MASS

Episode 3 "The Harmony of the World"

Carl spends a large part of the episode discounting the belief in astrology.I'm amazed that one of his quotes has stuck with me all these years and I used it in conversation just a couple of days before re-watching the episode. The quote is "that the obstetrician at your birth has a greater gravitational influence on you than any planet does." I'm always amazed that people that I consider critical thinkers can put any predictive stock in astrology. When Sagan shows that the patterns of the stars have been assigned different configurations by every culture that looked to the sky, it is obvious that the only significance to the star patterns is the mirroring of each culture's beliefs and fears.

Kepler comes through as one of the great thinkers of science. The fact that he could discard his life-long idea of using the perfect solids and circles to explain the planetary motions and embrace the vile and irregular ellipse as the solution is extraordinary.

From another perspective if I ever was able to go back in time, I think I'd rather hang with Tycho Brahe and his entourage for a night than the strait-laced Kepler. It makes me wonder when Tycho was able to make all those highly accurate astronomical sightings if he was always wining and dining every night.

It also hits home how hard life was back in those times. All the personal tragedy that occured to Kepler in his later life. Much of it caused by war caused by competing religions. That brings to mind a gentleman named Richard Dawkins who was on the Bill Maher show last week. He brought out a t-shirt with the logo, in large letters, "Religion", and in small letters below, "together we can find the cure".

Remember you can watch the updated 1980 Cosmos series on www.hulu.com/#!watch/63327 with commercials included but the price is right. It's free.

The blog by Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society's  called "Cosmos with Cosmos" can be found at, http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/ . His comments on each episode are very insightful and thorough.

Also check out Dean's suggested site www.learnerstv.com for some great science & astronomy videos. I was impressed with the video that showed how to compute a star's parallax, why a telescope mirror has to be shaped like a parabola to reflect all the light to a point and an explanation why a star like the sun swells up into a red giant star when it ages.