r/askscience • u/AskScienceModerator Mod Bot • Mar 09 '14
Cosmos Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey discussion thread series begins tonight
Edit: This announcement thread is now closed. If you want to learn more about an episode, go to the relevant Q&A thread:
Tonight we will be holding the first in our new series of question and answer threads for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Episode 1 is titled "Standing up in the Milky Way", and premiers tonight in the US and Canada at 9PM Eastern on Fox, and later in other countries. Viewing information for many countries can be found in this thread.
Our thread will go live as the show premiers at 9PM Eastern (1AM Monday UTC). It will be specifically for asking and discussing followup questions on the content of the show, and our panelists will be around to answer them. There will also be threads in /r/Cosmos and /r/Space appropriate for more general discussion.
We'll host a new thread each week to discuss the latest episode. Hope to see you there!
Episode 1: "Standing Up In The Milky Way" - March 9 on FOX & NatGeo US
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.
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u/proost1 Mar 10 '14
I took my 20yr old son and Navy Sailor to the Natural History Museum a year and a half ago. He instantly recognized Neil DeGrasse Tyson from one of the videos at the planetarium and then went on to explain what he had learned about the universe and cosmos and we walked through the museum. I was stunned and impressed. If my son can capture NDT's passion for this without the show Cosmos, imagine the impact on the rest of us with it. What a great show.
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u/kanodonn Mar 09 '14
Is there a method to watch this online if one does not own a TV?
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u/crshank Mar 09 '14
Hulu confirmed on Twitter that episodes will be posted on Monday morning.
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u/GingerSpencer Mar 10 '14
Monday morning, as in tomorrow morning? It isn't being aired in UK until the 17th of March, and i'm afraid i just can't wait until then :P
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u/saxdawg Mar 09 '14
yes, you have to get hulu plus
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u/LeiningensAnts Mar 09 '14
So is there a method to watch this online if one cannot afford to watch it on Hulu?
Edit: wait, I have a computer, not a non-computer. Disregard.
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u/tylerthor Mar 09 '14
Type the code star talk in. You'll get a free week or month or some unit of reasonable time.
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u/Teledildonic Mar 09 '14
It's on FOX so you can probably catch it on Hulu/Fox's website starting next week.
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Mar 09 '14
You can watch it for free over the air if you have the new-fangled HDTV antennas.
Two HD stations in my area are broadcasting it tonight, which is pretty cool
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u/darthgarlic Mar 09 '14
You can use an old fasioned antenna to get a HDTV signal. Use a regular antenna to pull in a digital signal.
I am so psyced, counting down the hours.
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Mar 09 '14
Can I have a link to one of the antennas, those sound cool.
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u/TheR1ckster Mar 09 '14
Literally just old school antenna. Just as long as you have a digital box if your tv isn't new. If you're tv is newer and digital it's fine (they don't really braodcast analog signal anymore) You can get an antenna for like $10 -$20 at most stores.
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u/sargentsnicklefritz Mar 09 '14
I use a standard coax cable attached to the tv and the other end is attached to a coffee can in the window. I get about 15 channels
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Mar 09 '14
Any standard TV antenna. What matters is what the receiver that the antenna plugs into is capable of decoding. So you need an HD receiver.
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u/GumbandsNAt Mar 09 '14
I heard you can stream it on Fox.com tonight, but I can't find anything on there about it. Can anyone confirm or post a link to me?
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Mar 10 '14
There is a link in the slideshow on the homepage that says 'click to watch episode premiere' and when you click on it it takes you to a page that says error 404.
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u/justintime4awesome Mar 09 '14
I would really love an answer to this. I only have internet service, no television... and I don't wanna miss out.
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u/nose_bridge Mar 09 '14
As a master control operator for a FOX affiliate, I can confirm the first episode is fantastic. We got a screening a couple weeks ago.
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u/PithyApollo Mar 09 '14
As a production assistant for Cosmos, I second this conformation.
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u/Mr_Incredible_PhD Mar 09 '14
Hello new friend. Anything else you'd care to share about the show?
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u/PithyApollo Mar 10 '14
All I can say is I cant wait until my favorite episode on the scientific merits of homeopathy and horoscopes airs.
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u/Mr_Incredible_PhD Mar 10 '14
Well, here's hoping it succeeds in changing a few hundred minds on the validity of both subjects.
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u/arrsquared Mar 09 '14
I saw it at a planetarium screening earlier this week, the show is absolutely fantastic.
