carl sagan's cosmos

  On 12/19/2009 at 5:13 PM, Spore said:

http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html

He just convinced me to bike to the nearest coffee shop and get me some grass..

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Cannabis enables nonmusicians to know a little about what it is like to be a musician

I guess this applies to me:)

carl sagan is the man

Got a boxset at the weekend, and I'm up to Episode 4.

One of the best purchases I've made in many years.

Haha, I took a break for a phonecall, and returned to hear Sagan describe the ideas surrounding Venus:

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Observation: You couldn't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.

Brilliant. I've obviously read this statement before, but never heard him drop it into such a beautifully worded argument.

The Universe is a Mindfuck ..

Thank god for Carl Sagan .. the universe makes more sense when it comes out of his mouth ..

its a shame you didn't register on December 1st

Was going to create a separate thread for this, but I think this thread would be as good a place as any to stick it.

Pretty fantastic in my opinion, kind of puts stuff into perspective. It's basically a complete map of the known universe (as per the title), it should expalin most of it at the beginning.

There's a similar video called the "Power of 10" from the 60s/70s (can't remember off-hand), that is also worth checking.

Hope you like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&feature=player_embedded#

very nice.. thanks for posting

That's a stunningly beautiful piece of animation. I had a poster on my wall throughout childhood that did a kind of "powers of ten" map of the known universe, but it's nothing compared to seeing it zoom out and in like that. Kind of reminds me of that machine that was used to torture Zaphod Beeblebrox in Hitchhiker's Guide - what was it called? The Infinite Perspective machine, or whatever, that gave people a tiny glimpse of exactly their place within the universe and how tiny it was.

Also WRT the topic of the thread - yay, Cosmos. Carl Sagan helped make me the person I am today.

Intro to Contact ftw

my brother just sent me this

no idea what it's from, but i fucking love it

Oh man, that's awesome. Sauce, plz.

Looks like a Men in Black comic though.

  On 2/12/2010 at 2:17 PM, kaini said:

my brother just sent me this

no idea what it's from, but i fucking love it

 

 

Apparently it's something called Atomic Robo

it makes me happy to see this thread pop up from time to time. i was stoned out of my mind when I created it.

I was meaning to bump this.

I started watching cosmos based purely on this thread, and I'm very glad I did. This show, as I explained to a friend, is almost a pot replacement for me in this pot-free country. Carl Sagan's mesmerizing narrations shine a warm, fascinating light on the world, similar to the effects of smoking marijuana. To learn after the fact that Sagan also smoked marijuana caught me by surprise, but it really fits perfectly.

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I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves.

-- Pretty much the coolest dude ever.

  On 2/12/2010 at 4:37 PM, Gary C said:

that's beautiful. speaks volumes about carl

  On 12/12/2009 at 3:23 PM, theSun said:

i like the shit at the end of cosmos on netflix. it's carl sagan 10 years later talking about what's new with the topic previously discussed.

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The greatest thrill for me in reliving this adventure has been not just that we have completed the preliminary reconnaissance with spacecraft of the entire solar system, and not just that we've discovered astonishing structures in the realm of galaxies, but especially that some of Cosmos's boldest dreams about this world are coming closer to reality.

Since this series' maiden voyage, the impossible has come to pass: Mighty walls that maintained insuperable ideological differences have come tumbling down; deadly enemies have embraced and begun to work together. The imperative to cherish the Earth and protect the global environment that sustains all of us has become widely accepted, and we've begun, finally, the process of reducing the obscene number of weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps we have, after all, decided to choose life.

But we still have light years to go to ensure that choice. Even after the summits and the ceremonies and the treaties, there are still some 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world—and it would require the detonation of only a tiny fraction of them to produce a nuclear winter, the predicted global climatic catastrophe that would result from the smoke and the dust lifted into the atmosphere by burning cities and petroleum facilities.

The world scientific community has begun to sound the alarm about the grave dangers posed by depleting the protective ozone shield and by greenhouse warming, and again we're taking some mitigating steps, but again those steps are too small and too slow. The discovery that such a thing as nuclear winter was really possible evolved out of the studies of Martian dust storms. The surface of Mars, fried by ultraviolet light, is also a reminder of why it's important to keep our ozone layer intact. The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is a valuable reminder that we must take the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth seriously.

Important lessons about our environment have come from spacecraft missions to the planets. By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.

Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it's too late? Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the Cosmos?

That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization.

Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, “I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you.

oh man.

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This week: Ann Druyan and Nick Sagan give us a unique and heartfelt look into the origins of Cosmos and Contact — and what esteemed scientist, citizen, father, and husband Carl Sagan was really like. SETI @ Home chief scientist Dan Werthimer explains humanity’s actual plan for how to deal with the discovery of an extra-terrestrial signal. We watch and discuss Contact

http://www.galacticwatercooler.com/2009/11/07/gwc-podcast-193/

and coincidentally, NPR just aired this incredibly lovely story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123534818

http://experiencetheplanets.com/

Some really awesome artwork of our solar-system here. There's a download button in the top-right once you've selected an image. I'm particularly fond of Vortex on Venus.

The view from Titan is also completely pant-shitting.

awesome. wish there were some more pics though....

  On 2/12/2010 at 6:22 PM, Gary C said:

http://experiencetheplanets.com/

 

Some really awesome artwork of our solar-system here. There's a download button in the top-right once you've selected an image. I'm particularly fond of Vortex on Venus.

excellent stuff, cheers for the link

I want to watch something as beautiful as those pictures, but the only thing that really comes close for me is the remake of Solaris and I've seen that too many times now. Any recommendations?

i want so badly to explore other worlds.

*explores pants*

  On 2/12/2010 at 9:03 PM, LOL Alzado said:

i want so badly to explore other worlds.

 

*explores pants*

The very reason why I played the free-trial of Eve Online.