This week, we talk about the Cosmos, old and new. Tim remembers watching the original “Cosmos” with his dad back in the 80’s and remembers Carl Sagan’s simple question of “why not save a step” as one of the many influences on his road to atheism. We talk mostly about the new series starring Neil Degrasse Tyson. We discuss our favorite parts of the series and how happy we are that Tyson continually makes subtle digs at religion and superstition.
Show notes below the fold
All of the episodes of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey are free on Hulu.
Molly: Electromagnetic and Gravitational forces being separate is one of the reasons that scientists are searching for a Unified Field Theory. Right now electronics do not affect gravity, because we don’t yet know how gravity and electricity are related. When we DO figure out how electronic and gravitational forces are related, we WILL be able to have electronics that affect gravity.
This is closely akin to the relationship between matter and energy, and is part of why Einstein’s discovery was so phenomenal, particularly given how he arrived at his discovery with very simple tools (compared to modern ones). By asking himself what happens if the speed of light is a constant and realizing that both space and time would have to bend to make that possible, Einstein arrived at E=mc^2. Think about that for a second: WHY would the ratio between something’s mass and the energy in that thing be equal to… the square of a speed? We take that equation for granted, but that concept is NUTS.
Like the relationship between matter and energy, the relationship between gravity and electronics may end up being similarly disproportionate and useless – we may discover that we CAN nullify gravity, but only with a completely unwieldy amount of electronic power, and only by completely nullifying gravity for a millisecond – in other words, a gravity bomb.
But right now we can’t do anything with gravity through electronic means (or electronics through gravitational means,) so we have to handle them as separate forces even though they’re likely related.
This week’s episode wasn’t even SLIGHTLY subtle — “Hey, look at a guy who spent his entire career figuring out that big businesses are screwing up the environment, and look how hard they fought to keep him quiet. Good thing we listened, huh?”
Betting that Fox News is not happy with Fox Entertainment right now.
That episode was fantastic! It feels like Tyson is setting everything up like a bunch of dominoes for when he does the “Global Climate Change is Real” episode.