Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - Master Post
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.
Episode 1: Shores of the Cosmic Ocean
Dr. Carl Sagan goes deep into space with the help of special effects to visit star clusters, supernovas, pulsars, quasars, and exploding galaxies. At the conclusion, he takes viewers to a re-creation of the 2,000-year-old Alexandrian Library. (with a brief foreword by Ann Druyan)
Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
In this episode, Dr. Sagan explains the history of the universe, and talks about the evolution of living organisms from the simplest microbes to humans. This comprehension of origins is necessary to understand what life forms might be found elsewhere in the universe.
Episode 3: Harmony of the Worlds
The life of Johannes Kepler, the first modern astronomer (who also wrote the first science fiction novel), is profiled. His influence on today’s views on planetary motion is explored.
Dr. Sagan takes viewers into the Venusian atmosphere to deliver a lesson on possible repercussions of the greenhouse effect. The noted author and astronomer explains complex subjects in an engaging and informative manner that is not difficult to understand. Accessibility to the subject enabled millions of viewers to appreciate the series. Through the magic of special effects, he also explores the Solar System to observe the effects of dramatic cosmic events on other objects in space.
Episode 5: Blues for a Red Planet
Dr. Sagan uses special effects to travel to Mars, as seen by authors of science fiction novels. He then contrasts this with pictures of the surface of Mars taken by the Viking spacecraft.
Here Dr. Sagan takes a look at the Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn, and compares the excitement to the adventuring spirit of the early Dutch explorers who traveled unknown seas for the first time. Their discoveries led to further knowledge of previously unheard of wonders and riches, comparable to the invaluable data retrieved by the spacecraft.
Episode 7: Backbone of the Night
In this episode, viewers examine these early endeavors to comprehend the night sky. The stars were thought to be campfires in the heavens, and the great expanse of stars known as the Milky Way was the “backbone of the night.” Dr. Sagan goes back to his childhood elementary school where the question “What are stars?” is the subject of discussion.
Episode 8: Travels in Space and Time
Through the magic of special effects, the viewer goes on a journey to observe the evolution of stars over millions of years, then sees a simulation of other stars with their orbiting planets. In Cosmos, Episode 8: Travels in Space and Time, Dr. Sagan also travels to Italy and introduces the young Einstein as he ponders beams of light and their speed.
Dr. Sagan presents a remarkable look at the life cycle of stars, using computer animation and space art. Cosmos, Episode 9: Lives of the Stars depicts the collapse of stars which precedes the formation of neutron stars and black holes. Dr. Sagan then guides the viewer five billion years into the future, when the Sun will flare out, encompassing the earth in its explosive death.
Dr. Sagan goes to India to check the Hindu cycles of cosmology. Then, thanks to computer simulation and other special effects, he falls into a black hole, only to emerge in New Mexico as he demonstrates The Very Large Array, the 27 radio telescopes listening to outer space.
Episode 11: Persistence of Memory
Dr. Sagan discusses the human brain, guiding the viewer through a maze of a brain model to demonstrate the intricacies of thought. He compares the intelligence of a whale to that of a human, and offers an explanation of how all the information needed for survival is stored in human genetic material and brains, and in books.
Episode 12: Encyclopaedia Galactica
Dr. Sagan takes the viewer to Egypt to puzzle over hieroglyphics, then to Arecibo Observatory, where the largest radio telescope in the world resides. He then invites the audience to imagine what another civilization in space would be like.
Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth?
Dr. Sagan makes use of the special effects that have illuminated previous shows to take the viewer back 15 billion years to the Big Bang, and marks the major steps leading to the modern-day view of space. He tells the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, one of the first women scientists, who became a martyr. To conclude, Dr. Sagan delivers a monologue on the responsibility of mankind not just to earth, but to the cosmos, the source of our being.
(youtube links and descriptions lifted from this reddit page, collected in one tumblr post for ease of sharing)
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
— Carl Sagan, ”Cosmos: The Persistence of Memory”
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
—Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, ep. 11
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
—Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
4 Billion Years of Evolution in 40 Seconds
This short clip is from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. I love watching this and seeing how Carl Sagan gracefully patches together the birth of life on this planet from creation until now. It’s amazing!
If you haven’t seen the show, it’s a 13 episode series that was first aired in 1980, was once the most viewed television series in US history, and has been viewed by over 500 million people worldwide. Luckily, Hulu and Netflix are both currently playing the entire series and I highly recommend it.
