Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey 2014 TV series discussion

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Hmmm, a bit too much on the speculative side, this latest one.
 
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Bandersnatch said:
Hmmm, a bit too much on the speculative side, this latest one.

Only the last five minutes. And: they told us it was going to be speculative. So it's ok in my book.
 
Bandersnatch said:
Hmmm, a bit too much on the speculative side, this latest one.

Most of it wasn't speculative actually-what it did do was incorrectly blur the line between math and physics. If they had just explained the difference between an eternal black hole and a realistic black hole resulting from gravitational collapse, and reserved their discussions about black holes connecting different asymptotically flat space-times to the former then it would have been fine-they would just be talking about the maximal (Kruskal) extension of Schwarzschild space-time. IIRC they did not make this distinction so that took away from the accuracy of their discussion-but really I doubt anyone who watched even cares about such details.
 
The Carl Sagan hero worship is getting to be a bit much. It felt right in the first two episodes, but he is overdoing it now.
 
Anyone who watches will get from it that the universe is a black hole, black holes are in fact wormholes, and multiverse is as good as fact.
I know they gave caveats of it all being a big 'perhaps', but I'm pretty sure that's going to be lost on most of the audience.

What I'm saying is I think they went for the Michio Kaku approach with this one, and as with Kaku it's going to do more harm than good.

And yeah, I mean the last few minutes only. The rest was great.
 
Algr said:
The Carl Sagan hero worship is getting to be a bit much. It felt right in the first two episodes, but he is overdoing it now.
Since the original Cosmos was Carl Sagan's and his wife is involved with this show, I think we can expect to see tributes to him in the series.
 
Evo said:
Since the original Cosmos was Carl Sagan's and his wife is involved with this show, I think we can expect to see tributes to him in the series.

Well, it isn't JUST that, Evo, it's also that

(1) Tyson has a strong personal admiration for Sagan, based on an experience meeting Sagan when he, Tyson, was about 17, and

(2) It isn't just that Sagan was on the original show, it is that the original was an absolutely outstanding presentation that would deserved kudos even if Tyson had never met Sagan.

I'm sure you know this, but I'm stating it to remind/inform members who may not know it.
 
Just finished watching it. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Will watch it again tomorrow evening, I'm sure there's more for me to learn in there lol

I'm really glad that Tyson is spending time in each episode going over the scientific method, keeping it simple and explaining how and why it works coupled with examples, it's something that everyone needs to understand.

"There can be no stronger test of an idea than it's predictive power." -Tyson, Cosmos 2014.
He used an orchid flower and a moth from Madagascar this time around. Darwin had seen the flower, the pollen is stored down a long thin tube, and then speculated that an insect must exist with a tongue long enough to reach the goodies hidden deep inside. It took 50 years but the prediction was confirmed.
I had read about this a long time ago but had completely forgotten about it. Won't be forgetting about this again any time soon :)

I however did not know about the reason why the neutrinos from the 1987 Supernova arrived earlier than the light. I knew they had arrived earlier but I never dug deeper to find out why. My first guess as I watched the show was that the neutrinos didn't travel faster than light but just left earlier, that perhaps there was a process going on in the star that produced them slightly before the star went supernova.
NDT's explanation made WAY more sense. Neutrinos interact very poorly with matter so they just got out of the star a lot faster than the light and the shockwave were able to and we saw them first.

There's also a reverberating sentiment I find in everything NDT says, the interconnectedness of everything, and not the new age mumbo jumbo type. IIRC, one of the first times I saw him may have been in the season 1 finale of History channel's The Universe, where he talks about how we're connected to each other biologically, to the Earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. There was another talk he gave at Beyond Belief '06 where he goes over the common origin of the iron in a meteorite and the iron in our blood.

In today's episode it's how we are all breathing the same carbon and oxygen, stuff that probably has been inside every single one of our ancestors. I'm not too sure about this one though, they are all exactly identitcal so to me it felt a little like saying 'you used the number 5 and it's the same one that Newton used!' It's a bit of a meh moment, but I get what he was trying to do.

His delivery has a very unique way of not only teaching you about your true place in the cosmos but also connecting with you on an emotional level that doesn't leave you feeling insignificant. I've had my girlfriend watch some other popular science shows/talks and after watching a show about how the Sun may at the end of it's life swallow up the Earth or how the end of our universe may play out in a big rip, she always says, "that's so sad." But I haven't heard that yet with NDT. Perhaps she's starting off with the misconception of what our place in the cosmos is but the point is that the delivery here is disarming.

