Carl Sagan's Cosmos, 1980

de Carl Sagan, Jaromír Hanzlík and Jonathan Fahn
Carl c'est la pédagogie a l’état pur. Un modèle d’être humain.
Serie de documentaires (12x1h) qui retrace l'histoire de la science et son evolution, ainsi que l'une des revelation capitale de cette science: notre appartenance commune a l'univers.

Part 1 - The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

We explore the universe revealed by science.
Take back 2000 years to the great library of Alexandria, first time and place where human ciollected seriously and systematically the knowledge og the world. Renaissance by enlarge rediscovered many of the finding from the antiquity to enlight the world around 1500

Part 2 - One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue

Life arose shortly after the Earth formed, suggesting that it is an inevitable chemical process. On Earth, in 4 billion years, life advanced no further than algae. So maybe more complex forms of life are harder to evolve, even harder than the origin of life itself. If this is true, the cosmos might be filled with microorganisms, but big beasts and vegetables and thinking beings are be comparatively rare. Artificial selection on samourai crabs over a few decades is very efficient. Imagine the process of natural selection over millions/billions of years. Spontaneous recombinaison of compounds into more and more complex molecules in the primitive atmosphere. It then gradually disolved in the primitive ocean, forming a primitive soup until 1 day, quite by accident, a crude molecule arose that was able to make crude copies of itself using as building blocks the other molecules in the soup. It was the ancestor of DNA. Description of the DNA and its role in transmiting heredity.Started to fill the primitive oceans as there was no predators. Unicellular plants. Multicellular plants. Invention of sex by the microbes....First dinausaur on chrismas eve, the first mamals emerged on december 26, the first birds on december 27. After 160 million years of dominating the Earth, the dinausors mysteriously prerished all over the planet at once, about the time the first flower appeared. On december 30 the first creature that look even remotely human evolved with spectacular growth of the brain. The written history of mankind takes only the last 10 seconds of different kinds of organic molecules yet only about 50 of them are used in the essential machinery of life in every living things. Sagan: "This oak tree and I are made of the same stuff. If you go back, you'll find that we have a common ancestor". Goes into the biology of inside the cells. Explication of DNA. Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, containing exquisitely evolved molecular machines (nucleic acid, enzymes, the cell architecture...).
etc...
Gros gros boulot de vulgarisation scientifique. Un peu daté au niveau visuel mais intemporel au niveau intellectuel.
8.9/10