Introduction by Ann Druyan :--
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When Carl Sagan, Steven Shrodder and I wrote the Television Serial "Cosmos" in the 1970s, a lot of things were different. Back then, the United States and the Soviet Union ( former Russia ), held the entire world in a perpetual hostage crisis called the "Cold War". The wealth and the scientific ingenuity of our civilization was being squandered in a runaway " Arms' Race " that employed more than half of the world's scientists and infested the earth with 50,000 nuclear weapons ! So much has happened since then - the Cold war is history, and Science has made "great strides".We have completed the spacecraft Reconneissance of the solar system - the preliminary mapping of the visible universe that surrounds us and we have charted the universe within - the human genome. When Cosmos was first broadcast, there was no world-wide-web, it was a different world. What a tribute to Carl Sagan, the scientist who took many a punch for daring to speculate that even after 20 of the most eventful years in the history of science Cosmos requires few revisions and indeed is rich in prophecy. Cosmos is both - a history of the scientific enterprise and an attempt to convey the soaring spiritual high of its central revelation - our Oneness with the Universe !! Now please enjoy Cosmos, the proud Saga of how, through this searching of the 40,000 generations of our ancestors, we have come to discover our co-ordinates in space and in Time, and how through the awesomely powerful method of science, we have been able to reconstruct, the sweep of cosmic evolution and defined our own part, in its great story.
The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean -- ( part narrated by Carl Sagan )
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The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stirs- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as of a distant memory of forming from a great height - we know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries......
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| The planets, the stars and the skies are so mysterious |
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| There are trillions and trillions of Suns in the Universe !! |
The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding - lost somewhere between immensity and eternity in our planetary home- the earth. For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves - this is a time of great danger, but our species is young and curious and brave - it shows much Promise....In the last three millenia ( 3000 years ) we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand cosmos, in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.
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| The immensity of the universe can be understood from the fact that our earth is said to be just a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam ! |
We are about to begin the Journey through the Cosmos -- we will encounter galaxies and suns and planets.... life and consciousness coming into being, evolving and perishing.... worlds of ice and stars of diamond, atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms....but its also a story of our own planet-- the plants and animals that share it with us... and its a story about us -- how we achieved our present understanding of the cosmos,how the cosmos has shaped our illusion and our culture and what our fate may be.
We wish to pursue the truth, no matter where it leads... but to find the truth we need imagination and scepticism both...we willnot be afraid to speculate but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from Fact.The cosmos is full beyond measure, elegant truths of exquisite inter-relationships of the awesome machinery of Nature.
The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we have learnt the most of what we know. Recently we have waded a little way out, maybe ankle deep, and the water seems inviting....some part of our being knows, this is where we came from. We long to return and we can... because the cosmos is also within us, we are made of star stuff, we are a way, the cosmos can know itself !!
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| All of us are made from " Star- stuff " !! |
The journey for each of us begins here... we are going to explore the cosmos in a ship of the imagination, unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size, drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies, it can take us anywhere in space and time. Perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to the worlds of dreams and worlds of facts. Come with me.....
