Billions And Billions Of Stars

No, this isn't a post about some movie awards show; it's about the television series Cosmos. You remember that, right? I was channel surfing yesterday morning and just happened to come across an episode of it being shown on the SciFi channel. Now, as you remember, the show was co-written and was hosted by scientist Carl Sagan, who passed away in 1996. I read all about him on Wiki, but I won't bore you with all the details - you can go check it out for yourself. Anywho, I was really curious to see it again and see how much relevance it still holds today. That series came out in 1980, and I remember being 9 years old and watching it with my mom. I remember being really freaked out by it, almost to the point of being scared by it. One, Carl Sagan was a very peculiar looking (a different turtleneck sweater for each day of the week) and sounding guy, even in 1980, and two, the concepts he was explaining sounded so foreign, incomprehensible, and infathomable to my 9yo pea-brain. Of course, today, I can appreciate the brilliance of his intelligence, zen-like demeanor, and personal passion for science. It seemed like there may have been some CGI embellishment of some of the animated sequences of the show, but all in all it was the same as what I remember. As far as relevance goes, I think it's still as fresh and relevant today as it was 28 years ago. And apparently, it's still being shown on tv stations all around the world. What was so coincidental yesterday was the episode I happened to watch was episode #12 (there were 13 hour-long episodes total), entitled "Encyclopedia Galactica", in which Sagan discussed the possibility of life on other planets and how we could go about searching for said life. He covers alot of theoretical points which apparently also made it into his book "Contact" (published in 1985), which was later made into the movie in 1997 starring Jodie Foster. I absolutely love that movie and end up watching it whenever it's being shown on cable. He even talked about the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and the possibility of extraterrestrials sending encrypted messages, just like they did in the movie in the form of non-repeating prime numbers. Cool stuff. It's also an interesting side note to mention that the band Supergrass claimed that they watched the entire Cosmos series while recording their fourth album in France, and the show became their primary creative inspiration behind that album, "Life On Other Planets" (a classic). I guess I'll need to add the series to my Netflix queue (though, not all 13 episodes in a row!!).