RocketSTEM Issue #6 - March 2014 | Page 23

And it was beautiful beyond words. The scientific perspective, we came to realize, did not limit awe, it unleashed it. We truly are, to use just one of the show’s many famous lines, a way for the cosmos to know itself. And yet, for all of its beauty and rapture, “Cosmos” was also uncompromising, taking aim at pseudoscience, mythology and irrationality of any stripe. This new “Cosmos,” three decades on, is the unmistakable progeny of the first, and continues that all-important legacy. There has never been a more critical time for “Cosmos.” Even more so than when it first aired, our society is one that is intrinsically and fundamentally built on the discoveries of science and the technological applications those discoveries generate. And yet, our age is one that is more suspicious and ignorant of that science than at any other time in our history. Conservatives rail against evolution and climate change. Liberals bemoan vaccines and GMOs. Meanwhile poll after poll reveals that millions of Americans see horoscopes as accurate guides on which to base their decisions, yet do not know that it is the Earth that rotates around the Sun and not vice-versa. Image: Richard Foreman, Jr./FOX “Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey” is the antidote to such thinking. Aside from the original series, “Cosmos” is like nothing you have ever seen on television before. It is as if a Hollywood blockbuster, born for the big screen, has been crammed into your television set. And why wouldn’t it be? When the show was first announced, artisans came out of the woodwork, begging for a chance to lend their talents to it. “Cosmos” is the result of film directors, producers, cinematographers, art directors, special effects artists and composers taking a respite from their movie careers to craft epic television because they believe in the message that strongly. But beyond all the razzle dazzle of Hollywood computer wizardry (those bemoaning the CGI-heavy trailers for the new show forget that the original “Cosmos” used groundbreaking special effects for its time), “Cosmos” would still fail if it did not have, at its core, a message worth telling and a messenger worth listening to. The message, delivered by the same scribes that penned the original, is as intoxicating and powerful as it ever was. And Neil deGrasse Tyson is a messenger for such a time as this – a teacher who understands that science is the best and most revelatory means we have for discerning the truth about you, the universe, and everything in between. Science is not a dogma, but rather a profound and profoundly moving tool by which hairless apes build towers of steel and glass into the sky, eradicate disease, extend lifespans, fly ourselves into deepest space, and penetrate the mysteries of our bodies and the universe. As the show’s Research Coordinator, it was my job, among other things, to try and help bridge the gap between the deep and sometimes inscrutable scripts and the various vendors who would bring them to life. In short, I got paid to come to work each day and study the universe; to sit down with the show’s scientific advisors and learn everything I could about black holes, planetary accretion disks, evolution, and DNA, and pass that incandescent information on to others so that they might render visual effects and animated segments that were both thrilling to watch and as factual as possible. I hope I did well. I had a good teacher in Neil. It is an education that I sincerely hope will continue for a great many years to come because I have so much more to learn. It is among the greatest honors of my life to have contributed, in my own measly way, to this incredible work of art and science, and to have partnered with Neil on what, I think we would both agree, is one of the proudest achievements of our lives. If “Cosmos” is the last great thing I do in this town, it will be enough. It is not hard to see why Neil long ago stepped into the shoes of the late Carl Sagan. 21 www.RocketSTEM.org 21