Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

[SgtRock]

Greeting EEVBees:

--I loved the old show, and I like the new one as well, even forgiving the 1/4 of the show spent over hyping and mischaracterizing the life of Dominican Friar Giordano Bruno. While it is true that Bruno did advocate for the Copernican view, he went even further to say that stars are suns (with planets yet), he also advocated for pigmies being the result of a second creation. Magic and Astrology figured prominently in his writings as well.

--The link below give a good run down of the history of Bruno.

http://www.thepinkflamingoblog.com/2014/03/16/why-neil-degrasse-tyson-is-no-carl-sagan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-neil-degrasse-tyson-is-no-carl-sagan

--Indeed, one of Bruno's prognostications was correct. And indeed the bloody predations of the Inquisition are well known, killing as many folks during its reign as Stalin did in an afternoon. Other than these two facts, the case for Bruno as a science advocate who died for his beliefs, is pure television. That is OK, we will let the children learn to love science. We can repair their history later. All this above may help the series. It is produced by Fox, and as yet, no one has said the usual about Fox, Murdoch, Ailes et al.

--I would have recommended Trofim Lysenko as a very much  better example of the same thing, only much worse. See below Wiki article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Repercussions

"From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943...."

--In any case I plan to watch all of the new Tyson Cosmos episodes. I have also promised myself to watch (for the umpteenth time the Sagan episodes), one through thirteen as each Tyson episode débuts.

--PS If "40%+ of  Americans believe the bible is literally true",  it would imply that the Catholics believe it, which is demonstrably false. The Catholics do not believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. Virgin Birth yes, 6000 years no. Yes?

"[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."
Margaret Sanger  1879 - 1966

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[EEVblog]

It is produced by Fox, and as yet, no one has said the usual about Fox, Murdoch, Ailes et al.

And why would they? Because the show is excellent and stands on it's own merits, the producers and backers are to be applauded for it. Only a fool would continue to berate someone or a group when they do good work.

--PS If "40%+ of  Americans believe the bible is literally true",  it would imply that the Catholics believe it, which is demonstrably false. The Catholics do not believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. Virgin Birth yes, 6000 years no. Yes?

That's what the surveys say. You either take the surveys as being accurate or you don't. The surveys are done by reputable companies, so it's a safe first assumption to assume they are close to being representative. Unless you have another survey that contradicts it? Because tha's what it will take, another proper reputable survey, not some mere supposition.

[sleemanj]

--PS If "40%+ of  Americans believe the bible is literally true",  it would imply that the Catholics believe it, which is demonstrably false. The Catholics do not believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. Virgin Birth yes, 6000 years no. Yes?

This requires that all the self proclaimed adherents to that faith actually know what the current teaching of that faith is, let alone accept it.

[SgtRock]

Greeting EEVBees:

This requires that all the self proclaimed adherents to that faith actually know what the current teaching of that faith is, let alone accept it.

--Good point. How can the churches be responsible for things they do not teach. I have not seen the survey. I would like to have a look at it. It is not a mere assumption that Catholics do not believe that the entire Bible is literally true. And simple inspection would show that a majority of Christian churches do not hold
that the earth is 6000 years old.  About the only ones who do believe this (not an inconsiderable number I admit) are the Baptists and much, much smaller denominations. Any argument that the Catholic Church is fundamentalist is prima facie untrue. I am afraid that lumping them all into the same category, is not such
a good idea in this case. I want to express my gratitude for being allowed to opine, and admit that I am frequently wrong but never in doubt. I will be glad to vet the survey if someone could provide the link. Hopefully, in the interest of accuracy, the survey did not include only households with a land line phone. We shall see.
--I like Docor Tyson, he is as smart as a whip. But, I love Doctor Carl. I have been doing a little research on Cornell University, Richard Feynman, Hans Bethe (who hired Feynman at $3000 per year), Carl Sagan, and Andrew Gold, long the bête noire of the Peak Petroleum advocates because of Gold's Hypothesis (I.E. Vast
amounts of Deep Oil, was the man who insisted on hiring Sagan after the panty waists at Harvard denied him tenure. In 1969 I was studying Russian at Syracuse University. I was dating a girl at Cornell who was in one of Doc Sagan's classes. She offered to get me into one of his lectures, which were incredibly popular at the
time. Due to a car accident we missed the first half of the lecture, but did catch the second half and I got to shake the mans hand. At the time I did not really know who he was, but I was really impressed with his lecture about moons and asteroids, it was thrilling, he had that something, just like Feynman did.

