I used to watch this happily with my parents when I was a child. I remember this scene very vividly. I'm amazed to see it again on youtube after all these years.
Hans Zimmers "Leave No Man Behind" from Black Hawk Down would be perfect music for this sequence. For people to benefit from relativistic space flight @ near light speeds they must go on the trip
I started reading Sagan's The Cosmos to my now 1 1/2 year old granddaughter a couple months ago. I shall begin to have her watch the series this Summer in between our time in the backyard garden.
"Pauulo says good bye to his little brother Vinchennnzo" I don't know why but I love listening to him say it like that haha. He almost had somewhat of a regal way of speaking
I still recall getting a chuckle out of that when me and my mom watched the original airing of Cosmos. Always had to be SO precise. The best occurs when he enunciates the !Kung tribe of the Kalahari-he must have practiced in front of mirror for hours, because the proper naming requires a special “clucking” sound with the tongue and the roof of the mouth. What a hoot Carl Sagan was!
This is my favorite part of the entire series. As a kid in the early 80s when I was 6-8 years old I watched this and left it with a far greater understanding of science than of people I knew in my daily life. We didn't have the word Autistic then so I didn't know I was that but I had no idea why people did what they did but I understood this stuff.
That’s awesome! I was also duly inspired by Dr. Sagan-went on to read 9 or 10 of his books, then read Asimov, Wheeler, Kaufmann, Gribbin, Hawking, Calder and many more-and became a soil scientist in the employ of the USDA/NRCS for 32 years.
Carl Sagan agrees with you! That's why he wrote books and starred in television shows, he wanted everyone to think critically as he did. It's up to us to embody the Sagan wisdom in ourselves as well as waiting for another Sagan type scientist to take Carl's old position.
My father introduced me to this video when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I was old enough to understand what they were suggesting, but not quite old enough to stick around long enough to realize that we can't really travel at the speed of light yet. So, naturally, I went and got my scooter--motor powered. I considered replicating what I'd seen here (or attemtping to) but then decided not to, because I didn't want to age so slowly while everyone I loved aged and withered away.
I was a little kid when this was on telly. I loved it, and I'm not sure why, because I hadn't really any clue what that Carl Sagan fella was going on about. But I remember I found his voice comforting, maybe because I thought he sounded a bit like Kermit the Frog at the time (though he doesn't really, but then again I am foreign). And also I liked Paolo and his magic red/blue scooter. A slice of my happy childhood suddenly in my mind again. Thank you for posting this video and giving me that.
I understand how Rick Springfield seems to never age a day from this Cosmos episode. Rick must be always travelling near the speed of light. Rick is in his mid 70's yet he looks 20 something.
that is science fiction. travelling far into space will not change how fast you age. if you are 40 and it takes you 60 earth years to fly somewhere, you will still be 100 by the time you get there, and will look like it too, if you're not already dead from old age before then. If you could fly to that place in 1 minute, and be back in 1 minute, you and everyone else on earth, would still be 2 minutes older than you all were before you left.
@@shaquadradeloiserussell8659if you traveled away from Earth at light speed for 1 minute, then return to Earth at light speed for the same amount of time almost 100 days would have passed on Earth in those two minutes.
Carl Sagan es un científico fascinante, por su trabajo (incansable) en la investigación y la divulgación científica en los campos de la astronomía, exobiologia, radioastronomia, la investigación de las ondas del sonido (el efecto dopler), el viaje en el tiempo a la velocidad de la Luz, (como en este caso del vídeo), la vida extraterrestre inteligente más allá de nuestro planeta tierra, y tantísimos otros temas muy interesantes, les envío muchos saludos desde la provincia de Buenos Aires República Argentina 🇦🇷
How did his brother survive all that time on the bench? What did he eat? Where did he poop? I hope the new version of Cosmos answers these loose threads.
Obviously, younger brother Vincenzo did not stay on the bench for fifty years. While Paulo took his relativistic ride, Vincenzo went on with his life, but returned to the bench at the same time every day, waiting for Paulo to return. The time dilation effects of special relativity led to a poignant reunion.
I dont want anybody to think that they would be in some kind of twilight zone when traveling close to c. To you, your watch is ticking normally, to an observer, your watch ticks very slow.
We hear an audible red and blue shift everyday as a sound wave. Listen to a car traveling on a road. You hear a high pitched noise as it approached, you hear an almost "exhale" lowered pitch as it passes. You have witnessed the effect Sagan is talking about. If we are in that car, our field of vision narrows due to speed relative to a "static" earth. Such a great video, thanks.
> If we are in that car, our field of vision narrows due to speed relative to a "static" earth. No it doesn't. The effect Carl is talking about, where things that are behind you appear in front of you, only happens at very near the speed of light. It doesn't occur at the incredibly sluggish speed of cars.
I suspect Sagan would have loved the news that neutrinos may go faster than the speed of light. He would not have focused on what was wrong with his earlier point of view, but what the implications of this new discovery was. He would have considered this information the best information available at that time, and that's ok.
