come nerd
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kateoplis:

"We’ve discovered a thousand planets orbiting other stars. We’ve discovered a new branch of the tree of life called, collectively, "extremophiles," that thrive in conditions that can kill other animal and humans — conditions of high pressure, high radiation, high density — or low density, low pressure; anything that we would think of as extreme is just natural for this branch of life. …

The whole field of astrobiology has come of age; we’re searching for the signatures of life in the atmospheres of the exoplanets, for example. We’ve confirmed that the dinosaurs died by asteroid, and that asteroid crater is in the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico. So the idea that such an event could render 70%of the world’s species extinct is itself an extraordinary result. 

What else has deepened? We know the age of the universe with more precision than ever before; we know a little bit more about the behavior of subatomic particles with the discovery of the Higgs Boson, a field made by a particle that gives mass to other particles; there’s discussion of the multiverse, where we are just one bubble out of an uncountable number of other bubbles of universes coming in and out of existence. So there’s a lot more science, but Cosmos is not about bringing the latest science to the public. There are documentaries that do that, and very good documentaries at that. …

What distinguishes us is the context in which this information is presented, and the context for Cosmos is how and why any of this science matters; what effect does it have on your outlook, your cosmic perspective; and in that way Cosmos can be taken to heart; Cosmos can influence you not only intellectually but emotionally. And with its good doses of awe and wonder, it can even affect you spiritually.”

Read on: Rolling Stone