PS  I do not know why this post is has all the unwanted carriage returns, I cannot fix them, short of retyping the whole. Sorry.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Carl Edward Sagan  1934 - 1996

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[kolonelkadat]

40%+ of Americans who think the bible is literally true.

sigh. I guess this wont mean anything to you since I'm american, but I would wager that the bible is mostly true.

I mean lets look at the story of david. That a man could be named david seems reasonable to me, although it is a bit of a stretch that in a land filled with beezelbubs and nebuchednezaars that some dude would be called something normal like david, but whatever. It cant be impossible.

Its also demonstrably true that a man can kill a man with a rock. So why cant a child? especially if its a kid whose spent his whole life killing things with rocks. With that in mind, it seems plausible that a child could be named david and kill some dude from an opposing army who probably was like "wow, its just some dumbass kid. I dont even have to try."

now maybe youre thinking "but thats not even about god or a miracle or whatever."
so what about the story where that jewish priest was like "hey other gods priest, lets each make a stack of wood. If your god is real then your stack will burn. My stack will burn if my god is real." and so they made their stacks, and then jewish priest was like "I really want to prove my point." and so he poured a bunch of what he claimed was water on it. Long story short, jewish priests pile caught fire and everyone converted to his religion because they saw it burn even after he doused it with "water."

I believe that. I mean its an easy trick. have some dudes go and pour water on it. then you go and pour a bucket of chemical on top of the water. the chemicals then react starting a fire. You call it god and bingo bango, you control a group of barely sentient proto-humans. 

you can explain all the magic tricks in the bible. most of them can even be recreated with a childs chemistry set. Add in the archaeological records that show all the bible towns and villages were real, and  it seems like a safe bet to say the bible is mostly true.

[echen1024]

Out of all the channels that pick to run this... FOX News!

[tom66]

Uh, FOX and FOX NEWS are two different entities.

Whilst Fox News has a pro-conservative bias, Fox as a channel is generally pro-liberal or neutral.

It's an interesting program for Fox to run nonetheless.

[Rigby]

40%+ of Americans who think the bible is literally true.

sigh. I guess this wont mean anything to you since I'm american, but I would wager that the bible is mostly true.

I mean lets look at the story of david. That a man could be named david seems reasonable to me, although it is a bit of a stretch that in a land filled with beezelbubs and nebuchednezaars that some dude would be called something normal like david, but whatever. It cant be impossible.

Its also demonstrably true that a man can kill a man with a rock. So why cant a child? especially if its a kid whose spent his whole life killing things with rocks. With that in mind, it seems plausible that a child could be named david and kill some dude from an opposing army who probably was like "wow, its just some dumbass kid. I dont even have to try."

now maybe youre thinking "but thats not even about god or a miracle or whatever."
so what about the story where that jewish priest was like "hey other gods priest, lets each make a stack of wood. If your god is real then your stack will burn. My stack will burn if my god is real." and so they made their stacks, and then jewish priest was like "I really want to prove my point." and so he poured a bunch of what he claimed was water on it. Long story short, jewish priests pile caught fire and everyone converted to his religion because they saw it burn even after he doused it with "water."

I believe that. I mean its an easy trick. have some dudes go and pour water on it. then you go and pour a bucket of chemical on top of the water. the chemicals then react starting a fire. You call it god and bingo bango, you control a group of barely sentient proto-humans. 

you can explain all the magic tricks in the bible. most of them can even be recreated with a childs chemistry set. Add in the archaeological records that show all the bible towns and villages were real, and  it seems like a safe bet to say the bible is mostly true.

