Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"

it is here in case anyone else wants to be really cool like me.

This collection of Voyager's electromagnetic recordings of the planets is still one of my fave drone/ambient albums. Drop me a line if you want a copy.

omg tehresa that makes me almost want to get a cell phone.

woah that sounds awesome
xpost

>This collection of Voyager's electromagnetic recordings of the planets is still one of my fave drone/ambient albums.

I have only four of those, from when they were being distributed as individual discs for each planet by the BRAIN / MIND RESEARCH record label

and they get dragged and out and listened to frequently, they are keepers

man if they are milton parker approved, i must certainly listen to them!

no idea exactly how they processed the data into audible waveforms, but... not going to argue, they are classic CDs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs

i was a pre-teen astronomy nut, even before i'd seen a single episode of "cosmos." when i finally did (on one of its periodic rebroadcasts on the local PBS station), i thought that i'd gotten over astronomy (an eighties version of "astronomy for dummies" that i took out of the school library went into a lot of the ridiculously hard mathematical concepts of astrophysics, and since i've never been a math ace that pretty much killed any dreams i ever had of being an astronomer). anyway, "cosmos" reopened my own love and fascination for astronomy which never really died.

watching these old episodes again on Netflix, i realize now how much of what Sagan had to say about science, rationality and humanity's place in the cosmos (for lack of a better turn) came to influence my own adult thinking about such things. almost subconscious -- it was like walking through an archaeology dig of my own way of thinking. it also helped that Sagan had one of the most mellifluous voices imaginable, plus the skill in making non-scientists understand difficult-to-grasp concepts.

I am watching this on Netflix and it just the most wonderful thing I've ever seen.

I sometimes see the series on DVD in a store but I always put it back, thinking something that's 30 years old will be at least half wrong by now. Would it be?

The last time I saw it on television, they had "updated" some of the animations with cgi...but probably sometime in the 90s, because it looked terrible. Even worse (and far less charming) than the originals.

it's still on Netflix fwiw

I'm in Netflix-less Belgium but thx

Think all of it is available on youtube.

most of this is still "right", but even if it weren't, it's so good that it'll be worth watching long after we have better models for everything it describes. it's sistine-chapel-level.

(one of the reasons it's so good in fact is how constantly it hammers the message "and this is only what we think SO FAR!")

ok, thanks for that, I'm definitely getting it next time.

xp I just watched the Mars episode and the whole time Sagan is going on about being biased towards seeing what we want and/or expect to see ("I'm a carbon chauvinist. (...) I'm a water chauvinist. (...) Maybe it's because I'm made of up carbon and water.")

Thing is, its not just about the scientific theories, its about the narrative of the progression of human thought over the millenia. The wasted opportunities, the significant leaps ahead, etc. That he 'visits' the library of Alexandria in the first episode pretty much displays much of Cosmos's M.O.

Billions and billions of classic

planetary science has changed a huge amount because of the probes of the last 10 years, although a lot of what we know (and the best images) came from voyager (which were also post-cosmos).

cosmology/extragalactic stuff (pretty much only episode 10) is a totally different subject, and the limited amount he was presumably able to present has been superseded.

otherwise it looks it covers areas in which progress has been incremental or negligible.

my impression though is that it's kind of timeless and the specific material is almost not the point. i haven't seen it though.

Your impression is correct. Why, I said as much in response to you five years ago at the start of the thread. :-D

haha, yeah, in that sense its got more in common with civilization or the ascent of man that it has with, say, that brian cox thing (or that brian greene thing for that matter), both of which are current knowledge but lack the personal, essayistic stuff and are going to date badly.

one day i will watch this show and civilization and then poll them vs. the ascent of man (and then vote for ascent of man)

One day you will host your own show 'Caek's Corner,' we all guest star, the scientific knowledge of humanity is improved forevermore and you dedicate your combined Nobel in Peace, Literature and Physics to 'that one bunch of people I knew at some point...I forget their names.'

Thanks for confirming it's not as (out)dated as I feared.

i thought about Carl Sagan and "Cosmos" the other day when i read the story about the Kepler satellite finding planets that might contain life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk4XN3KtOCg&feature=player_embedded

i still remember the episode where Carl visited his old classroom in Brooklyn to do a guest lecture on astronomy, passed around NASA pictures of different satellites in our solar system, and demonstrated the techniques that late-70s astronomers used to detect if a star had any planets.

BTW, the Cosmos episode about Kepler himself (and his discoveries) is a thing of beauty ... one of the few films that makes me well up a little bit.

Right. 10 episodes into this. It takes a little getting used to, the slow voice, the dreamy sequences, the sometimes dated and repeated synth music (don't watch one episode a day like I tried initially), but overall, it's very very very impressive indeed. I'm joining your ranks, fellow Saganists.

Kenan OTM re: Connections, by the way. Series 1 and The Day The Universe Changed are both awesome (Connections 2 and 3 not so much)

Oh, and you were right about Cosmos not being outdated at all. Some details here and there (dark matter and dark energy are too new to be included, for instance), but nothing big.

I wanna see the outside of the Spaceship Of The Imagination!

the slow voice, the dreamy sequences and the synth music are what make it epic and timeless! if you want frantic pacing, breathless narration and shitty music, there are multiple seasons of "the universe" available for viewing.

when the people assembling the VHS tape edition decided they couldn't afford to license all of the tracks they used for the original broadcasts, they cut about 80% of the most amazing synth tracks: Heldon / Jarre / Eno / Reich / Schulze / Froese / Stockhausen etc. and they hired Vangelis to write a bunch of new music to fill in the gaps. this being the late 80's, the new Vangelis music was actually much more dated & repetitive than the original broadcasts

so while the DVDs look wonderful, on the musical side of things they're a step down, and another example of how exorbitant sync licenses are prompting us to mutilate broadcast history

http://cosmic_voyager.tripod.com/cosmosindex.htm

the original Vangelis music is still pretty amazing. not to mention all of the classical music selections throughout.

i almost always tear up a little when any episode of this hits its final five minutes and starts in with the tinkly-piano-backed summation

i also love any shot of sagan looking thoughtfully out the viewport of his SHIP OF THE IMAGINATION, especially the totally lol one in episode 2 or 3 where he watches a supernova (i.e. stares off-camera with a grave but accepting expression while someone shines a light in his face and cranks up a dimmer switch)

it's the url you've all been dreading

http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/fox-orders-13-episode-sequel-to-carl-sagans-cosmos-docu-series-to-be-produced-by-seth-macfarlane-for-2013-launch/

That's for damn sure.

I hate him

FOX? Is the Cosmos going to be 6,000 years old?

I hate McFarlane so much. I wonder why a sequel being made now -- is it because of the relative success of The Wonders of the Universe et al?

The Cosmos Corporation can't put the original Cosmos on Blu-Ray since it's way too old, so if they want to keep earning $$$ with the name they'll have to make something new.

(correction: it's called Cosmos Studios)

UGHHHHH @ mcfarlane

i guess i shouldve read the article, VERY glad it's NOT hosted by mcfarlane

I remember watching Cosmos and feeling like the universe is awesome - these days I watch it and feel that the internet is awesome

stewie talks about supernovas

http://www.avclub.com/articles/seth-macfarlane-to-update-carl-sagans-cosmos-for-f,60020/

http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/60/60020/sagan_jpg_627x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpg

1969: Civilization
1973: Ascent of Man
1980: Cosmos

2011: Cosmos II: WTF

As talked about upthread...

right. just making the point that no one can be bothered to come up with something new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRmz0HrECIQ

yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjrmK8t6VYk

:'‑)ƪ(˘▽˘ƪ) :'‑(