Cosmos: Possible Worlds

Long-time readers of this blog may recall my excitement four years ago when Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premièred. Both an update and a sequel to Carl Sagan’s ground-breaking 1980 series Cosmos, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey was hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson and covered a variety of topics concerning humanity’s place in the universe, from the smallest atoms to the largest galaxies, and everything in between. It was both beautiful to watch and highly educational. It’s a series I strongly recommend for gaining a better understanding of science and the world around us.

It’s been a while, but the great news is, Cosmos is coming back for another season! Cosmos: Possible Worlds will air next year. I’ve known about this for some time now, but what I’ve only just learnt is that a new trailer came out last week. Have a watch!

Educational programming is important, and in many ways, science programming is especially so. Cosmos is far from the only science show out there (and there are many good ones, too), but it is one of the most high-profile, and that helps bring it to a larger number of people. We live in a time when science is more and more frequently coming under attack. In the United States, in particular, people in power try to place topics like climate change under the heading of “fake news” and push creationism as being on the same scientific level as evolution.

It’s not limited to the States, though. I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Here in Ontario, we have recently elected a new conservative government that is already seeking to scrap environmental protections put in place by the last government and is fighting against the federal government’s attempts to keep those or similar environmental protections in place. This same provincial government is also scrapping a newly established sex education programme for Ontario students and replacing it with an out-of-date programme from 1998. And they’re doing this for reasons based entirely around misinformation (see here for a good overview of this situation).

As a teacher, I welcome any attempts to bring science and education to people young and old. One of the best ways is to present science in a way that is entertaining and stimulating. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey does this through the use of thrilling visuals. It is truly a feast for the eyes, on par with the numerous fictional shows and games vying to grab the attention of viewers. Along with these visuals, Cosmos also presents its subject matter in a straight-forward, easy-to-understand manner. You don’t need a PhD in physics to understand the show. You don’t really need any background in science at all. Yet even for those with a background in science, it still has much to offer, covering such a diverse array of subjects as it does. One of the great things about Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is also how accessible it is to people of many different ages. I’ve used Cosmos in a classroom with 12-year-old students and have seen it captivate adults as well.

From the preview, Cosmos: Possible Worlds looks to contain these same things—thrilling visuals accompanying an accessible and entertaining discussion of scientific topics. As Neil deGrasse Tyson says, “Things are about to get epic.” I can’t wait!

June Round-Up Plus To Be Takei

June was a very busy month for me—in the non-virtual, non-internet world, that is. Consequently, it was a very slow month here on Of Dice and Pen. I was only able to get a few things posted, but July looks to be a quiet month, so I envision much more productivity here.

I did, however, get three Pathfinder review posted: Occult Mysteries, Shifting Sands, and Blood of the Elements. Coming soon, you can expect to see reviews of Numeria, Land of Fallen Stars and Secrets of the Sphinx, the fourth part of the Mummy's Mask Adventure Path.

June also saw the final couple episodes of Cosmos: “The World Set Free” and “Unafraid of the Dark”. It's only been a few short weeks, but I already miss seeing new episodes each week and writing about them. As I've said before, I think it's amazing that a science series has gotten such a high-profile showing, and I wish more science and documentary shows could receive the same treatment. Of course, just because they're not high-profile doesn't mean we can't seek them out and watch them. There are lots of options out there, and many very good ones, including Carl Sagan's original Cosmos series.

In the realm of science fiction/fantasy documentaries, here's one about Star Trek actor and LGBTQ icon and activist, George Takei: To Be Takei. I'm really quite excited to see this one, as George Takei is a fascinating and funny man.

And this Kickstarter for The Great Kingdom, a documentary about Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, looks like it could be interesting. (Edit: Something weird was happening with the embedding of the preview for The Great Kingdom, so I've removed it. You can watch the preview at the site linked.)

But back in the realm of pure science fiction and fantasy, the exciting news is that Doctor Who will be returning on August 23, as reported in this post.

Have a great July everyone!