I would wager that bible stories are stories that are passed down through generations from different cultures like fables told to teach a moral or something.  the koran, in this respect, is almost exactly like the bible, as they share > 95% of their stories and teach almost exactly the same moral code.  it is damned uncanny how similar the bible and the koran are.  so alike are they that it could easily lead one to believe that they were the same moral code handed down through generations through the same stories and then spiced up with a little of the local culture at the time of writing. 

we even have physical tangible proof that some of these stories were told long before christianity came into being.  in that way i believe most of the stories told in the bible are somewhat based on a 500th generation photocopy of a handwritten account of a story.  probably a small grain of truth in many of them.

christians: you know that feeling you get when you think of the koran and the muslim religion and how untrue you know it all to be, and how clearly wrong the notion of greek gods like zeus and apollo are, and how every religion that isn't christianity is just wrong?  look at this laughable list of all the deities that have been worshipped.  think of how clearly wrong most of them are.  that is exactly how atheists such as myself feel about all of the same deities, plus christ/god, and all of the same religions, plus christianity. 

atheists and christians really aren't very different.  atheists don't believe in any of the hundreds of gods in those lists, christians don't believe in any of the hundreds of gods in those lists, except one.

[EEVblog]

we even have physical tangible proof that some of these stories were told long before christianity came into being.  in that way i believe most of the stories told in the bible are somewhat based on a 500th generation photocopy of a handwritten account of a story.  probably a small grain of truth in many of them

A lot of the big ticket Christan stuff predates the bible and Jesus. The virgin birth, the resurrection, the wise men, the crusifiction etc, are almost identical stories shared from at last several previous god myths. Why any would still believe it after knowing this history is beyond me.

[Rigby]

believing you know things has a lot to do with not actually knowing things.  ignorance makes you feel smart.

[Richard Head]

Can I recommend reading anything written by Richard Dawkins.
Start with The Selfish gene.

[ve7xen]

I have to say I wasn't very impressed with the first episode. Lots of flashy effects, but very little substance. Silence (well, bombastic music) while they spend 30s on an animation of the wanky ship floating around. There were some interesting tidbits in there, but few and far between. I'll probably give the second episode a watch and give it a second chance, but if it's more of the same I'll stick to my science YouTubers, as they have a much higher content density, as much as I love NDT.

[cimmo]

believing you know things has a lot to do with not actually knowing things.  ignorance makes you feel smart.

AKA, the Dunning-Kruger effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

[mariush]

Episode 2 discusses Evolution, how species adapt, tree of life etc. 

Episode 3 discusses meteors, comets, planetary/celestial motion, newton's laws that made space exploration possible etc - imho this is the best episode so far in the series, very well made.

Episode 4 discusses time, speed of light, gravity, how gravity applies to other objects besides earth,  black holes (black stars) , possibility of universes inside black holes.. imho a bit more flashy effects compared to episode 3 but still quite good (better than episode 1).

I'd say keep watching it and keep in mind you probably know lots of these things, but the series is aimed at people that probably don't get taught these things at school (US has lots of teachers that don't believe in evolution or just don't teach it properly due to their beliefs and lots of kids are basically indoctrinated in churches )

ps. some trivia.. in Episode 4, one of the scientists is voiced by Patrick Steward ( Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek)

[BravoV]

I'd say keep watching it and keep in mind you probably know lots of these things, but the series is aimed at people that probably don't get taught these things at school (US has lots of teachers that don't believe in evolution or just don't teach it properly due to their beliefs and lots of kids are basically indoctrinated in churches )

+1, this series is re-made for youngsters, just keep your expectation realistically.

For me its like enjoying the re-reading of an excellent "old" book, but this time its re-printed and re-touched with much better graphic & better printing technology, thats all.

[echen1024]

I'd say keep watching it and keep in mind you probably know lots of these things, but the series is aimed at people that probably don't get taught these things at school (US has lots of teachers that don't believe in evolution or just don't teach it properly due to their beliefs and lots of kids are basically indoctrinated in churches )

+1, this series is re-made for youngsters, just keep your expectation realistically.

For me its like enjoying the re-reading of an excellent "old" book, but this time it re-printed and re-touched with much better graphic & better printing technology, thats all.

yes, that is how I feel. Luckily my teachers that have touched on this topic majored in biology and believed in evolution.

[Sionyn]

reminds me of these rednecks

[firewalker]

Really enjoyed no 7.

Alexander.

[tom66]

Binge-watched the last three, very impressed so far.
Interested that he didn't bring up lead and lead-free solders and components; but I guess they are a relatively minor problem in comparison to fuel. (the disposal tends to be localised to third world countries so we can pretend it doesn't happen.)
I still use leaded solder, not aware of any good alternatives yet...

[firewalker]

 Cosmos Panel QA.



Alexander.

[lemmegraphdat]

They gonna have that Flying Spaghetti Monster thingy?