Carl Sagan's Cosmos [DVD] [1980]

Description

Product Description CARL SAGAN'S COSMOS - A PERSONAL VOYAGECosmos tells the fascinating story of how nearly fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transformed matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilisation grew up together and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science.Astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan is host and narrator of this amazing 13-hour series which originally aired on the BBC in the UK and on Public Broadcasting Stations in the United States in 1980 and has since been broadcast in over 60 countries worlwide to a global audience of more than 500 millionDr. Sagan describes the universe in a way that appeals to a mass audience, by using Earth as a reference point, by speaking in terms intelligible to non-scientific people, by relating the exploration of space to that of the Earth by pioneers of old, and by citing such Earth legends as the Library of Alexandria as metaphors for space-related future events.Among Dr. Sagan's favorite topics are the origins of life, the search for life on Mars, the infernal composition of the atmosphere of Venus and a warning about a similar effect taking place on Earth due to global pollution and the 'greenhouse effect', the lives of stars, interstellar travel and the effects of attaining the speed of light, the danger of mankind technologically self-destructing, and the search, using radio technology, for intelligent life in deep space.Now remastered and restored, this multi-Primetime Emmy Award winning masterpiece, featuring music from Vangelis, is regarded as one of, if not, the greatest scientific series of all timeCOSMOS: A SPACE-TIME ODYSSEYFollowing Sagan's death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series along with Steven Soter, a producer from the series, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, sought to create a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.Step foward none other than Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, Ted, American Dad, The Cleveland Show amongst othersInfluenced by Cosmos as a child, MacFarlane believed that Cosmos served to 'bridge the gap between the academic community and the general public'.Having met Tyson in 2008, MacFarlane told Tyson, 'I'm at a point in my career where I have some disposable income and I'd like to spend it on something worthwhile'.Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey was commissoned in 2011 & is due to be broadcast in the US on 10th March 2014 and on 16th March in the UK on SKY1 and the National Geographic channel. Review 'Carl Sagan's masterpiece, probably the most important reason I got interested in astronomy'. --Professor Brian Cox