The best episodes of Cosmos
Ranked by viewer rating, highs first. Lit marks on the season rail place this list across the run. Vote on a placement to back it or contest it.
- 01
The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
The past is another planet - many, actually - and we will bring several of them back to life and ride the Ship of the Imagination to a vision of the Earth a quarter of a billion years into the future. Join us on a journey through space and time to grasp how the autobiography of the Earth is written in its atoms, its oceans, its continents, and all living things.
- 02
We know less now about the universe than educated Europeans did before the discovery of the Americas. All those billions of galaxies, all those stars, planets and moons--they amount to a meager 4 per cent of what really awaits out there. This awareness is the humility that distinguishes science from other human activities. It savors the fact that even bigger mysteries, mysteries like dark energy, await us.
- 03
The Ship of the Imagination, unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size, drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies, can take us anywhere in space and time. It has been idling for more than three decades, and yet it has never been overtaken. Its global legacy remains vibrant. Now, it's time once again to set sail for the stars.
- 04
Life itself sends its own messages across billions of years. It is written within us, in our DNA. But will we survive the damage caused by our global civilization? Neil shares a hopeful vision of what our future could be if we take our scientific knowledge to heart.
- 05
Our journey begins with a trip to another world and time, an idyllic beach during the last perfect day on the planet Venus, right before a runaway greenhouse effect wreaks havoc on the planet, boiling the oceans and turning the skies a sickening yellow. We then trace the surprisingly lengthy history of our awareness of global warming and alternative energy sources, taking the Ship of the Imagination to intervene at some critical points in time.
- 06
An exploration of how light, time, and gravity combine to distort our perceptions of the universe. We eavesdrop on a series of walks along a beach in the year 1809. William Herschel, whose many discoveries include the insight that telescopes are time machines, tells bedtime stories to his son John, who will grow up to make some rather profound discoveries of his own. A stranger lurks nearby. All three of them figure into the funhouse reality of tricks that light plays with time and gravity.
- 07
The keys to the cosmos have been lying around for us to find all along. Light, itself, holds so many of them, but we never realized they were there until we learned the basic rules of science.
- 08
The little known but heroic story of a guy from Iowa that can't really be told without going all the way back to the time long before the Earth was formed - to the origin of the elements in the hearts of stars. The tempestuous youth of the Earth effectively erased all traces of its beginnings. How did we ever learn its true age?
- 09
The constellation of the Pleiades provides a vehicle for us to explore a series of paradoxes and epochal discoveries for humanity. The untold story of the modern "sisters of the sun," the early 20th century female astronomers, led by two deaf women, at Harvard who catalogued the stars. It's also the story of the young British woman who joined forces with them, her defiance of the world's leading expert, and how she taught the world what the stars are really made of.
- 10
Our world of high technology and instantaneous electronic communication with each other and with our robotic emissaries at the solar system's frontier is demystified through the inspiring life story of the man whose genius Albert Einstein revered. Michael Faraday, a child of 19th century poverty, someone from whom nothing much was expected, inventor of the motor and the generator, a lifelong fundamentalist Christian, he is the bridge to the world of smartphones, tablets and so much else.
- 11
The Fleeting Grace of the Habitable Zone
There is no refuge from change in the cosmos. There will come a time in the life of the sun when Earth will no longer be a home for us. Explore the story of our ancestors who rose to a comparable challenge, as well as a long-term vision of our future on other worlds.
- 12
Discover a new vision of genesis at the bottom of the blood-red sea of the infant Earth and the story of Victor Goldschmidt, the man who found the first clues to life's beginnings in a green jewel called olivine. As he searched for the origins of life, he risked his own, daring to toy with his Nazi tormentors.
- 13
Some of the Things That Molecules Do
Life is transformation. Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd and all the other canine breeds we love today. And over the eons, natural selection has sculpted the exquisitely complex human eye out of a microscopic patch of pigment.
- 14
There was a time, not so long ago, when natural events could only be understood as gestures of divine displeasure. We will witness the moment that all changed, but first--The Ship of the Imagination is in the brooding, frigid realm of the Oort Cloud, where a trillion comets wait. Our Ship takes us on a hair-raising ride, chasing a single comet through its million-year plunge towards the Sun.