Cosmos - Unafraid of the Dark

The Library of Alexandria was a prominent virtual location on Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos series. It is fitting, therefore, that the final episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series should begin in that location. Tyson uses it as both a tale of caution and one of inspiration. Before its destruction, the Library of Alexandria was one of the greatest repositories of knowledge in the world. It was a representation of the incredible things humanity could achieve. Yet it was only available to a privileged few, unlike the knowledge that we can download at our fingertips today. There were very few to defend it when the time came.

One of the key themes in “Unafraid of the Dark” is that scientific knowledge should be freely available to all, for that is the only way to ensure that it is used responsibly. Scientists are human beings and capable of error. They’re also capable of corruption. Only by others cross-checking data and theories can the errors be found and corruption weeded out. But there’s a bigger, more encompassing theme, to this final episode, and that is the fact that human knowledge is incomplete. There is so much about the cosmos that we simply don’t know. In fact, when Martin Behaim made the very first globe of the Earth in 1492 (a globe that only contained the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa), people then knew relatively more about the Earth than we know now about the universe as a whole. Yet we shouldn’t be ashamed of this. Indeed, Tyson presents this fact as a point of inspiration, a reason for us to continue the search and to learn more, for there can be nothing more exciting than discovering something new—something that seems to rewrite reality as we know it.

Cosmos - The World Set Free

The world is a beautiful place, full of awe-inspiring sights and teeming with millions of lifeforms. Yet the world is a fragile place, too. Life has evolved within a very delicate balance of elements in the atmosphere. Alter that balance just a little and things can change drastically. We have known about global warming for quite some time now, but we have been slow to do anything about it. Indeed, there are many who deny its implications or even its entire existence. They dismiss the overwhelming evidence simply because it doesn’t fit their world-view. Climate change is a gradual process, and even at its current accelerated rate, it’s not something noticeable to the naked eye from day to day or year to year. And because we can’t see it, it’s hard to accept. But simply because something is hard to see doesn’t make it untrue.

A few episodes ago, in “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth”, Cosmos explored long-term climate change, looking at the many different kinds of worlds the Earth has been. Most of that climate change has been completely natural. Climate does change on its own over thousands and millions of years, and even without human influence, it would continue to change. That episode also touched on modern climate change, drawing attention to the fact that we are releasing carbon into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuel at an incredible rate, and it was the release of carbon from the Carboniferous period that ended the Permian and drastically altered the world’s climate.

In the most recent episode, “The World Set Free”, Cosmos returns to the topic of climate change and this time looks closely at human-created climate change and the phenomenon of global warming that we must deal with today. There is absolutely no reason any of this episode should be controversial, and yet there are many that will make it so. Still, this is knowledge that we must absorb and Cosmos, in its usual way, presents it clearly and accessibly, and in an entertaining fashion.

Cosmos - The Immortals

This week’s Cosmos is one of the more speculative episodes so far, delving into the questions of life that we don’t fully have the answers for yet. But that makes it no less a beautiful and enlightening episode than any other so far. In many ways, speculation is one of the most important parts of the scientific process. Certainly, speculation can be (and often is) wrong, but without the speculation, there is little to drive us to the truth. “The Immortals” looks at one of the biggest questions of all: Where did life come from? But more than that, it looks at where life is going. Does humanity have what it takes to survive, or will it, one day, just be added to the list of extinct species?

Humanity has often looked for immortality—a way to escape the shackles of of an individual’s short time on this planet. But there are different kinds of immortality, and even though “The Immortals” opens with the question, “Are there beings in the cosmos who live forever?” the episode doesn’t concern itself with the idea of a single individual being able to literally live forever. Instead, it takes the route Cosmos has taken previously where records of an existence (from pictures to writing) are a form of immortality. The episode takes us back to ancient Uruk and the Akkadian priestess Enheduanna, who was one of the earliest known poets and authors, and the first person to ever sign her name to her work, ensuring that her name would be recognized long after her death. From there, we learn of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the earliest example of the hero’s journey. Gilgamesh sought immortality, and in a sense, he found it because his name is still known today. Writing and stories are a way of preserving the past, and so, are a way of keeping their subjects alive potentially forever.