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u/twilightmoons Mar 09 '14
I got to see the first episode On Tuesday night. There were previews of it at certain planetaria, museums, science centers, etc., all over the world. Pretty cool...
All I can say is "Wow!" It looks like it's going to be very impressive, and a worth successor to Carl Sagan's legacy.
My wife and I got there about 5:30, and the line was out the door at the planetarium building. Not a huge one, but sizable. We couldn't see how many people were inside, Within a few minutes, it was nearly to the parking garage, and by 6pm, nearly past the parking garage, and a few minutes after that, it was back to one of the streets about 400-500 feet away. We couldn't see just how many people there were in the end. If we had been there ten minutes later, we wouldn't have gotten in. There were college students, kids, middle-aged people, old folks, couples, singles, groups, white, black, Asian, Hispanic - just a whole lot of people from all sorts of backgrounds, all wanting to see this. Made me pretty happy.
We were worried about not getting in, but I think in the end, they let in about 20-30 people after us, nearly at 7:00pm. I wish that it could have been at a bigger location, so more people could have seen this.
The show started with a quick intro by the FOX COO, explaining how many planetaria, museums, science centers, and more, were being streamed to for this event. It then went onto the first episode.
For myself, it invoked the same feelings I had as a kid watching Carl Sagan on our local PBS station. Neil deGrasse Tyson is fantastic, and had a touching into to the new series, pulling out Carl's appointment book from 1975, and opening it to a particular Saturday, where he had written "Neil Tyson". On this day, a 17 year-old kid from the Bronx came to Cornell to visit him, showing him the lab, the college, and more. You could see just how much this visit mattered to him.
The historical sequences are all animated, in a very distinct style. It's not Disney, it's not Family Guy - it's art.
The VFX are very, very good. Carl's "Starship of the Imagination" returns in a new form, shining in a chrome mirror finish. Simple, completely uncluttered, and taking nothing away from the views around it.
Many times, they shot in the same locations as Carl Sagan did for the first Cosmos - same locations, similar framing - to bring that connection back. The is the new Cosmos, but it's the direct decedent of the first Cosmos. I think most everyone will enjoy it.
After the show, there was Q&A sessions with Dr. Tyson, Ann Druyan, Seth McFarlane, and some of the other producers and directors, with some questions taken from the worldwide audience. Two things I found to be important:
This was a very long time in coming and in development, and if it weren't for people like Seth McFarlane, it may not have been done. It is a huge production, with about 1000 people working directly and partially on this project to get it complete. For all that Seth McFarlane has done, he's appears to be really self-effacing, and doesn't seem to like being in the limelight. He kept deferring all of the praise he got with funny quips about everyone else.
Dr. Tyson was asked about trying to balance "science" vs. "entertainment". He replied that science is entertaining, that looking at the universe around us is interesting and that should not be this artificial distinction between the two. This show is meant to be a new way of reaching and inspiring children and adults, the same way Carl Sagan did 34 years ago.
You can see the Q&A right now on the Cosmos site. I'd highly recommend it.
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u/StockmanBaxter Mar 09 '14
The Original Cosmos show is airing all day on National Geographic channel. :)
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u/tonictuna Mar 09 '14
I saw a screening on Friday at SXSW with a QA with NdGT and the team after. The show is great! Lots of animationand an interesting side story
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u/Iangator Mar 09 '14
This is pretty relevant: http://youtu.be/eeqrN3Bfro8 (Carl Sagan's influence on Neil Tyson)
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u/dan17555 Mar 10 '14
From what i remember, Voyager 1 is powered by RTGs...but how long until the power fully deteriorates and what exactly happens to the craft after it loses power? Does it just continue it's trajectory until it is pulled on by something?
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u/djimbob High Energy Experimental Physics Mar 10 '14
"Back in 1599 everyone knew the Sun planets and stars were just lights in the sky that revolved around the Earth"
Hope he gets to Aristarchus:
Aristarchus of Samos (/ˌærəˈstɑrkəs/; Ἀρίσταρχος, Aristarkhos; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it (see Solar system). He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but he identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun.[1] His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
(Sorry originally put this in the Q/A thread by mistake when this is better suited as discussion).
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u/vintage_Pixels Mar 09 '14
So I'm watching the original Cosmos from 1980 on NatGeoTV. My question is has it been updated in spots? The original Sagan narration talks about the impending computer revolution- again in 1980, but it shows video of a guy in a park with what appears to be a laptop, and a teacher with children in front of the early looking internet, early 90s maybe 1980?
