During today's discussion it struck me that many of you may not know about the remake of the old television show "Cosmos." Astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote and narrated the original show, taking viewers on a mind-blowing journey through space and time. The show has recently been brought back to life by Seth MacFarlane (yes, the "Family Guy" dude) and Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysicist and all-around amazing translator of science for the general public). Science is cool, people--join the party and watch the new "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" on Fox or Hulu.
http://www.cosmosontv.com/
So I just finished watching my first ever episode of "Cosmos". I watched the episode about the clean room. So in a nutshell the episode is basically about this scientist who spends like 6 years trying to make a completely clean room so that he can study lead. The purpose of doing that was so that the amount of lead in like rock and sediment and stuff could help identify exactly how old the earth really is. The outcome of all of that was that the earth was figured out to be like 4 and a half billion years old. After a discovery like that the scientist got suggestive threats from chemical company people that he needed to stop his research on lead. Lead apparently is bad, which I knew it wasn't the greatest thing but had no idea just how much effect it had on human health. Another surprising aspect of the episode was that lead is somehow linked to the rise and fall of the roman empire? Not really completely sure how that happened. Science is cool, and I felt like I was watching a cool suspenseful movie with the way the announcer guy kept talking. It was also a nice break from reading books and studying for finals by watching a tv show. Which I have not done in quite some time now.
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