Old 'Cosmos' vs. New 'Cosmos': Who's the King of the Universe?
There were two times in my life when I was literally brought to my knees by the beauty of the night sky. Once was on a camping trip in the Nevada desert in my late 20s, when I looked up, caught the Milky Way shining brighter and clearer than ever I'd seen, like a river of a billion diamonds. My legs started to buckle, apparently realizing their insignificance in the scheme of things. I sat down rather rapidly on the desert floor.
The other time was when I was a child and first watched the late Carl Sagan's 1980 PBS ******, Cosmos, and had the exact same reaction standing in front of a TV set. Sagan's "ship of the imagination" and the galaxies it span through — well, they weren't quite state of the art special effects, even in 1980, the year of Empire Strikes Back. But it was e**ugh, with Sagan's hyp**tically confident narration, to send millions of minds spinning into the stars. Mouth agape, head shaking, barely able to stand: this was how we watched Cosmos. Read more...