Symbols on paper. How could something like that lead to better buildings, or machines that can fly?

Theory doesn't mean what you think it means.

When someone says "theory", you think it means an educated guess. In science, that's actually called a hypothesis. A scientific theory is an explanation that can be repeatedly confirmed through experimentation and observation. Theory is misused very often and causes a lot of misunderstandings.

Yes, this. You hear it a lot on TV: Someone whips out a "theory" in a few seconds.

"Hypothesis" is too big of a word, and might frighten a viewer into changing the channel.

Our GPS satellite network is calibrated using Einstein's Theory of relativity. The theory states that the faster an object moves relative to another object, the slower time will pass. Because of the extreme velocities of the GPS satellites in space, their internal clocks have compensate for time dilation. If they didn't, the directions they send would be 100's of feet off.

If it's called a theory, it means it's on pretty solid ground. If it's a hypothesis, then you can question it.

And don't forget the special (corrected later) relativity part of it: The stronger the gravitational field is, the slower time gets.
The satellites are farther from Earth than we are, so their clocks run a little faster because of that.
The special and general effects don't perfectly balance though. If I'm remembering correctly, the high speed's effect is greater.

 

[nageov3t]

Caught the first episode. WAY too fast paced. They should have picked one subject and stuck with it. I watched it with my daughter and she was completely lost by the time the calendar thing came around.

I agreed, but it's also the first of thirteen episodes and is just meant to serve as an introductory. I assume/hope the future episodes will more or less get in-depth with single subjects.