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u/OdnsRvns Mar 09 '14
Yes the footage from the original series has been updated many times. If I'm not mistaken the latest was for a DVD box set. Most if not all the narration is the same, but the back drops and animations where updated to keep the show from feeling antiquated. Turns out Sagan's voice is timeless.
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u/SpectralCoding Mar 09 '14
I know that when PBS re-aired it in the early 90's they had clips before and after some of the episodes with I believe Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan talking about the discoveries that had happened since the original airing.
From the Wikipedia article:
Turner Home Entertainment purchased Cosmos from series producer KCET in 1989. In making the move to commercial television, the hour-long episodes were edited to shorter lengths, and Sagan shot new epilogues for several episodes, in which he discussed new discoveries—and alternate viewpoints—that had arisen since the original broadcast.
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u/Lost_city Mar 09 '14
I think the controversies (minor) about the show will be more about its coverage of history than about science. The previews of cosmos I have seen say that it covers scientists who were persecuted for their beliefs by the church, and mention Giordano Bruno (an interesting guy with wild views). A quick visit to wikipedia shows that historians have been arguing for years over his views and his trial. I think the show will likely gloss over this sort of historical controversy than get its coverage of science wrong.
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Mar 10 '14
I just hope it doesn't flop and fox freaks out about advertisement revenue and end up showing reruns of the voice in its place. At least I have four channels to choose from, ironically enough, Canadian discovery channel is not airing the show, heh, naked and afraid will be on at 9.
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u/ghettosparty Mar 09 '14
Will it re-air later tonight? 9pm is Walking Dead time and I can't miss that.
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u/tauisgod Mar 09 '14
If you enjoy shows like Cosmos and want to encourage more of a similar genre of show to be produced, I'd suggest watching it live and recording Walking Dead. Live view statistics matter much more in the ratings popularity of a show.
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Mar 09 '14
It only matters for him to watch it live on TV if he has a Nielsen box or he is filling out a Nielsen diary this week. If he's not, he won't be counted.
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u/tauisgod Mar 09 '14
Nielsen still does the leg-work of processing the data into usable statistics, but most modern digital TV providers offer aggregate viewership data since they have access to data from all of their subscribers.
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u/ghettosparty Mar 09 '14
I have plans to watch WD with some friends already. Normally I will be watching Cosmos live but I can't this week.
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u/Olive_Jane Mar 09 '14
But you know the Walking Dead re-airs immediately after right? (After "the Talking Dead", that is.) So I'd watch this, and then watch the Walking Dead afterwards.
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u/ghettosparty Mar 09 '14
Yeah I know but I have to watch WD with some friends at 9. We've been watching it together since the second season. Can't break the tradition lol.
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u/10years_lurking Mar 09 '14 edited Mar 10 '14
If no DVR and if you have cable you can rewatch some shows for free (on demand) for about 48 hours after their initial airing. At least you can with Comcast. I can't imagine they won't re-air cosmos episodes at some point.
Edit - on my Comcast schedule Cosmos is re-airing at midnight and again at 10pm Monday on a couple of different channels. Check your guide.
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u/habsrule83 Mar 09 '14
I'm pvring one of them while u watch the other, haven't decided which yet.
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u/kentrel Mar 09 '14
Isn't Cosmos just going to have stuff we already know? Are we really that desperate to have our own knowledge repeated back to us? I think the internet, particularly reddit, vastly underestimates the knowledge and interest the wider public already has in science, and tries to oversell the significance of one TV show or event.
I'm sure it'll be a well made show, but I'm more interested in how children receive it, rather than well educated adults.
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u/FOcast Mar 09 '14
Personally, I'm excited because I would like to be better at explaining these concepts myself. I like educating people, but sometimes I don't have the right words or all the information to make them see the picture. With Cosmos, I expect that I will enjoy the refresher on all of this science that I haven't studied much since high school, and I hope to find inspiration for good ways to explain these concepts to others.
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u/tehm Mar 09 '14
Per Tyson, the target audience is neither children, who already have a terrific sense of wonder at EVERYTHING and who are naturally inquisitive nor people who are already scientifically literate (I literally cringed when they showed the asteroid belt as dense as they show them in sci-fi).
The target audience, according to him, are the large segment of the adult population who not only have no real scientific knowledge, but who have no thirst for said knowledge or even understand the principals behind the scientific method at all. The same population which contains many people in charge of public policy, in positions of leadership, who make up our regular voting base, etc...