Cosmos - The Electric Boy

There are a lot of things that we take for granted in our modern world, the ability to communicate over vast distances almost instantaneously being one such thing. Phones are ubiquitous everywhere. Computers and televisions bring us entertainment. We can hear or read other people’s thoughts by pulling up websites like this one, or buy things without ever having to enter a store. But how do we do that? How do these items work? “The Electric Boy”, the tenth episode of Cosmos answers that question by delving into the life of Michael Faraday, the scientist who unlocked the secrets of electromagnetism and invented the first electric motor, amongst numerous other great achievements. As host Neil deGrasse Tyson says, while other people probably would have eventually made Faraday’s discoveries, if Faraday had never lived, the world we live in today would likely be a very different place.

In some ways, this episode is similar to “The Clean Room”, in that it focuses so heavily on the life of just one scientist. While it starts with a brief mention of Newton, who, after coming up with his laws of planetary motion, was stumped by what causes that motion, the vast majority of the episode focuses exclusively on Faraday, who was the first to solve that problem that Newton couldn’t. Unlike “The Clean Room”, however, there’s a bit more look at the science itself in the vein of most Cosmos episodes.

Cosmos - The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth

Change is an immutable part of life. As we go through our lives, we see change all the time, from changing fads and fashions to changing technologies. Some of it is quick and some of it is more gradual, but we can’t fail to notice that it’s there. Yet there is some change that is harder to spot, even invisible to an individual. We tend to think of our lives as being quite lengthy. Some of us even manage to live past a century. Yet, compared to the age of the Earth, even a century is but a tiny fragment of time, a mere blip out of billions of years. As such, we tend to think of the world as a stable environment. Sure, the weather may change from day to day and the seasons cycle through the years, but the overall patterns remain the same—reliable and unchanging. But if we could view time through a wider lens and see it over thousands and millions of years, we would see just how much change it goes through. Species evolve and die off. The climate changes. Ice ages come and go. Levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere change. The world we live in is not the same world that existed in the distant past.

The ninth episode of Cosmos, “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth” takes us on a journey through the long lifetime of our world and gives us brief glimpses of the many worlds Earth has been over its long life. In doing so, we learn of the mechanisms that influence and guide climate change, along with the catastrophes that can sometimes happen as a result. It’s an episode that is particularly relevant to us today, as we live in a world in which those slow, invisible changes are starting to become visible. Climate change is happening at an unprecedented rate, due in no small part to ourselves.

For me personally, this is one of the most educational episodes of Cosmos so far, as it covers several periods of Earth’s history I was previously unfamiliar with, starting with the Carboniferous era, approximately 300 million years ago. This was the time when trees first evolved. They developed a substance called lignin that was both strong and flexible and allowed them to grow tall over top of the other plants of the world. However, lignin was also indigestible to the bacteria and fungi of the time. As such, when the trees died, they didn’t decay. Instead, they became buried under the ground as the millennia passed. Without their decay, their carbon was not returned to the air to balance out the oxygen the trees created while alive. This meant that oxygen levels rose higher than they have ever been during any other period on Earth, leading to the evolution of unbelievably large insects. Indeed, my first instinctive reaction to the computer animation of those insects was that it had to be an exaggeration. It’s not.

Cosmos - Sisters of the Sun

Science has been dominated by men for...well, a very long time, much like most of Western society. While that domination has gradually loosened over the last century, it still very much exists today, with women, on average, still having to overcome more obstacles than men in order to pursue a career in science. Because of this dominance, when looking at the history of science, as Cosmos has been doing in addition to explaining the science, it is inevitable that the majority of names will be those of men. However, they most certainly shouldn’t be all men’s names, for there have been many women working in science over the centuries (not even just this past one), and many women have made important discoveries. Yet, how many can we name off the tops of our heads? I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t name many. Marie Curie comes to mind almost immediately, but after that, I have to stop and think in order to come up with a pitifully small sample. Yet asked to name men (or just scientists in general), numerous come immediately to mind before I have to stop and think a bit: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Hawking, Sagan, Tyson... As I said, there are more men, but surely I ought to be able to remember a few more women.

