From Brian Cox’s Wikipedia entry:
“He has stated in many interviews and in an episode of Wonders of the Universe[61] that when he was 12, the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan was a key factor in inspiring him to become a physicist”
Oh, irony!
Pre-internet, but not pre-cable, which was how I watched it.
IMO, the new series, in comparison to the old, is dreadful.
That synthesizer music really made it feel space age-y.
You had PBS on cable in 1980?
Yes. It’s still the only way to watch it in most of Canada.
If we’re talking Brian Cox we have to talk about the spoofs:
Well, that’s this universe done. What do we do for an encore?
Yes, and it could have quite a robust life being shown in classrooms.
Well of course I’m heartbroken and so is my daughter. Anyone have some recommendations for similar shows that can be watched online?
The best part about Cosmos was how everything was simplified and still interesting for those of us who knew most of what was being shown already. We already watched the original but I don’t think it held my 9 year old’s interest like the new version.
This hotel is shit.
Brian Cox is foekin’ awesome.
I really only knew the old Cosmos from the book. I liked the new one, I thought it stayed interesting to the last. NDGT remains respectable AFAIAC, and now he’s famous so there ya go.
The thing that really got me watching this new version of Cosmos was just how much our knowledge of the Universe has changed in the thirty-odd years since the original show came out. At the time, I was the Astronomy TA at my college, and I remember how baffled everyone was by the orbital dynamics of galaxies. We hadn’t yet confirmed the existence of exoplanets. And Sagan seemed to come down on the side of the closed, oscillating model of the Cosmos. Now we’ve found thousands of planets orbiting other stars, we know about dark matter and dark energy (still no idea of what they are and how they work, though), and it looks as though the Universe is flat and will keep on expanding at a speed faster than that of light forever.
I wish I could stick around for another two or three hundred years just to see how things finally turn out!
This is totally how I felt about the series.
I really wanted to love it, but it just left me dissatisfied overall, with only fleeting moments of awesomeness. The history of the scientists and the discoveries really bogged down the awe and wonder I thought the show should’ve been more heavy on.
I found myself contemplating the 2.5D animation budget/production more as there was so much of that work to be done over anything else. And while I liked the style and execution that’s not gonna get anyone excited about the universe. Sagan balanced those parts much better in the original.
Once they started the blatant anti-Creationism stuff they were toast on Fox.
Fox and Fox News are two very different beasts that happen to share a name and owner.
I really like the visualizations. There’s some stuff I sorta know, but seeing it really helps. I loved seeing atoms with their electrons jumping from state to state.
Neil deGrasse Tyson v. the Right: Cosmos, Christians and the Battle for American Science
What was the point of that?
Who is freaking out about Cosmos? One creationist article written months ago and then to find further evidence we get links to books on Amazon.com and Wikipedia.
This Sean McElwee character should keep Neil deGrasse Tyson’s name off his keyboard if he’s going to use him to drum-up an excuse to complain that right wingers don’t like communism. Cosmos did a fine job making its case and doesn’t need manufactured nonsense like this to back it up.
Anyone know when/if it’ll be available on Amazon or netflix for streaming?