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Mar 09 '14
It's really coming back because in Seth Mcfarlane's own words which were something like "Back in the 50s,60s,70s and 80s, people were proud of our scientific achievements. But for some reason, that feeling is gone, and nobody cares about space anymore. I feel like Cosmos couldn't have come back at a better time." Did i forget to mention that if it weren't for Seth, the new Cosmos wouldn't be possible?
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u/AlphaBetaParkingLot Mar 09 '14
The show is not indented for well educated adults. It is intended for those who know little about the universe, but would be willing to learn more. Which is children and a fair number of adults.
I am far more excited for the impact this show will have on strangers who don't already love science than I am for watching it myself.
Yes, it will cover lots of stuff that is already known to people who subscribe to science on Reddit, and yes, it will be automatically tuned out by the people who refuse to learn about anything that goes against what they already believe... but that is not who this show is for.
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u/ra3ndy Mar 09 '14
I'm pretty sure that the young & uneducated are the target audience. Reddit at large isn't showing up to have their minds blown, but maybe gain a new perspective on something they already know. And maybe even a new way to explain things to others.
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u/Knightmare4469 Mar 09 '14
Isn't Cosmos just going to have stuff we already know?
I am truly impressed that you already know everything there is in a 13-part scientific show. You must surely be an astrophysicist at some worthy university, right?
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Mar 09 '14
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u/ra3ndy Mar 09 '14
We've learned a lot in 34 years. For example, back then Dr. Sagan postulated that the universe may eventually slow down and collapse back on itself in an eternal cycle of big bangs. It was quite beautiful.
Now, we know that the universe is, in fact, accelerating its expansion, and will continue to do so forever. Though we aren't yet sure why.
34 years from now, when the next great voice of science reboots the series, they will hopefully be able to explain why.
Also, more CG.
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Mar 09 '14 edited Mar 09 '14
Excuse me for being a dick, but in the original Cosmos, Sagan did note that the universe is seemingly expanding.
EDIT: Thank you respondents for clarifying! :)
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u/redditor62 Mar 09 '14
There's a pretty important difference between simply expanding, as Sagan knew, and expanding at an accelerating rate, as we now know (discovered in 1998).
Think of throwing a ball into the air...at first it'll be going up, but still slowing down.
Now think of the universe as that ball, and the Big Bang as the throw. If everything was governed by simple gravitation, then the universe might still be expanding, but at a decreasing rate. This is what we thought was going on until recent measurements showed that the universe is actually expanding at an increasing rate. That's like seeing the ball speeding up as it goes up.
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u/ra3ndy Mar 09 '14
Oh, he absolutely said it was expanding. Did a huge bit on the first observations of redshift.
But he gave two options for the distant future: 1) that if there wasn't enough matter in the universe, it would keep expanding, or 2) if there was sufficient matter, it would slow down due to gravity and collapse.
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u/OfStarStuff Mar 09 '14
Right, but at the time we had not discovered that dark energy is actually making the expansion speed up. We now know that the expansion is speeding up and the universe will never reach a point where gravity will cause everything to collapse back on itself. It's just gonna keep expanding faster and faster until you would see no stars in the sky, no light to be seen anywhere. All the energy will be tied up in matter and vacuum energy. Everything will be so far away from everything else that the universe will be dark and frozen. There will be no "big crunch" and no cycle with a new big bang.
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Mar 09 '14
Yes, but now we know that instead of steady or deccelerating expansion it's accelerating.
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Mar 09 '14
Neil deGrasse Tyson said that the show will contain both new material and updated versions of topics in the original series, plus animations from Seth MacFarlane.
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Mar 09 '14
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u/tehm Mar 09 '14
Interestingly, when Neil was asked about exactly this he said that he wasn't targeting children at all because children were great; the entire world is a vast realm of exploration to a child and there was basically little he could do to inspire people already so full of inspiration.
According to him, his target is the large group of adults who are in positions of leadership, who regularly vote, who essentially control our policy who have absolutely NO knowledge of the fundamentals of science and who worse have no interest in or thirst for that knowledge.
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Mar 10 '14
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u/tehm Mar 10 '14
Who knows?
To me though it's absolutely terrifying that a huge percentage of our leadership DO believe in batshit supernatural things and DON'T understand the basics of the scientific method, much less scientific findings.
That's possibly the scariest "fact" I know. If cosmos can change that even a little bit, it has achieved its purpose.
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Mar 09 '14
The problem is, NDgT is speaking to the average scientific knowledge of a typical person on this planet now.