“Sisters of the Sun”, the eighth episode of Cosmos, takes steps to rectify that a little bit by introducing us to some of the pioneers of astronomical spectroscopy: Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan-Leavitt, and Cecilia Payne. Cannon developed the system used to classify stellar bodies and Swan-Leavitt the method to determine the distance to the stars and thus the size of the universe. Cecilia Payne took the work of Annie Jump Cannon and deciphered her spectral analyses to determine the composition of stars—particularly the ground-breaking discovery that hydrogen and helium are about a million times more abundant than any other element.

Cosmos - The Clean Room

It is an unfortunate fact that science can be misused, sometimes deliberately. The numbers don’t lie, but the way those numbers—those bits of data—are interpreted can sometimes be skewed to fit preconceptions and biases, or even business or political agendas. The seventh episode of Cosmos, “The Clean Room”, looks at the search for the age of the Earth, but also explores the wider issue that came from that search—Clair Patterson’s fight to remove lead from the plethora of products it was part of, particularly gasoline.

Every episode of Cosmos so far has had a mix of scientific explanation and historical narration, as does this episode. However, “The Clean Room” focuses far more on the history side than other episodes. While the history segments have generally been animated and have used voice actors to portray the historic characters, this episode concentrates far more on telling a dramatic tale—a fable with a moral message. If it weren’t for Neil deGrasse Tyson’s voice-over narration, this could almost be a Hollywood movie about the life of Clair Patterson (voiced here by Richard Gere) with science itself as the hero and the Ethyl Corporation as the villains.

Cosmos - Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still

There are more atoms in a human eye than there are stars in the entire universe. So we learn in the opening moments of the sixth episode of Cosmos, “Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still”. One of the most mesmerizing things about Cosmos is the way it draws together the commonalities between the cosmic and atomic scales—the awe-inspiringly huge and the equally awe-inspiringly tiny. It takes two things that people generally think of as separate and unconnected and shows how they’re both part of the same cosmos. Each affects the other, and we can never have a full understanding of one without having an understanding of the other. While this episode’s focus is on the atomic realm, it must still look to the stars in order to explain it all.

The episode takes us first on a journey into the microscopic realm of a dew drop, introducing us to the tiny lifeforms that live there, such as the tardigrade, one of the most resilient creatures in the world. We then enter plant cells to learn about the workings of photosynthesis to produce energy. There’s some rather entertaining computer animation imagining the inner workings of the cells as a factory production line, almost steampunk-like in its presentation. It’s a little odd, to be sure, but it helps to simplify a complex process that is still not fully understood. As Neil deGrasse Tyson narrates, we can recreate photosynthesis in a laboratory, but with nowhere near the efficiency and precision of an actual plant cell. If we could, we would solve all the world’s energy problems. And as unusual as the factory-like animation may seem, it’s important to remember that most of the animation in this series is simplified to make it easier for viewers to digest. The representation of atoms in this episode and others, for example, is not really what atoms look like, but they provide a useful, easily comprehended stand-in for actual atoms. One of the goals of Cosmos is to entrance new people into the scientific fold, to inspire future scientists—and inspiring the series has certainly managed to be!

Cosmos - Hiding in the Light

Light is truly wondrous. Visible light is so prevalent in our lives, we take it for granted and don’t really notice just how incredible it is. Even if we’re somewhat well-versed in the science, it’s easy to forget its bizarre qualities and go about our daily lives and barely pay it any mind. The fifth episode of Cosmos, “Hiding in the Light” continues the programme’s investigation into the nature of light, focusing on its wave nature and the discovery that there are forms of light not visible to the human eye. It also gives us a glimpse into the quantum world and shows us a little more of just how strange, unintuitive, and utterly astounding the universe is.

