Monday, April 9, 2012

Origin of Life and Cosmos - Carl Sagan


Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers and David Oyster, Richard Wells, Tom Weidlinger, and others. It covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people. A book to accompany the series was also published.

Note:
I think some of the theories are very commercialize and control. The information about the universe and life is undeniable. Don't take everything said here as its face value. There is so many different ideas and ways things came to be or is. A very interesting documentary, one that will make you question our existence. I only posted the first part of all these videos. Do follow up the rest from their respective channels, believe me its all there.


Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean"
1. Ann Druyan Intro
* Benefits of the end of the Cold War
2. Opening
3. The Cosmos
* Introduction
* Dr. Sagan launches a Spaceship of the Imagination (a dandelion seed)...
4. Spaceship Universe
* ...to a hundred billion galaxies...
* Where we are located (the Local Group), light-years
5. Spaceship Galaxy
* ...to a billion trillion stars, M31...
6. Spaceship Stars
* ..to the Milky Way, globular clusters, pulsars ...
* ..to an inhabited exoplanet, Orion Nebula...
7. Spaceship Solar System
* ..to a yellow star, nine planets, dozens of moons, thousands of asteroids and billions of comets and flying through Valles Marineris
8. Planet Earth
* Eratosthenes and the circumference of Earth
9. Alexandrian Library
* The modern-day city of Alexandria in Egypt
* The ancient Library of Alexandria
10. Ages of Science
11. Cosmic Calendar
* The Cosmic Calendar: from the beginning of the universe to the arrival of humans
12. End Credits

The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean - Episode 1 (Part 1)




Episode 2: "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue"
1. Opening
2. Spaceship Cosmic Matter
3. Heike Crab
* The story of the Heike crab and artificial selection of crabs resembling samurai warriors
4. Artificial Selection
5. Natural Selection
* Evolution through natural selection
6. Watchmaker
* Intelligent design
7. Cosmic Calendar
* The development of life on the Cosmic Calendar, and the Cambrian explosion
* DNA and its functions in growth, replication and repair; mutations
8. Evolution
* Animated evolution, from microbes to man
9. Kew Gardens-DNA
* Journey into the cell nucleus
10. Miller-Urey Experiment
* Common biochemistry of terrestrial organisms
* Creation of the molecules of life in the laboratory; the Miller-Urey experiment
11. Alien Life
* Speculation about life in Jupiter's clouds
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* RNA can control chemical reactions as well as reproduce itself.
* Comets have a lot of organic molecules in them.
* A comet may have caused the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event.

One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue - Episode 2 (Part 1)




Episode 3: "The Harmony of the Worlds"
1. Opening
2. Astronomers vs. Astrologers
* Astronomy vs. astrology
3. Astrology
* Careful observations, fuzzy thinking and pious fraud.
4. Laws of Nature
5. Constellations
* Constellations and ancient astronomy
6. Astronomers
* Anasazian ceremonial calendar
7. Ptolemy/Copernicus
* Ptolemy and the geocentric world view
8. Kepler
* Johannes Kepler …
9. Kepler and Tycho Brahe
* … and Tycho Brahe
10. Kepler’s Laws
* Kepler's laws
11. The Somnium
* The first Science Fiction book: The Dream
12. End Credits

The Harmony of the Worlds - Episode 3 (Part 1)




Episode 4: "Heaven and Hell"
1. Opening
2. Heaven and Hell
3. Tunguska Event
* The Tunguska event
4. Comets
* The composition and origin of comets
5. Collisions with Earth
* Asteroids and impact craters
* Lunar impact seen by Canterbury monks in 1178 (Giordano Bruno (crater))
6. Planetary Evolution
7. Venus
* The controversial theories of Immanuel Velikovsky
* The planet Venus in fiction and fact
8. Descent to Venus
* Venera landers
9. Change
* Human impact on the global environment
10. Deaths of Worlds
* Venus as an example of the greenhouse effect
11. Conclusion
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* The hellish conditions of Venus are a reminder of increasing greenhouse effect.

