In this final blog post I will review and discuss my opinions on the 9th episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmos, “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth”. In this episode Tyson covers the history and physical landscape (also known as Palaeogeography) of planet earth. He starts by covering how most of the worlds coal sources were made; by lignin rich trees that lived untouched by herbivores. He then goes on to explain how these coal sources later helped caused, along with volcanic activity the Permian Triassic extinction event. While these topics don’d directly relate to astronomy it does help to know how certain aspects of a planets biology can lead to its own destruction if left unchecked.

As the episode progresses Tyson moves to focus on plate tectonics and how they create and change the landmasses of the world. He also covers a lot of the history and theories that scientists of the past had on landmasses. He covers how plate tectonics work in an adequate way though I wouldn’t have been adverse to a bit more detail. In total I think this added greatly to the value of the episode and compliments what we are learning in astronomy quite well.

As the episode moves towards conclusion Tyson changes focus once more to explain the extinction event that lead towards the rising of the mammals and while this section of the episode was quite interesting It had little to do with astronomy. Though he does later explain some of the effects the astral bodies of out solar system can have on our planet. In total this episode of cosmos was a great addition to my knowledge of Astronomy, Palaeogeography and Ecology and I would highly recommend it.

Episode 8 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmos “Sisters of the Sun” focuses on the composition and life-cycle of stars. The episode starts of describing how different cultures in history created constellations specifically the Greeks and the Pleiades. Tyson then goes on to give us an overview of the works of Edward Pickering and how he recorded the spectra of multiple stars at once. Tyson also describes the accomplishments of the Harvard Computers specifically how they cataloged spectra. As the episode progressed Tyson moved on to discuss stars themselves and how clouds of interstellar gas form into new stars. He also explains many of the internal mechanics of stars that relate to things such as how a star keeps its size and how stars change into different types of stars. The ending of this episode then goes into possibly the most interesting part of a stars life cycle, death. He goes over novas, supernovas and how these can become pulsars. This episode fits nicely with the section of the curriculum we are in, and works very well to solidify many of the ideas presented in class. In conclusion I would highly recommend this episode to anyone in our class.

This episode is focused around how the age of the earth was originally discovered by Clair Patterson and some of the methods used to date things today. The episode starts of with Neil Degrasse Tyson describing how the earth was formed slightly after (millions of years) after the formation of the sun. Tyson later goes on to briefly cover what Patterson did underneath the supervision of Harrison Brown, which included accurately counting the number of lead particles in Meteor Crater. He used this in conjunction with the known half life of uranium when exposed to lead to estimate the age of the earth. Patterson then discovered that the result were contaminated by the surrounding environment and thus went to make the worlds first clean-room to prevent environmental contamination. Leading up to the end of the episode Tyson discusses Patterson’s following discoveries in the origin of lead. This episode really ties in well with some of the dating processes we were discussing in class and therefor I highly recommend it.

The sixth episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos “Deeper Deeper Deeper Still” brings its focus towards the microscopic and atomic exploring many concepts related to biology and atomic theory. He covers some extremely interesting microbes as well as tardigrades and photosynthesis but while these are all very interesting yet again they have little to do with astronomy. He also covers a couple of different flowers with some unusual effects and the Sphinx moth. After the section covering biology he moves into discussing the philosophers Thales (one of the first philosophers to see the world in a scientific way) and Democritus the original inventor of an “Atom”. We then get into the part of the episode in which he discusses atomic theory going over what molecules are made of (neutrons, protons and electrons). After going over the basics he then brings it back towards space near the end of the episode by explaining how neutrinos work and how some of them have existed from the big bang although they cannot be observed. Overall this episode has its ups and downs with most of the section on atomic theory (except the part with neutrinos) being extremely boring though I did enjoy the earlier section about tardigrades.

The fifth episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos focuses primarily on light. At the beginning of the episode discussing the invention of both the pinhole camera and optics (which lead to the first telescope). This is also the first episode in which the scientific principle is brought up in any way. As the episode progresses Tyson delves more into the history and progression of early theories of light and some of the implications these early theories had on the scientific community. The people who created the theories (Isaac Newton, William Herschel, and Joseph von Fraunhofer) also get a bit more screentime with several of their other discoveries getting highlighted.

Towards the end of the episode, Tyson discusses a bit of quantum theory mainly focusing on electrons and atomic orbitals. While some parts of this episode get a bit heavy on how technical it is I would still recommend anyone to watch this if they would like a fundamental understanding of how the scientific discoveries on light were made.

The forth episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos begins by covering the speed of light and the concept of seeing back in time when we look at celestial objects. It also covers how the earths gravity bends the light from the sun and makes the sun rise 2 minutes earlier than it will physically.

               The majority of this episode focuses on light and how slow it can be in relation to the scope of the cosmos. The episode uses some interesting imagery to do this. In one scene showing earth from the Pleiades and another from center of the Milky way. Doing this really gives off a feeling of time travel as the episode progresses. The episode also heavily goes into the evolution of the theory on gravity and other fundamental theories. While also going over black holes or “dark stars” this episode is extremely interesting and does a great job going over some of the fundamental rules of the universe.

The third episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos brings us yet again towards a more astronomical view of the universe. The episode starts off depicting the way early humans viewed comets as signs of impending cataclysm. It does this to show the evolution of humanity’s perception of the cosmos throughout the entirety of the episode. We also get in this episode a brief overview of the Oort cloud and the part it plays in comets. Comets do end up being a large part of this episode.

               Towards the middle of the episode, Neil gets more into the rivalry between Hooke and Newton. This did a great job at both getting across the type of relationship Hooke and Newton had as well as giving Hooke more exposure in the modern-day. Besides the detail they go into Hooke’s achievements they also show the extent of both Newton and Halley’s achievements (as well as Oort’s earlier on). I was not aware of the extent of things Halley did for the scientific world or how possibly the most important book to science was almost denied publishing due to the book of fish. Overall this episode was a great shift back toward astronomy from the previous episode and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early discovery of the way the cosmos work.

In the second episode of Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, he decides to take a turn away from the cosmos and towards the history and evolution of life on earth. The episode starts with an overview of the creation of dogs by early humans. While I do like how they went over how early humans unintentionally started the domestication of wolves I feel as though they idealize selective breeding too much. In my opinion, the prosses of selectively breeding dogs has caused many medical problems and in many cases created species born into suffering.
The episode then switches over into discussing evolution as a whole and how mutations occur. While the time spent on the mutation process was fairly interesting the rest of this introduction to evolution felt boring and common. The best part of this section by far was the representation of the evolution of the eye. The graphical representation of the eye over time was quite captivating.
Near the ending of the episode, Neil briefly goes over how other forms of life on other planets (such as titan, though this is a moon) would differ. This is a concept that I don’t see in media that often. This section of the episode feels like the only part discussing the cosmos, and while a did enjoy many of the concepts of this episode I would’ve preferred a higher focus on space over biology.