Carl Sagan's Cosmos

So I was listening to an episode of the GeekNights podcast, and Rym's thing of the night was this strange song. The first time I listened to it, it was weird and I didn't like it. But after listening to it a couple more times, I really liked it; especially this amazing chorus:

"A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way"

This "song" doesn't rhyme and it's really just a techno remix, but it's so interesting. Particularly this line: "The sky calls to us if we do not destroy ourselves we will one day venture to the stars." I think I could base an entire novel around that one line.

Apparently this entire song is based on a documentary done in 1980 called Cosmos. According to Rym on Geeknights, this one documentary is the basis for why a lot of people got into astronomy. Conveniently enough, the entire 13 episode documentary is on Hulu.

So I just watched the first episode and it all felt like information I had heard before. But I did learn about this Eratosthenes person. He was able to figure out the earth was round and calculate the exact circumference of the earth by using shadows at the exact same time of day in two different locations 800 km apart. I had learned in elementary school that it was Christopher Columbus that discovered the earth was round when he didn't fall off the earth on his way to the new world. Eratosthenes needs WAY more credit for his discovery.

The first episode of Carl Sagan's: "Cosmos" interested me, and I think I'll be going and watching the rest of the series on Hulu slowly over the next few weeks.