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Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Episode 03 - When Knowledge Conquered Fear. The episode begins with Tyson describing how pattern recognition manifested in early civilization as using astronomy and astrology to predict the passing of the seasons, including how the passage of a comet was often taken as an omen. Tyson continues to explain that the origin of comets only became known in the 20th century due to the work of Jan Oort and his hypothesis of the Oort cloud.

Tyson then continues to relate the collaboration between Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton in the last part of the 17th century in Cambridge. The collaboration would result in the publication of PhilosophiƦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the first major work to describe the laws of physics in mathematical terms, despite objections and claims of plagiarism from Robert Hooke and financial difficulties of the Royal Society of London. Tyson explains how this work challenged the prevailing notion that God had planned out the heavens, but would end up influencing many factors of modern life, including space flight.

Tyson further describes Halley's contributions based on Newton's work, including determining Earth's distance to the sun, the motion of stars and predicting the orbit of then-unnamed Halley's Comet using Newton's laws. Tyson contrasts these scientific approaches to understanding the galaxy compared to what earlier civilizations had done, and considers this advancement as humankind's first steps into exploring the universe. The episode ends with an animation of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies' merging based on the principles of Newton's laws. (from wikipedia.org)

Episode 03 - When Knowledge Conquered Fear


Go to Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey Home or watch other episodes:

Episode 01 - Standing Up in the Milky Way
Episode 02 - Some of the Things that Molecules Do
Episode 03 - When Knowledge Conquered Fear
Episode 04 - A Sky Full of Ghosts
Episode 05 - Hiding in the Light
Episode 06 - Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still
Episode 07 - The Clean Room
Episode 08 - Sisters of the Sun
Episode 09 - The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
Episode 10 - The Electric Boy
Episode 11- The Immortals
Episode 12 - The World Set Free
Episode 13 - Unafraid of the Dark