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Both Tyson and Bill Nye are taking the unwanted public nerd position of attempting to slow down the anti-science movement and the dumbing down of Amerika. There is a big split happening in the US, astounding discoveries on one hand, on the other hand, Facebook. The strength of the US is that it has always had a few kids that have uber-intelligence and while the rest of society operates on a satisfactory-C level, these wunderkind are at the A-level. The show also needs to appeal to a very young audience for best effect. Tyson is no Carl Sagan either, not his fault. There are discoveries being made but answers often lead to more questions. Proof of the big bang today, and the graphic explains a lot but also raises the question, Dark Ages?
http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/news...0-copy.jpg
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*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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I didn't see the second episode of Cosmos but did watch the third one last night. I thought it was interesting, not so much for the science since I didn't learn anything new there, but the history behind the Newtonian laws of gravity. Some of the stuff I knew but there were a lot of details I didn't. I didn't really get the very last bit though, that just didn't seem to fit in with what most of the show's discussion (i.e., it was all comets and the history of calculating solar system orbits, but then suddenly switched to the future of our Galaxy and Andromeda). Although obviously it was about predicting things using the laws of gravity, it just didn't work for me. Too big a leap.
I think there were about 2-seconds of Mauna Kea night-time shots close to the end of the show, but it was over too quickly for me to be sure.
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I knew Newton developed calculus and a lot of the other math used in astronomy, and I knew Halley first predicted a recurrent comet appearance. I did not, however, know about the relationship between these two men, nor did I know about the rather villainous Hook. I think the bit at the end was useful to show us how the same math that could predict the interaction of two relatively simple objects (sun and comet) could also be used to describe the far more vast and complicated interaction of two galaxies. They just skimmed over it sorta too fast. I wondered if any of the pictures at the end were from Mauna Kea.
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Yep, same thing here, Chunkster. I did a course in the history of science way back when but don't remember any stuff about the relationship between Newton, Halley and Hooke (may just be my memory but was also less interested in the history back then). And that kind of stuff still goes on today in science! As to an example of using gravity to predict events, my own choice would have probably been the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter. The impact was predicted and there was a world-wide audience for it, so many would have associated with it (less so, I think, for the future collision between our Galaxy and Andromeda) plus it would have fitted in better with the main focus of the episode. That was also a huge event here on Hawaii with most of the observatories recording the impacts from the comet's fragments (I think our place was the only observatory on MK to measure the effects using spectroscopy rather than imaging). Anyway, it's a minor grumble as I thought it was an excellent episode and will try and find out where those shots at the end came from.
<edited for a typo and to add a few words>
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quote:
Originally posted by Chunkster
I knew Newton developed calculus and a lot of the other math used in astronomy, and I knew Halley first predicted a recurrent comet appearance.
Liebnitz also developed a calculus but it never caught on. Recently, there was a news item that a parchment had been found that Archimedes was developing a calculus. The parchment had been bleached by monks to write religious passages over.
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*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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If you haven't watched Cosmos yet, here's another reason to watch. This Sunday 3/30 the voice of Patrick Stewart, otherwise known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek, will beam down for a segment as the voice of 19th century astronomer William Herschel. Make it so!
http://io9.com/patrick-stewart-beams-dow...1552283261
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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I found tonight's episode (03/30) thoroughly entertaining and interesting. It explored the bizarre world of relativity and phenomena such as black holes. Lots of details and steps were missed out which was understandable given they're fitting so much into 45 minutes or so, and there was another nice tribute to Sagan at the end. Still nothing much from Mauna Kea, although they did discuss observing the most distant objects in the universe, and over the years several of the observatories have have held those records. One of those included a few minutes of frenetic activity by myself and a now-retired colleague and friend!
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/2009/10...-ages.html
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Learned more about the history about science/astronomy from tonight's episode and it spent the last ten minutes or so discussing light, spectroscopy and the wavelengths many of the MK observatories work at but we can't see with our own eyes. Still nothing obvious from Mauna Kea, but thought the explanation of how we learn things from spectroscopy was really quite good given it was aimed at the layperson and it can be quite a complicated subject. I'm also a bit biased since my own area is infrared spectroscopy but think this was a good show tonight.
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Thanks for the reminders Tom. I hope this helps the TMT along.
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