Fox news is remaking Carl Sagan’s iconic Cosmos series with the help of Seth MacFarlane (creator of family guy) and Neil Degrasse Tyson. It will premier on Fox on this Sunday.
Why re-create it?
There’s a lot to be said for science education through the glamor of a popular television series. Carl Sagan’s original series came out during the Cold War, when we as a human race were very focused on local issues; it’s hard to pursue astronomy when you’re going through bomb drills on a daily basis. His series strove to provide the viewers with a “cosmic perspective” in a time when the world needed a wider view of the universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson hopes that in the present political climate, this series will remind viewers of our place as world citizens. In the emerging environmental crisis, the hope is that humankind can relearn its place in the universe and come to appreciate the grand scale of things.
Even if none of the above appeals to you, the technological advancements in filming have achieved such a level that this recreation of the Cosmos will be glorious in its effects.
Pale Blue Dot [This image was taken by Voyager 1 on its swing past Saturn in 1990]:
Carl Sagan said:
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
unravelingthesky 