We need more people like Sagan and less dirtbag politicians and middle eastern dictators. In 1000 years we will either by far more advanced then we could ever dream, or we will be consigned to dwell on our weaknesses rather then our strengths.
@theseaotter He was a master at explaining brilliant and complicated thoughts and ideas ina way that common folks like us could understand and that's a rare gift.. hopefully there will be another like him..
If you were to travel at exactly light speed, time actually *would* stop for you. Getting to the speed of light, however, would require more energy than exists in the universe.
Carl Sagan explains such complicated theories in such simple ways that people with almost no knowledge of physics and cosmology can easily understand what he is trying to explain.
If Paolo's Scooter got 60 miles per gallon, and he traveled the Speed of Light for just 10 minutes he would need a fuel tank that held about 2 quadrillion gallons of gas! What a great video. Mind expanding to think that Time does pass at such different rates and some brilliant minds discovered this with just pencil and paper (or chalk and blackboard) to do the requisite mathematics...
there's agood example about this. Imagine you watch a clock; what you see is the light that goes to the clock and then to your eyes, so you see it's moving; but if you go to the speed of light wlaking away from it and watching it, you'll see the same time always, until you stop, because you're going at the same speed of the image you received when you was in front of the clock (of course in real life you wouldn't be able to see the clock because of the distance, unless is a big star size clock)
You'd see either a black or white TV screen, since its a recording of light waves and refections, - Not real life. All colors would blend, to the human eye watching the TV. No light waves would accually be distorted.
most common example is astronauts and space satellites. Astronauts in their average career will have travelled fowards in time by 20 hours... also the time on satellites have to be constantly adjusted to match a master clock on the earth. The time onboard a satellite creeps ahead into the future because of the speed they travel at all the time.. this is everyday stuff
Watched this as a senior in high school when it came out. Of course, my dad couldn’t understand it and hated watching it. My mother watched only because of Carl’s voice. Science was my thing, not theirs.
I have a practically overwhelming amount of memories of this ORIGINAL version of COSMOS. Nothing but respect though for the Neil DeGrasse Tyson version.😎👍🏻
I think there's a bit of an inconsistency here. Of you take a drive around your town close to the speed of light, it's not that you will return decades later, it's that your journey will be near instantaneous. Light can travel around the Earth 7 times in 1 second, thus in order for your trip to take a single decade in Earth time, you would have to drive around the equator over 2 billion times. Just that for you, it would take progressively less time, the closer you are to the speed of light.
That's the hard part with trying to illustrate anything related to the speed of light: it's so fast that you either have to contend with incomprehensibly vast distances or incomprehensibly short timeframes. Here I suppose they tried their best to sidestep the issue by focusing on time spent traveling, ignoring some other consequences to keep it in a familiar frame of reference.
Don't buy oil of olay to prevent ageing. Just travel at the speed of light for half hour!! Seriously though, what a magnificent video. This boggles my mind and makes no sense but it's all true which is a mindfeck.
no mate. to you, that 8 mins would be like just a few seconds or less, but in reality, its still 8 mins. your bio clock ticks slower, that means you "degrade" slower. but if you were travelling for 8 mins according to you (your bio clock), then yes, you would find your frends old.
In short, light is always traveling the same speed, then again we define space and time by light so light is always going straight too, it's the universe that curves and slows down. Sidenote for anyone interested With the LHC now its cool, H+ going ~the speed of light, get added energy, so they, instead of going faster, expand in size.
With our current understanding of the world, it seems humans wouldn't survive the journey, yet this is an imaginative journey. Still, it is assumed that we can suvive the journey and the person traveling wouldn't die of old age since time outside your scope would pass faster relative to you, but your experience within the fast speed would seem normal.
If you travel in a spaceship with a speed close to speed of light, then time would go by slower. You wouldn't understand that. You would see your clock clicking normally. You would get hungry as usual, your nails would grow as always after some days. Or actually what is "day" for you. If I was outside that spaceship, not travelling with your speed,but still able to see you, I would see a man almost..motionless! Everything you would do in a perfectly normal way,I would see it like in slow motion!
we cannot observe reality directly, we are always slightly behind, waiting for the light to reach our eyes. maybe the 'answers ' mankind search for are in this delay. at the moment all we can do is look into the past.
If you held a mirror in front of your face while you traveled at the speed of light would you be able to see your reflect? The Church of Sagan! All hail Carl! CC!
I would have thought that the boy on the bike would have come back from his trip in an instant in the eyes of his brother and the brother would have been the same age.
@Corcoancaoc Exactly. If the Sun were to disappear instantaneously, we wouldn't feel it's shock wave for 8 minutes. Which is the time it takes light to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
@dalepelser "if time slows down at near the speed of light surely then time stops at the speed of light, then obviuosly tim would reverse faster than the speed of light" Yes, so moving at speed of light would be moot, because you would never reach your destination. :)
