Renowned Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson made a speech on having a different perspective of the universe and looking beyond our own inflated egos. The video was posted on the Big Think channel on youtube. I found it very enlightening and made a more cinematic version of that speech.. Here is the video.

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This would be a good place to discuss the new "Cosmos" series which just ended on the Fox channel. I thoroughly enjoyed EVERY episode and saw most episodes twice. They are jam packed with data that is easy to forget.

 

Anyone else see the series? What did you think?

 

In early July the Science channel has new episodes of "How the Universe Works". Don't miss it!

Edited June 17, 201411 yr by Airbrush

I thoroughly enjoyed that series as well

I'm also a fan of the new Cosmos. Neil DeGrasse Tyson (hereafter just "Neil") is a much better presenter than Carl Sagan. I found Sagan's exposition technique a bit pompous, as if he were speaking to a crowd of 6-year-olds. Neil is far more direct, speaking in a manner typical to discussions between equals...despite the fact he knows far more about the topic than 99.99+% of the viewership.

 

Neil's animation also does a great job in those places where words don't well convey the concepts involved.

I thought the series was brilliantly done, aside of course from the pretty well explained ideas articulated well by prof, tyson, they went the extra mile in making some lovely special effects xD (i know that's not particularly important in a good documentary but hey, if we're appealing to the general public of all ages, it's gotta look exciting)

i didn't like the part near the end with carl sagan making that long speech about earth being a small pin prick on which everybody lives and dies and things, i disagree with what i think he's implying, namely the idea that because we don't occupy a large volume compared with stars, galaxy and the observable universe we are somehow insignificant. since when does significance have to do with size? a deadly virus is pretty small compared to a human, does that make it insignificant?

 

anyway aside from that i thought it was great, i found his explanations around relativity to be very handwavy but i can understand the general public may get bored with the details easily. i'd have liked there to have been an episode on the currently unproven hypotheses and ideas in science, like some explanations for dark matter/ dark energy and things like string theory and loop quantum gravity etc.