Heaven and Hell - Episode 4 (Part 1)




Episode 5: "Blues for a Red Planet"
1. Opening
2. Martians
* H. G. Wells and The War of the Worlds
3. Lowell
* Percival Lowell's false vision of canals on Mars
4. Edgar Rice Burroughs
* Barsoom (The Martians' name of Mars in Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books)
5. Goddard
* Robert Goddard and early rocket-building
6. Inhabited Planets
* Remote Sensing
7. Mars
* Mars probes
8. Viking Landers
* The Viking probes and their search for life on Mars
9. Life on Mars?
* The work of Sagan's friend, Wolf V. Vishniac
10. Mars Rover
* Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's suggestion
11. Terraforming Mars
* The possibility of terraforming and colonizing Mars
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Mars is relevant to the global environment of the Earth.
* Humans on Mars.

Blues for a Red Planet - Episode 5 (Part 1)




Episode 6: "Travelers' Tales"
1. Opening
2. Voyager, JPL
* The Voyager probes
3. Traveller's Routes
* Centuries of sailing ships explorers.
4. Dutch Renaissance
* The Netherlands in the 17th century
* The persecution of Galileo Galilei and his compeers by the Roman Catholic Church for their views on heliocentrism
5. Huygens
* The life and work of father Constantijn and particularly son Christiaan Huygens and his contemporaries
6. Huygens – conclusion
* Christiaan Huygens' discoveries.
7. Traveller's Tales
* Exaggerations in the past.
8. Jovian System
* The Voyager probes (first images of Jupiter...
9. Europa and Io
* ....and its moons)
10. Voyager Ships' Log
11. Saturn and Titan
* Saturn and its system of moons, including Titan
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Image processing reconstructs Voyager’s worlds.
* Voyager’s last portrait of the Solar System.
* Tiny blue dot.

Travelers' Tales - Episode 6 (Part 1)




Episode 7: "The Backbone of Night"
1. Opening
2. What are the Stars?
* Sagan's childhood in Brooklyn, New York
3. Brooklyn Schoolroom
* Teaching children about the cosmos
4. Mythology of Stars
* The realization that stars are suns; the Milky Way mythology of the !Kung bushmen and ancient Greeks.
5. Ancient Greek Scientists
* The history of ancient Ionia, Thales
* The tyrant Polycrates
6. Science Blossoms
* Anaximander's use of a stick to tell time and season, Theodorus of Samos, Empedocles and the water thief
7. Democritus
* The Ionian philosophers: Democritus...
8. Pythagoras
* ...Pythagoras, Theodorus, Anaxagoras
9. Plato and the Others
* Plato, Aristotle, Aristarchus and The Pythagoreans were suppressors of knowledge, advocates of slavery and of epistemic secrecy
10. Distance to Stars
* Christiaan Huygens
11. Evidence of Other Planets
* Teaching children about the cosmos
12. End Credits

The Backbone of Night - Episode 7 (Part 1)




Episode 8: "Journeys in Space and Time"
1. Opening
2. Constellations
* Constellations and how they change over time
3. Time and Space
4. Relativity
* The speed of light and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity
o Time dilation, redshift, blue shift
5. Leonardo da Vinci
* Leonardo da Vinci's designs
6. Interstellar Travel
* designs for spaceships that could travel near light speed
7. Time Travel
* Time travel and its hypothetical effects on human history
8. Solar Systems
* The origins of the solar system
* Possible other worlds
9. Cosmic Time Frame
* The history of life
10. Dinosaurs
11. Immensity of Space
* Commonality between the numinous and Earth's future.
* World at a critical branch point in history where our actions will propagate down through the centuries.
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Sagan’s novel Contact regarding supraluminal travelling.
* Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology and wormholes.

Journeys in Space and Time - Episode 8 (Part 1)




Episode 9: "The Lives of the Stars"
1. Opening
2. Apple Pie
* Atoms (electrons and nucleus)
3. The Very Large
* Powers of ten, the googol and the googolplex, infinity
4. Atoms
5. Chemical Elements
* The periodic table of elements
6. Nuclear Forces
* Protons and neutrons
7. The Stars and Our Sun
* The lifecycle of stars; white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes
8. Death of Stars
* The end of the Sun and of Earth, supernovae, red giants, pulsars
9. Star Stuff
* The creation of different atomic nuclei in stars
* Radioactivity and cosmic rays
10. Gravity in Wonderland
* Gravity and its effects; gravity as the curvature of spacetime, the wormhole hypothesis
11. Children of the Stars
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Supernova SN 1987A.
* Neutrino astronomy.