- 15
Science casts its Cloak of Visibility over everything, including Neil, himself, to see him as a man composed of his constituent atoms. The Ship of the Imagination takes us on an epic voyage to the bottom of a dewdrop to discover the exotic life forms and violent conflict that's unfolding there. We return to the surface to encounter life's ingenious strategies for sending its ancient message into the future.
- 16
Viewers are invited on an adventure spanning billions of years into the evolution of life and consciousness. Visit a 100,000-year-old laboratory, and examine the story of the change in lifestyle that radically altered human existence and the life of the heretic who found God in the book of nature, which opened our way to the stars.
- 17
A child lies on the rug of a tenement, dreaming of interstellar adventures. At the dawn of the space age, a young Carl Sagan's career is forged in the clash of his mentors: two scientific titans, astronomer Gerard Kuiper and chemist Harold Urey. Sagan goes on to realize his childhood dreams, carrying their research forward and communicating its significance to the whole world.
- 18
The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth
A hidden underground network — a collaboration of four kingdoms of life — is revealed. Explore a true first-contact story between humans and beings who communicate with a symbolic language and have maintained a representative democracy for tens of millions of years.
- 19
Two atoms (carbon and uranium) from different parts of the universe meet on a small planet. Examine how a deadly embrace between science and state altered the fate of the world, and behold a gripping cautionary tale of others who grew used to living in the shadow of grave danger until it killed them all… except for one.
- 20
In the counterintuitive realm of quantum mechanics, light can be two contradictory things (a wave and a particle), and somehow — no one knows how — an unseen observer can alter the nature of reality. Meet Thomas Young, the man who stumbled upon this hole in reality and the still-unfolding technological revolution it made possible.
- 21
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
From the birth of the devil in ancient Persia, where a beloved family dog becomes a seething beast, to a searing story of saintliness among macaque monkeys, join an exploration into the human potential for change. One of history's greatest monsters is transformed into one of its shining lights.
- 22
Coming of Age in the Anthropocene
In what kind of world can a child born in 2020 expect to grow up? When did our slide into planetwide environmental destruction begin? Enter the possible world that awaits a 2020 baby in her twenties: one darkened by our refusal to confront the real and mounting challenges we face but one which still offers a message of hope.
- 23
Seven Wonders of the New World
Young Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson first discovered their passion for science at the New York World's Fairs of the past. Visit the dazzling pavilions of the 2039 New York World's Fair, where problems currently considered intractable may have been solved through public commitment and scientific imagination. A child's journey comes full circle, presenting a future bright with possibilities.
- 24
Embark on a voyage of discovery through the evolution of consciousness with stops in ancient Greece and a visit to the largest life form on Earth. This journey takes us into the poignant dream of an abandoned orphan who opened the way to our understanding of the architecture of thought and introduced a vision of a galactic network of thought.
- 25
In the first half of the 20th century, pioneering geneticist Nikolai Vavilov traveled five continents to assemble a treasury of the world's seeds. He dreamed that science could be the means to end hunger, and his refusal to tell a scientific lie cost him his life. Witness the heroism of his colleagues and its direct impact on our lives in one of the most stirring stories in the history of science.
Shows like Cosmos
The closest matches on shared genres, ranked by match strength and popularity.
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What on Earth? is a documentary series using satellite images of strange geological occurrences and man-made structures on Earth to examine such matters as the planet's extreme locations, phenomena and species. - 02Mystery·Nature·HistoryThe best episodes of The Sky at Night1957–present·BBC FourOur team of astronomers tell us what's on view in the night sky.
- 03Mystery·Nature·HistoryThe best episodes of Lost Treasures of Egypt2019–presentSame network — National Geographic·
- 04Mystery·Nature·HistoryThe best episodes of Strip the Cosmos2014–2020·Science
In each episode of Strip the Cosmos, stunning CGI strips major planets, moons, black holes, stars and galaxies of gases, minerals, rock, magma and gravitational force-fields – layer by layer – revealing the destiny,… - 05Mystery·History·AdventureThe best episodes of Expedition Unknown2015–present·DiscoveryIn the hit series Expedition Unknown, Travel Channel's witty explorer Josh Gates seeks answers to some of the world's most captivating unsolved stories and legends.
- 06Nature·HistoryThe best episodes of NOVA1974–present·PBS
NOVA brings you stories from the frontlines of science and engineering, answering the big questions of today and tomorrow, from how our ancestors lived, to whether parallel universes exist, to how technology will…
