COSMOS Then and Now, Keith Cowing
“The new incarnation of “COSMOS” hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson debuted the other night. Highly anticipated, this new effort seeks to reboot, rekindle, and revitalize the indelible impression that its predecessor, hosted by Carl Sagan, made on many of us back in 1980. The first episode of the new COSMOS did not disappoint. Will it be the equal of its predecessor? Hard to say after just one episode – but nothing I saw leads me to think that it will be anything but spectacular and on a par with Sagan’s pioneering work.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

7 replies on “COSMOS Re-imagined”

  1. Excellent article, I can’t wait for the Blu-ray release of the new COSMOS so I can watch it without commercial interruptions.

  2. I thought it was pretty good, other than the botched history in the Bruno story.

  3. My only quibble was.. when viewing the asteroid belt, is there *anywhere* in the belt itself that looks like the debris field depicted? That looked more out of Empire Strikes Back than Terran Asteroid Belt. (Note– I could be wrong).

    –J

    1. If you stood on any asteroid any where in the belt, you would be unlikely to see more than one other asteroid, and that would be an unresolved point of light.

  4. Cosmos STO overlooks the collision theory of the creation of our Moon. Tyson, if he had final say, does not include the collision of a Mars sized body with the Earth but he does include that the Moon orbited very close to the Earth early on and drifted away (as rotational energy transferred to Lunar orbital energy). The collision forming the Moon is as important, well more so, as the many misses that the Dinosaur killing asteroid avoided over billions of years to lead to the fateful collision with Earth.

  5. Any object in the Oort Cloud is as far away as we are from Neptune, sez NDT; pretty cool. I really know the density was so low.

    I watched it initially with trepidation, thinking it might be a moving version of his NY Museum, which is pretty disappointing. I was wrong. Pacing and visuals excellent. He’s conveying the *magic* just like CS.

    I also noticed the difference in the opening pan with NDT standing on a drought-wracked piece of California coastline, the same spot was quite green when CS stood there.

  6. Anything directed at elevating the public’s consciousness with regards to science is a welcome development. Keep it up.

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