Why Shows Like Cosmos Are Important

Not sure how many of you watched the show #Cosmos yesterday but I must say, after waiting a couple months for the show to finally air I was thrilled when it finally started. I was also not in any way let down. I thought Neil deGrasse Tyson did a wonderful job of taking over for Carl Sagan. He even paid a thoughtful homage to the great astronomer with the story of how they met when he (Neil) was 17 and a budding astronomer himself.

The show did a fine job of telling the story of our beginnings and also an small hint of where we could one day go. This is what I want to focus on here today. Our long history and yet how small that history and our lives are in this wonderfully large universe.

The Long and Short of it All

It is sometimes funny to think just how big we think we are. You can often times hear people talk about the great things they have done, or how long someone will remember someone else. While it might be true in the context of our lives, how often do you really think about the scale of it all? Consider for a moment just how long we have been here on this planet. What? We have been here for some 200,000 years and most of it we really do not know too much about?

Once you consider our time here, try and think about what it means in the lifespan of the planet. Then, once you have that in your mind, consider how long our planet has been here. Then, take it a bit further and consider our Sun and Solar System. Need some help? I can lend a hand, and I am in no way ashamed to say that I was helped a little with this from the show last night.

Our Universe is a whopping 13.8 billion years old. Now, taking that further, our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old and our Sun, 4.5 billion years. Of course, our planet came to life (along with the rest of them in our solar system) at about the same time. There is some discussion in certain circles about the age of all of these objects. They argument is whether they are 4.5 or 4.54 billion years old. But does that .04 billion years really matter?

So, after all of that have you thought about how small we are yet? Think about those time frames and the ages of the planets and universe. They are all in the billions. We barely live to be 100 years anymore. This is not even a blink of the eye in universal terms. This is a problem in my mind. Sure, we all want to live as long as possible but just living for the sake of living is not the context that I am thinking of here. Let's now consider where we are in the history of our exploration of the universe.

We have really only started to look at the solar system and the rest of space with our current views and ideas for the last 50 years. Sure, we knew that we all rotate around the Sun for longer than that (thought not too much longer) but most of what we now know about space and how it works came about rather recently. So looking forward, if we are to continue to study the universe and our planet and every other planet we can find, how much time would we need? Well, we would need a hell of a lot of it that is for sure.

It takes us humans a very long time to do anything. Before we can even get into space or send a satellite up there it takes us time to earn money, get the project approved, build something, get the people or the project re-approved, fight the people who do not want the project to take place, and if we are lucky we can finally send it up. Then again.. there is usually some other sort of delay. Now with  the time that we humans have on this planet we can safely say that for one person, say the person who is leading the project for this imaginary satellite, the time that it took to get this project from start to finish was a rather large percentage of their life.
 With  that being the case how does anyone ever get enough done to make a difference?

The short answer here is that they don't. The usual scenario is that people can get about one project like this going per lifetime. If they are lucky or good they can get multiple projects rolling. Or maybe they are in charge of others and they can use that position to help people in multiple situations. Either way, usually one person puts almost an entire life's work into a project like this and by the time it is actually doing what they had hoped and dreamed it one day would, they are old and sadly almost too old to really do much about it anymore.

This is in my opinion one of our major stumbling blocks to our exploration of the universe. The one thing that does help us however is that we can record our past triumphs and failures for the next generation to pick up where we left off. This however does require schooling and for people, kids mostly, to be interested in these subjects. This means we need teachers and people who will try and foster that next generation. Again all of this takes money and lots of it.

All of this is just one small example of how long much of our exploring and studying and everything else can take.  This is one example though of why shows like Cosmos are so important. The hope is, at least in my mind is that the show can foster a new thought in a young child's mind. That it can get people excited again about science and space. If that is true, there will be a few more kids who will dream about becoming an astronomer. The more of those we have, the better our chances of finding out more about space or the means to travel through it.

We need to give people a way to experience space and the wonders of the universe to the fullest extent. People who have a desire to learn about these things should be given every opportunity. Our lives are too short to learn everything that there is to learn. This is why our ability to record information for generations that follow is so important. We must take that information and expand on it. We must always give people who have a wandering mind the chances to do just that. And most of all, we must never repeat the mistake that we have made in the past. We must never persecute people for thinking differently, having new ideas, and challenging the status quo.

Our species is a special one. This is especially true on this planet. While this is true at home we have no idea what lies beyond the stars. There is every possible opportunity for there to be other "special" beings out there. There is nothing in science that says it is not possible. Therefore we must prepare for that opportunity and know that someday our species will meet another. It might take a million years so we must make sure that we are around that long. That will take more exploration and furthermore it will take expansion. For this we need more people to take on the role of scientist and astronomer and engineer and others like it. We need the younger generations to take an interest in these and other fields. This is why shows like Cosmos are so important. They take all the information we have talked about and they bring it to the masses. They allow new minds to think further and brighter. They will bring new ideas to people who might have been looking for a new way to explore. We need to keep these minds going and must give them every opportunity to continue on their path. Thank you Cosmos for helping to do just that!