Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules: 1 Test ideas by experiment and observation 2 Build on those ideas that pass the test, reject the ones that fail 3 Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and 4 Question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey men

Many of us suspect that all of this - all the worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters in our observable universe - is but one tiny bubble in an infinite ocean of other universes; a multiverse. Universe upon universe; worlds without end.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey world

Stars . . . get so hot that the nuclei of the atoms fuse together deep within them to make the oxygen we breathe, the carbon in our muscles, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood. All of it was cooked in the fiery hearts of long-vanished stars. You, me, everyone: we are made of star stuff.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey art

Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. Its the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher; a community of minds reaching back to antiquity, and forward to the stars.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey science

If life has a sanctuary, its here in the nucleus, which contains our DNA - the ancient scripture of our genetic code. And its written in a language that all life can read.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey life

The Theory of Evolution, like the Theory of Gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on earth is not only solid science, in my view, its also a soaring spiritual experience.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey life

That nameless corridor? Thats for another day. While standing near the as-yet-unnamed, sixth corridor in the Halls of Extinction.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey day

Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. Were not afraid to admit what we dont know. Theres no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all the answers.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey knowledge

Does the fact that most of us know the names of mass murderers but never heard of Jan Oort say anything about us?

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey murder

Newtons Principia Mathematica set us free. . . . By finding the natural laws governing the comings and goings of comets, he decoupled the motions of the heavens from their ancient connections to our fears.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey fear

Newtons laws made it possible for Edmond Halley to see some 50 years into the future and predict the behavior of a single comet.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey future

Using nothing more than Newtons laws of gravitation, we astronomers can confidently predict that several billion years from now our home galaxy - the Milky Way - will merge with our neighboring galaxy - Andromeda. . . . Any life on the worlds of that far off future future . . . would be treated to an amazing billion-year-long light show; a dance of a half a trillion stars, to music first heard on one little world, by a man who had but one true friend.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey life

Some stars are so far away, it takes eons for their light to get to Earth. By the time the light from some stars gets here, they are already dead. For those stars, we see only their ghosts.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey time

In the observed universe, everyone gets to feel special . . . at the center of the cosmic horizon. . . . Its what you get when you have a finite speed of light in a universe that had a beginning in time.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey time

Nature commands, Thou shalt not add my speed to the speed of light. . . . For reality to be logically consistent, there must be a cosmic speed limit.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey nature

Why is Venus scorching hot? Its because . . . the flow of energy is blocked by a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide. . . . Venus is in the grip of a runaway greenhouse effect.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey energy

By burning coal, oil and gas, our civilization is exhaling carbon dioxide much faster than Earth can absorb it. So, CO2 is building up in the atmosphere. The planet is heating up.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey art

Keep your eye on the man, not the dog. Comparing the gradual curve of Tysons path along a beach to climate and the erratic path of a dog Tyson is holding on a leash to weather.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey man

More solar energy falls on Earth in one hour than all the energy our civilization consumes in an entire year. If we could harness a tiny fraction of the available solar and wind power, we could supply all our energy needs forever, and without adding any carbon to the atmosphere.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey art

We looked back on our way to the Moon and saw one world, indivisible, and kind of small. . . . This . . . was the unexpected gift of Apollo.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey world

There seems to be a mysterious force in the universe, one that overwhelms gravity on the grandest scale to push the cosmos apart. . . . We call it dark energy, but that name, like dark matter, is merely a code word for our ignorance. Its okay not to know all the answers. Its better to admit our ignorance than to believe answers that might be wrong. Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out whats really there.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey art

The difference between seeing nothing but a pebble and reading the history of the cosmos inscribed inside it is science. Discussing a slow-growing manganese nodule from the ocean floor which shows that a star near the Earth went supernova within the last two million years or so.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey science

There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home weve ever known. Recording of Carl Sagans voice over a re-imagining of the pale blue dot image of Earth taken by Voyager 1.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey art

The nucleus is very small compared to the rest of the atom. If an atom were the size of this cathedral, its nucleus would be the size of that mote of dust.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey cat

What better way to find the true age of the Earth than with the uranium atom? If you knew what fraction of the uranium in a rock had turned into lead, you could calculate how much time had passed since the rock was formed.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey time

Congratulations. Youre alive. Theres an unbroken thread that stretches across more than three billion years that connects us to the first life that ever touched this world. Think of how tough, resourceful and lucky all of our countless ancestors must have been to survive long enough to pass on the message of life to the next and the next and the next generation, hundreds of millions of times before it came to us. . . . Each of us is a runner in the longest and most dangerous relay race there ever was, and at this moment, we hold the baton in our hands.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey life

I could be thousands of miles away, and yet, when you turn on whatever device is bringing my image and voice to you, Im there. Instantaneously. How is that possible? . . . It all began in the mind of one person. . . . This is the story of how we learned to make electrons do our bidding.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey mind

Show me the spectrum of anything, whether here on Earth or from a distant star, and Ill tell you what its made of. Fraunhofers lines are the atomic signatures of the elements writ large across the cosmos. As with every other major revelation in the history of science, it opened the way to newer and deeper mysteries.

— Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey science

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