The Most Astounding Fact (Neil DeGrasse Tyson)

[Gruntled Old Man]

Sit back. Take a deep breath. Hold it a moment. Then slowly release it. And watch this magnificent video.

Marvel at the beautiful imagery. Listen to the words of Dr. Tyson.

If this does not soothe you, calm you, if this does not cause your mind and body to relax, well, I'm sorry, but you will, quite simply, not live to age 69, as I have.

You see, the world will keep turning, regardless of what some misinterpreted Mayan inscriptions have been sensationalized to purport. This earth shall perservere, despite the best efforts to destroy it. In fact, it's downright laughable to consider, even for a moment, that OUR puny efforts could ever cause the destruction of this planet. We could, ourselves, Russia, China, Israel unleash the full measure of our nuclear arsenals, yet life on Earth would ultimately survive. We most likely wouldn't, but, hey, sic transit gloria mundi.

And now, if you'll kindly excuse me, I am going to bed, and will sleep most soundly. See you tomorrow, if there's anything that moves me to post.

Good night.

[CherokeeDem]

1. I loved Carl Sagan....

and I miss his voice and his love of the universe very much. However, I have found my second love, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. What an amazing man and what an amazing description of who we are. We are the universe.

Thanks so much for posting this, it was simply beautiful.

Can't wait until the new Cosmos series begins...Tyson wil be wonderful.

[Gruntled Old Man]

5. I agree 100%

I can think of no one better than Tyson to carry on Sagan's legacy of making the Universe understandable to non-scientists like me.

[saras]

2. "Life" in that case, may mean bacteria miles down in solid rock.

With a reasonable combination of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, we could pretty much eradicate multicellular life from the planet. We'd have to explicitly target important systems like the ionosphere and deep oceans rather than just big cities, but I think we could do a pretty thorough job. Remove the ozone layer with the longer-lasting gases, ramp up the production of the more effective greenhouse gases, poison the country's major aquifers, strip the vegetation with long-lasting poisons, vaporize a few thousand tons of plutonium into the air...

I think he vastly underestimates the damage we could do if we really set our minds to it.

[Speck Tater]

3. We are stardust. We are golden. And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. nt

[Scuba]

6. +1

[drokhole]

4. "You are the Big Bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are."

"Billions of years ago you were a Big Bang. And now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the Big Bang. But you are. It depends on how you define yourself. You're not something that is a result of the Big Bang, on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the Big Bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are."

"What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call 'here and now.' You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real deep down you is the whole universe."

- Alan Watts