The episode begins with a look at some of the earliest discoveries about light, such as the fact that it travels in straight lines. We learn about Mo Tse’s creation of the camera obscura, and Ibn al-Hasan’s later work with the same thing and his development of the principles of the scientific method. It’s good to see this inclusion of non-Western contributions to the development of science. Science history often has (like so many other things in the Western world) a Western bias and Cosmos so far hasn’t really been an exception to this, but this episode helps to show that not every scientific discovery has taken place in Europe or the United States. There have been many great discoveries in other parts of the world. Indeed, as this episode shows, if it weren’t for Emperor Chin suppressing the works of Mo Tse and other early Chinese philosophers, science might have advanced far, far sooner.

The Delian Mode

Delia Derbyshire is a name well-known to Doctor Who fans as the person who brought us the original version of the show’s famous theme music. She did a whole lot more for Doctor Who, and her legacy extends well beyond just that one show. However, in all her time on Doctor Who, she was never credited for it. Ron Grainer wrote the Doctor Who theme, but it was Derbyshire who arranged and realized it. Even though Grainer felt she should be credited for it, she wasn’t because she was an employee of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which had a long-time policy that its members did not get individual credit for work they did as employees of the Workshop. So even though many fans knew who she was, her name never appeared on screen. The arrangers of the later versions of the theme, from Peter Howell to Murray Gold, all received credit, but not her. It wasn’t until—gasp!—“The Day of the Doctor” last year (several years after her death) that Derbyshire finally received her first on-screen credit for the work she did on Doctor Who. But on-screen credit aside, Delia Derbyshire was one of the pioneers of electronic music, and she is finally starting to be acknowledged for the monumental role she played in music history.

The Delian Mode is a documentary about Derbyshire and her music. From director Kara Blake, it weaves together interviews with the people who worked with her and samples of her music and recordings of Derbyshire herself. But the documentary is more than just a dry presentation of facts and commentary. It’s visually and audially mesmerizing, a work of art in itself. Through it, viewers journey through the process Derbyshire used to create the haunting music she’s famous for. We see not only the actual equipment she used, but also visual interpretations of the ideas and concepts behind the music. We learn of the everyday items she sampled sounds from and hear her own words on how she felt as a woman in an industry dominated by men. One of the most phenomenal things I learned from The Delian Mode was that, after Derbyshire’s death, 267 tapes and countless manuscripts were found stored in her attic—a massive testament to the huge output of her work.

The Delian Mode was released in 2009 and won a Genie award for best short documentary in 2010. In my view, this is a beautiful film and a moving tribute to Derbyshire, one that will be enjoyed by not just Doctor Who fans, but by anyone with an interest in electronic music; I certainly feel it deserved this award. I highly recommend watching it!

Cosmos - A Sky Full of Ghosts

Imagination is a powerful thing. It’s the ability to contemplate things that might be and sometimes even to contemplate the complete impossible. The fourth episode of Cosmos, “A Sky Full of Ghosts” is really all about the power of imagination, as well as its pitfalls. It shows how science, at its most basic, all starts with an idea, one that people then investigate. Sometimes the idea is right. Sometimes it’s wrong. Other times, it’s somewhere in between and needs to be modified to bring it closer to being correct.

The episode opens with a very simple statement of “Seeing is not believing,” and proceeds with a demonstration of how some ideas can seem obvious and yet be wrong. Light can play tricks on our eyes. From the exact position of the sun in our sky to the existence of a horizon to the apparent existence of a cosmic horizon, we encounter optical illusions every day of our lives. But it’s through investigating these illusions and questioning them that we uncover the truth. “A Sky Full of Ghosts” goes on to talk about the nature of light and establishes that light has a finite (albeit immensely fast) speed. We can determine the age of the universe (in billions of years) by how far we can see. The light from the “cosmic horizon” has needed those billions of years just to reach us, but there simply hasn’t been enough time for anything beyond that point to get here. We also learn more of how gravity works and its effects on light itself.

Cosmos - When Knowledge Conquered Fear

I continue to be awed by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Each episode just gets better and better, and the third episode, “When Knowledge Conquered Fear” is no exception. Even though I already know most of the information it’s covering, I continue to be entranced by its presentation. And that’s not to say I haven’t learned anything. This episode, in particular, taught me a lot about Edmund Halley and Robert Hooke that I didn’t previously know. What’s more, it continues to be a great introduction to all there is about science and a perfect spiritual successor to Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos.