The Lives of the Stars - Episode 9 (Part 1)




Episode 10: "The Edge of Forever"
1. Opening
2. Big Bang
* The origins of the universe, the Big Bang theory
3. Galaxies
* Types of galaxies
4. Astronomical Anomalies
* Galactic collisions, quasars
5. Doppler Effect
* The Doppler effect
6. Humason
* Life and work of Milton L. Humason
7. Dimensions
* Flatland, hypercube & the four-dimensional and closed universe
8. The Universe
* An infinite universe vs. a god
9. India
* Creation myths, esp. Hindu cosmology
10. Oscillating Universe
* Contracting and re-expanding vs. ever-expanding universe
11. VLA
* The Very Large Array in New Mexico, dark matter, the multiverse hypothesis
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Milky Way is perhaps a barred spiral galaxy.
* Galaxies strung out along odd, irregular surfaces.

The Edge of Forever - Episode 10 (Part 1)




Episode 11: "The Persistence of Memory"
1. Opening
* Bits, the basic units of information
2. Intelligence
* The diversity of life in the oceans
3. Whales
* Whales and their songs
o The disturbance of the whale communications network by humans
o Whale hunting
4. Genes and DNA
* DNA and the brain as libraries
5. The Brain
* The structure of the human brain: brain stem, Paul McLean's Triune Brain Model: reptilian brain, limbic system, cerebral cortex
* The frontal lobes as critical in long-term planning
* Neurons and connections between them, the two brain hemispheres, the corpus callosum
6. The City
* The evolution of cities and …
7. Libraries
* …the history of libraries, ….
8. Books
* …books and writing
9. Computers
* The development of computers and satellites, the potential for global collective intelligence
10. Other Brains
* Intelligence on other worlds
11. Voyager
* The Voyager Golden Record
12. End Credits

The Persistence of Memory - Episode 11 (Part 1)




Episode 12: "Encyclopaedia Galactica"
1. Opening
2. Close Encounters
* Betty and Barney Hill abduction and UFOs
3. Refutations
4. UFOs
5. Champollion’s Egypt
* Jean-François Champollion's translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs
6. Hieroglyphics
7. Rosetta Stone
8. SETI
* Our way of communicating with extraterrestrials (SETI)
9. Arecibo
* Arecibo Radiotelescope
10. Drake Equation and Contact
* The chance of technical civilizations existing elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy; the Drake equation
11. Encyclopedia Galactica
* A look at a hypothetical encyclopedia consisting of other worlds in the galaxy
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Fewer sightings of UFOs, more stories of abductions.
* META scanning the skies for signals.

Encyclopaedia Galactica - Episode 12 (Part 1)




Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?"
1. Opening
2. Tlingit and Aztec Indians
* The Tlingit and the voyage and encounters of the explorer Jean-François de La Pérouse
* The Aztecs and the destruction brought by the Spanish conquistadores
3. Who Speaks for Earth?
* Sagan's vision (told as a dream) of traveling to a far distant world, only to return to find that the human race had long since been destroyed by nuclear warfare
4. Nuclear War and Balance of Terror
* The balance of terror on the Earth today
5. Alexandrian Library
* The destruction of the Library of Alexandria ...
6. Hypatia
* ...and the murder of Hypatia
7. Big Bang and the Stuff of Life
* The beginning of the universe and good endeavors of our civilization
8. Evolution of Life
9. Star Stuff
10. What Humans Have Done
11. We Speak for Earth
* Sagan's plea to cherish life and continue our journey to the cosmos
12. Cosmos Update 10 years later
* Completed the preliminary reconnaissance of planets with spacecraft.
* Mighty walls have come tumbling down. Deadly enemies have embraced.
* Reducing the obscene number of nuclear weapons.

Who Speaks for Earth? - Episode 13 (Part 1)




Episode 14: "Ted Turner Interviews Dr. Sagan"
Some versions of the series including the first North American home video release included a specially made 14th episode, which consisted of an hour-long interview between Sagan and Ted Turner,[8] in which the two discussed the series and new discoveries in the years since its first broadcast. This unique episode was not included in the DVD release.

Ted Turner Interviews Dr. Sagan - Episode 14 (Part 1)

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