Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm still loathing the cartoons. There must be a better way to talk about constellations and mythology than having badly-animated Disney-style cartoons with squeaky-voiced maidens. In that part of the show, I was cheering for the bear.

 

[adhuin]

I'm still loathing the cartoons. There must be a better way to talk about constellations and mythology than having badly-animated Disney-style cartoons with squeaky-voiced maidens. In that part of the show, I was cheering for the bear.

Live-action Bears aren't cheap, unless you're satisfied with dudes with bear masks.

Series has been getting better and better. Hopefully there will be a second season.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Bad animations beat bad actors. If I had to be picky, I'd go with better drawn snapshot like stills.

Have to admit, between the parade of well-known facts, from time to time, little pieces of information I wasn't aware of pop up. And that's not too shabby for a series meant for the general public.

 

[Aroddo]

interesting episode ... like all Cosmos episodes.
I remember when gas stations started to switch to unleaded fuel ... and the industry still tried to scare people into not buying it by claiming, that motors will be damaged by this new mixture.
And when it was smog alarm I didn't even realize what poison I was breathing in.

Thank goodness for government regulation to protect us from the free market.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I like the cartoons and if they help keep my future children tuned into this show and learn some science then the series has accomplished its goal.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Opinions on tonight's show?

We saw some more about extinctions, Alfred Wegener and continental drift, and the early atmosphere of Earth. Oh, and we owe our species' existence to Panama, without which the ocean currents wouldn't have changed Africa's climate and caused our remote hominid ancestors to come down from the trees and learn to stand upright.

 

[Kyriakos]

Opinions on tonight's show?

We saw some more about extinctions, Alfred Wegener and continental drift, and the early atmosphere of Earth. Oh, and we owe our species' existence to Panama, without which the ocean currents wouldn't have changed Africa's climate and caused our remote hominid ancestors to come down from the trees and learn to stand upright.

^

This Nu-science starts to sound more and more like religion.

 

[timtofly]

I thought cults were the stuff of imagination. Religion takes faith.

 

[Cutlass]

I liked it. The part about volcanoes so large and erupting for so long that they cover a sizable part of a big continent is scary. Why hasn't that happened in the past 65 million years? And could it happen again?

 

[classical_hero]

I was expecting this to be a ground breaking show, but to be perfectly honest it is rather boring and most of what it talks about is either boring, or downright right. So many times when the show goes into known history, it is often wrong.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I liked it. The part about volcanoes so large and erupting for so long that they cover a sizable part of a big continent is scary. Why hasn't that happened in the past 65 million years? And could it happen again?

It probably just takes very special circumstances for continent-wide eruptions like the Siberian Traps (i'm assuming that's what you're talking about, I haven't seen it yet). Those circumstances are thankfully rare, so it just hasn't happened. Yet.

But it could - Yellowstone is smaller than the Siberian Traps but it is still a mega-volcano that would cause global catastrophe if when it erupts again.

I was expecting this to be a ground breaking show, but to be perfectly honest it is rather boring and most of what it talks about is either boring, or downright right. So many times when the show goes into known history, it is often wrong.

^

This Nu-science starts to sound more and more like religion.

What the heck are you two even talking about? Nu-science?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

We saw some more about extinctions, Alfred Wegener and continental drift, and the early atmosphere of Earth. Oh, and we owe our species' existence to Panama, without which the ocean currents wouldn't have changed Africa's climate and caused our remote hominid ancestors to come down from the trees and learn to stand upright.

^

This Nu-science starts to sound more and more like religion.

Whut?

What part of my admittedly brief synopsis of last night's episode sounds like religion? It was clearly explained that before North and South America became one continuous landmass, what we now call the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were one ocean, and the currents had different patterns.

Fast-forward enough millions of years for North America and South America to become one continent (the area where they join up is the country of Panama), and the oceans became separated and developed new patterns of currents. This in turn wreaked very definite climatic changes on the landmasses. Parts of Africa became drier, and the trees our hominid ancestors lived in became sparser. To find food, they had to come down and venture out onto the savannah. Eventually, they learned to stand upright - which gave them an advantage both in finding food and knowing when predators were near. Natural selection favored the hominids who could stand upright, walk upright, and travel to find food.

I liked it. The part about volcanoes so large and erupting for so long that they cover a sizable part of a big continent is scary. Why hasn't that happened in the past 65 million years? And could it happen again?

Give it time. And hope that by then, we'll have the means to get off the planet if it does happen.

 

[Kyriakos]

Whut?

What part of my admittedly brief synopsis of last night's episode sounds like religion? It was clearly explained that before North and South America became one continuous landmass, what we now call the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were one ocean, and the currents had different patterns.

Fast-forward enough millions of years for North America and South America to become one continent (the area where they join up is the country of Panama), and the oceans became separated and developed new patterns of currents. This in turn wreaked very definite climatic changes on the landmasses. Parts of Africa became drier, and the trees our hominid ancestors lived in became sparser. To find food, they had to come down and venture out onto the savannah. Eventually, they learned to stand upright - which gave them an advantage both in finding food and knowing when predators were near. Natural selection favored the hominids who could stand upright, walk upright, and travel to find food.


