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Cosmos Back on TV

05-06-14

The series Cosmos is being aired again with 13 new episodes produced by a team that may be considered old and new. 
The original TV series aired in 1980 written by Ann Druyan, Steven Soter, and Carl Sagan who was also the presenter. 
The 2014 series, subtitled A Spacetime Odyssey, is now co-created by Soter and Druyan, with Brannon Braga as the
producer and Neil deGrasse Tyson as the presenter.

The 2014 series cleverly employs animations to explain its chosen topics to a general audience.  As the name implies,
Cosmos is all-encompassing to the universe, and is in fact all about the Universe, the philosopher Pythagoras regarded as
the first person to apply the term cosmos (Greek κόσμος) to an orderly universe.

The documentary could be supplemental to most anyone’s study of astronomy or space science since the topics are
perhaps ones less considered within the traditional venues of the science fields.  For instance, what was the actual relation
between the work of Halley and Newton and how, or if, did they collaborate ?  What is the meaning of all the lead precautions
(paint for the house and gas in the car, for example) and how did it come down to one person’s conviction to undermine
this problem ?  Were the first “computers” a group of Harvard women who teamed in 1901 to systematically
journal the star constellations ? 

Like its predecessor, the new Cosmos brings up ideas that may not be so obvious, or maybe the obvious was never that
known.  The series is a must for a budding scientist and even the seasoned scientist may glimpse a new fact or two - but
as the name series implies – Cosmos is for everyone.