Good teachers not only know their subject but also know how to communicate it. Dawkins was one of the first that I ever listened/watched and I loved every second, but he's not everyone's cup of tea. NDT's on the other hand got it in spades, especially the communication.
 
Just watched Season 1, episode 8. I loved it. So far I'm incredibly impressed. All the spirit of the original Cosmos, and I'm still learning good stuff. Just wonderful. I love it.
 
It reminded me of:
marie_curie.png
 
collinsmark said:
Just watched Season 1, episode 8. I loved it. So far I'm incredibly impressed. All the spirit of the original Cosmos, and I'm still learning good stuff. Just wonderful. I love it.

Yeah, it's a really good series so far. I really enjoy the focus on the history of science. Many science enthousiasts already know most of the facts, but rarely know the history involved.
 
Lately the series is moving more into new material that I didn't already know. It's getting PERSONAL!

:)
 
I think they are doing a really excellent job.
 
collinsmark said:
Just watched Season 1, episode 8. I loved it. So far I'm incredibly impressed. All the spirit of the original Cosmos, and I'm still learning good stuff. Just wonderful. I love it.
I have to catch up with the series. I watched episode 8, and I was interested to learn about the development of the stellar classification system, and the work done by the team of women at Harvard, and of Cecilia Payne's dissertation on stellar composition, which opposed the prevailing understanding of the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonia_Maury

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/cecilia-payne-profile

https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/news-posts/what-is-a-cepheid-variable-star (this is an additional link)

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book

"Excerpts from Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge, edited by Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson, a publication of the New Press. © 2000 American Museum of Natural History."
 
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I wasn't that thrilled with tonight's episode. The first half was overly speculative on the origin of life. At this time, the correct answer to "how did life begin" is "we don't know (but we have some guesses)." Tyson brought out one of the most speculative guesses of all, exogenesis/panspermia. Panspermia says life came to Earth from Mars, or maybe from a planet orbiting some other star. What about all of those other guesses? Tyson only mentioned a couple, in very brief passing. There are a number of others he didn't mention at all. For now, they are all guesses.

I've never liked it when popularizers of science tout their own special speculation as the answer to life, the universe, and everything without one mention that what they are touting is highly speculative. I was hoping that Tyson would rise above this, but apparently not.
 
That's terrible.

I wonder how much say he has over the script? If any? He's just the narrator.
 
Evo said:
I wonder how much say he has over the script? If any? He's just the narrator.
I suspect quite a bit. The preachy moments, and there have been a few, are consistent with his preachy moments elsewhere. Regarding tonight's episode, he is an astrophysicist, after all. Exogenesis / panspermia is consonant with his profession. Confirmation bias, perhaps. Panspermia says his science is indeed the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
 
Evo said:
That's terrible.

I wonder how much say he has over the script? If any? He's just the narrator.

I'm hearing more and more of the tone of Ann Druyan (producer) on the episodes. Her bio says she was once into ancient astronauts, pre Sagan.
 
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I posted the comment on Twitter and Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote

I think speculative is fine, but they should make the boundary btwn science and spec clearer
 
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Last week came the announcement that 'the greatest genius who ever lived' was Newton, period. No IMO, no in this or that field, no dependence on influence, no qualifiers at all. Sorry Aristotle, Shakespeare, thanks for playing but our host NgT says you go home with the goat from door two.
 
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mheslep said:
I'm hearing more and more of the tone of Ann Druyan (producer) on the episodes. Her bio says she was once into ancient astronauts, pre Sagan.
I had heard this part was going to be a problem due to her wonky beliefs. Too bad.
 
I watched the episode about faraday and that was the first episode I have seen. I thought it was good but I'm not into the cartoons, I would prefer actors.
 
Well I've seen a few of the episodes. I don't dig the cartoons either - I feel like I'm watching "schoolhouse rock". It also seems to spend a lot of time making sure minor characters in science history get their recognition, rather than actually explaining the science they discovered. The music, compared to the original, isn't doing it for me. Summing up... I fell asleep during the last episode I watched. Not at all absorbing.
 
tfr000 said:
Well I've seen a few of the episodes. I don't dig the cartoons either - I feel like I'm watching "schoolhouse rock".

The producer, Seth MacFarlane, is an animator so we shouldn't be surprised by animations :)
 
How many episodes are there? The last one I saw is entitled "Immortals". I loved the episode about optics and then the one about Faraday's discoveries.
 
There are 13 episodes. Tomorow (June 8) is the last one.