Give it time. And hope that by then, we'll have the means to get off the planet if it does happen.

It sounds more like a hypothesis, at least to people not involved in geology. Not the part that if north and south america were utterly seperate and the atlantic and pacific were one sea that would have a great effect on global climate (cause this seems fairly intuitive to argue), but the hypothesis that they previously were seperate to a huge degree, that in the not-so-pangaia the origin of the human species was in Africa, and so on. Since this is a science show, it should have gone into presenting more than a hypothesis (maybe it did, but i only had your brief synopsis to reflect upon).

In brief: when someone argues something and merely alludes to scientific backing for the argument, it may be a wrong stance to view that as not backed enough, but it is surely not just wrong but downright drone-like to merely nod despite not having the needed background in that order (in this case largely geology, i assume) so as to examine the offered argued 'backing'.

 

[Cheetah]

the hypothesis that they previously were seperate to a huge degree [...]

The scientific hypothesis of plate tectonics was established as scientific theory of plate tectonics in the mid 1960's, so I take it that you don't question the theory itself.

Studying how the plates used to be configured is called Plate reconstruction. We can know quite a bit of how the plates used to be, here I've just taken a few sentences from Wikipedia and made them into a list:

• The geometric fit between continents, such as between west Africa and South America.
• Magnetic stripe patterns provide a reliable guide to relative plate motions going back into the Jurassic period.
• The tracks of hotspots give absolute reconstructions, but these are only available back to the Cretaceous.
• Older reconstructions rely mainly on paleomagnetic pole data, although these only constrain the latitude and rotation, but not the longitude.
• Combining poles of different ages in a particular plate to produce apparent polar wander paths provides a method for comparing the motions of different plates through time.
• The distribution of certain sedimentary rock types.
• Faunal provinces shown by particular fossil groups.
• The position of orogenic belts.

[...] that in the not-so-pangaia the origin of the human species was in Africa, and so on.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say in the latter half of the sentence, so maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but no matter how you look at it, humans evolved in Africa. There's no way any understanding of plate tectonics could bring that into question.

Since this is a science show, it should have gone into presenting more than a hypothesis (maybe it did, but i only had your brief synopsis to reflect upon).

In brief: when someone argues something and merely alludes to scientific backing for the argument, it may be a wrong stance to view that as not backed enough, but it is surely not just wrong but downright drone-like to merely nod despite not having the needed background in that order (in this case largely geology, i assume) so as to examine the offered argued 'backing'.

No actual scientist has questioned the theory of plate tectonics for 50 years now. It is essentially as well established as the theories of gravity and evolution. Sure, it would be nice if Cosmos went deeper and more detailed into the topics, but there's a limited amount of time to do so, so some things must be skipped.

There is no scientific dispute around the general theory of plate tectonics any more. That got completed in the five decades from 1910 to 1970.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I do know of tectonic movements and the tectonic plates, even from highschool. The note was specifically about an argued original sufficiently massive distance between those two continents. Afaik plate tectonics are empirically studied as well by now (ie the movements in those plates in very small degrees next to their massive size), and afaik they are also factored a lot in the examination of earthquake and aftershock patterns (which is not as efficient yet at any rate), along with zones of increased risk for earthquakes.

 

[timtofly]

Not to mention the huge crater evidence in the Gulf of Mexico and then just east of Nicaragua where two mega meteors left an impact and possible rift in the crust after the Pangaea separation. Perhaps even the event that pushed Central America up out of the ocean.

 

[Cheetah]

^I do know of tectonic movements and the tectonic plates, even from highschool. The note was specifically about an argued original sufficiently massive distance between those two continents. Afaik plate tectonics are empirically studied as well by now (ie the movements in those plates in very small degrees next to their massive size), and afaik they are also factored a lot in the examination of earthquake and aftershock patterns (which is not as efficient yet at any rate), along with zones of increased risk for earthquakes.

I'm a bit lost as to what we're arguing then: It seems to me that we're in agreement, it's just that you wanted Tyson to have explained more detailed about a part of plate tectonics that you're not familiar with.

In which case I think you just have a 1st world problem on your hands.

 

[Aroddo]

I was expecting this to be a ground breaking show, but to be perfectly honest it is rather boring and most of what it talks about is either boring, or downright right. So many times when the show goes into known history, it is often wrong.

If you were perfectly honest you'd just say that you hate the show because it's not like the original Cosmos from your youth:


Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'm a bit lost as to what we're arguing then: It seems to me that we're in agreement, it's just that you wanted Tyson to have explained more detailed about a part of plate tectonics that you're not familiar with.

In which case I think you just have a 1st world problem on your hands.

Maybe, but if they spend millions of dollars on a science show/series, it might be a better idea to have more stuff in the episode they seem to have centered on this issue, than info available in highschool books

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The issue you are trying to raise is really a non-issue. Continents shift by vast distances over geological time scales, even when compared to their size.