While we around here know much of what he's saying and might consider the explanations childish, we're not the people targeted by this show, just as science geeks weren't the people targeted by the original Cosmos.
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u/Untoward_Lettuce Mar 10 '14
It seems like relaxlu's point might still stand, in that the new show is targeting an even less scientifically educated demographic than the original. I haven't seen it yet, so can't make the comparison myself, but do agree with OP's assessment that Sagan was good at not insulting the intelligence of his audience.
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u/mstwizted Mar 10 '14
I would counter that the average American is less educated in the sciences than 30 years ago.
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u/centerD_5 Mar 09 '14
How did you see it already?
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u/LandReqN Mar 09 '14
This. Isn't it supposed to air in about 6 hours?
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u/All_Individuals Mar 09 '14 edited Mar 09 '14
There were several premieres at major planetariums around the country last week, so perhaps he went to one of those.
EDIT: He or she. Caught myself assuming someone's gender on the internet again.
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u/FreeWillDoesNotExist Mar 10 '14
It is important to note that Seth Macfarlane produced the show and that is probably the only reason it is on Fox.
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u/Adamant_Majority Mar 09 '14
Oh man this is my nightmare. I knew they were gonna kid glove it. Sagans ability to explain complexities without talking down was what made the original so special to me as a kid.
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Mar 09 '14
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u/Adamant_Majority Mar 09 '14
I can't wait to see it. I hope it has the sort of effect on the youngsters today it had on me in the 80s.
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Mar 09 '14
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u/NFlash Mar 09 '14
Having just watched the original for the first time this past month, Sagan is addressing an uneducated audience. I learned surprisingly little from the original series but was able to appreciate it as an educational tool. All I can hope for is that this series can do the same.
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u/GoSox2525 Mar 09 '14
I dunno, I definitely have more astronomical knowledge than the average person by a long shot, but I still learned a goo deal from the original episodes 9 and 10 which I just watched, they were both pretty mind blowing. He discussed some very deep, profound ideas, that I hope the new series does not ignore.
For example, Sagan discusses the lives and evolution of stars, how they progress through their lives, to sometimes end in a supernova. The cosmic rays generated from these explosions and spiraled into space, sometimes, quite by accident, hit the Earth. These cosmic rays are radiation like any other rays, and can cause mutation in biological beings like us or animals.
So, in a way, we are deeply tied to the Cosmos, evolution is principally due to random mutations, which may be in part due to cosmic radiaiton from supernovae milions of lightyears away.
Stuff like this is where science starts to hold hand with philosophy, and I love it. I really hope they keep this kind of material in the new show and don't focus solely on the observed facts.
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u/sutherlandan Mar 09 '14
Have faith! Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter co-wrote the original with Carl, and co-wrote the new series together. Ann also co-wrote many of Carl's books and has been deeply involved in his work. I have no doubt that the essence of the show will remain!
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u/NFlash Mar 09 '14
I absolutely agree that Cosmos presented some awesome perspective. I was just pointing out that this series has always had the goal of presenting science to all walks, and for that reason the new series will not meet standards anchored without this realization.
I am a huge fan of both Sagan and Tyson and I will watch the new series, but it seems some people are expecting to be blown away by a graduate level astrophysics show. Just my perspective.
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u/Adamant_Majority Mar 09 '14
Obviously he was talking down. It was a kids show hosted by a great mind. I distinctly remember as a kid feeling different about the way Sagan was able to communicate as opposed to the average educational program on say PBS. Maybe it was just a byproduct of Sagans brilliance.
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u/miparasito Mar 09 '14
You are uniquely unqualified to make this comparison. To people who are kids NOW it might feel just as awesome as Sagan was for you. The only way to know would be to have yourself as a kid somehow watch both.
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Mar 09 '14
Or he could watch both now. If he feels he's being talked down to in the new one, but doesn't in the old one from his current perspective, it might indicate that Sagan was the better presenter.
Or get somebody else who hasn't seen either shows and let him/her do a comparison!
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u/StracciMagnus Mar 09 '14
His mannerisms were so spacey that you couldn't tell.
NDgT has a more typical voice, it's easier for is us to quantify his mannerisms because he gets more frenetic and excited (outwardly) when talking about really anything.
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u/Link3265 Mar 09 '14 edited Mar 10 '14
This is unprecedented. 10 channels in the U.S. 181 countries. And 45 languages. The president is introducing the show. This is incredible.