In “When Knowledge Conquered Fear”, Tyson takes a look at the human ability of pattern recognition, both in the ways that it has helped us and hindered us. The episode starts with a discussion of comets and how early civilizations interpreted them as omens of disaster, then moves into the reality of what we know about comets today, taking us on a journey out to the Oort Cloud and introducing us to the not-well-known Jan Oort, whom the Oort Cloud is named after.

Cosmos - Some of the Things that Molecules Do

I expected Cosmos to be good, but it has far exceeded my expectations. This is a wonderful series that absolutely everyone should be watching in order to gain a rounded view of science and the world. What works so well about the series is that it’s clear and accessible, presented in terms that people with no former knowledge of the subject can follow, while still being entertaining to others who may know some or a lot of the topic. It’s a visual feast that absolutely everyone can enjoy.

The second episode, titled "Some of the Things that Molecules Do", delves into that giant of science: evolution. It begins with a look at artificial selection by discussing the history of dog breeding. Dogs are the perfect choice here—not just because I happen to be a dog lover and utterly adore dogs (I have two of my own), but because dogs are things that all the viewers will be familiar with. Many will own dogs of their own, but even if they don’t, they’ll have encountered dogs in numerous ways throughout their lives. Indeed, dogs are a much better choice than the crabs of Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos because viewers will relate to them better (except perhaps for crab fishers and some biologists). They can see examples of this artificial selection right in their own lives, and that helps to make the concept of natural selection more accessible.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

In 1980, PBS broadcast Cosmos. The 13-episode series was hosted by Carl Sagan, who was also one of the principal writers. The series went on to become one of the most widely viewed and most influential science programmes ever. It inspired a generation of people to learn about the universe and our place within it. No doubt it inspired many to go on to become scientists themselves and to help add to the sum total of human knowledge.

I, personally, didn’t see it when it originally aired. I don’t quite remember when I saw it for the first time, but it was quite a few years later. By that time, I was already highly interested in astronomy and cosmology, and it pretty much cemented my desire to continue in that direction. Of course, I ended up going in a different direction once I hit university, but I never lost my interest in the stars and Cosmos remains one of my favourite science programmes.

Although the original Cosmos series is still very relevant today—perhaps remarkably so given that over 33 years have passed since it first aired—science has advanced in that time and parts of it are out of date. But now, there’s a new Cosmos. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey began airing last Sunday. Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, this new series updates the old for a new generation of viewers, educating us once more about our place in the universe. But it’s not just for new viewers. While it covers much of the same material as Sagan’s Cosmos, it also has much that is new, making it just as compelling viewing for people who have already seen the original. And naturally, the new series has been made with modern special effects, making it a spectacle for the eyes as well.

Cosmos Returns!

Carl Sagan's Cosmos is one of the pinnacles of scientific and academic programming. The 13-episode series originally aired on PBS in 1980 and has since gone on to become one of the most viewed science documentaries ever. In it, Sagan invited viewers to journey the cosmos on the Spaceship of the Imagination. Throughout the series, Sagan explored life, the universe, and everything, combining scientific fact and speculation with awe-inspiring visuals and spellbinding music. It was a series that helped instil a love of science and learning into a great many people and still does today. Anybody who hasn't seen the original Cosmos series should do so NOW! 

However, it has been over 30 years now since the series first aired, and while it is still incredibly relevant today, scientific discovery has marched on somewhat and some of the series is thus out-of-date. It's time for a new series of Cosmos, one to update and expand on the original, and to tell new tales of scientific discovery. The new series, fully titled Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, will air in 2014 and will be hosted by none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson. The first trailer for the series has now been released (embedded below). I'm hugely stoked for this show, especially because Tyson is doing it, as I can't think of a better person for it (yes, I'm something of a Neil deGrasse Tyson fan).

The series will air on FOX, which at first glance is a little worrying since FOX (rather deservingly) has a bad reputation when it comes to science reporting. However, Tyson (as reported by IO9) has said that he's happy about FOX's involvement as he doesn't want to preach to the converted, but rather wants to reach the mainstream.