#Cosmos E7: So Fresh & So Clean Clean

(I live tweet Cosmos every Sunday @ 8pm CST. For all of my Cosmos recaps, please click here)

Episode 7 of Fox's Cosmos, entitled "The Clean Room", covered the search behind the age of the Universe. Meteorites found on the Earth surface contain a certain amount of lead, which is actually a decayed form of Uranium.  Thus, by measuring the amount of lead, one can determine the age of the rock, and this can be extended to the age of the Earth. Clair Patterson had to build a "Clean Room", a lab that was free of lead contamination so that he could accurately measure the amount of lead in a meteorite.

Lead was a popular ingredient in many products in the middle of the 20th century, from paint to gasoline. Patterson's work help to show that the amount of lead in the environment has been increasing over time, and this helped many industries (such as oil and petroleum) to stop using lead in their products, since it was known to be poisonous.  Of course, these industries did not go down without a fight, and hired their own scientists to push their agenda.

Check out Outkast's video for "So Fresh, Co Clean" below, as well as the Storify of the live tweet of the episode.

#Cosmos E6: How Deep? Put a Star To Sleep

(I live tweet Cosmos every Sunday @ 8pm CST. For all of my Cosmos recaps, please click here)

The sixth episode of Cosmos aired on Fox , and I held my usual live tweet which is shown below. But first, let's check out some videos from the episode.

Check out the complexity of "life in the dew drop", which features two life forms, Paramecium and. Dileptus, in an epic battle. It's amazing how much goes on within the smallest things that humans can observe.  As Tyson puts it, the dew drops has its own little cosmos within it.

Check out the advanced, underground chamber that the Japanese built to detect the neutrino. It had to be far underground so that other molecules wouldn't make it through the layers of Earth. A array of light detectors surrounded 50k tons of distilled water is the trap.

Finally, see how the finite speed of light prevents us from seeing farther back in time than 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

Check out the live tweet below!

#Cosmos E5: Spectrum shaker

(I live tweet Cosmos every Sunday @ 8pm CST. For all of my Cosmos recaps, please click here)

The fifth episode of Cosmos aired on Fox, and it is was all about the light spectrum, and how scientists from different countries (Joseph von Fraunhofer from Germany, Mozi from China,  Ibn al-Haytham from Iraq, Isaac Newton from England)  and time periods help us arrive at our current understanding of light. Most of the light that we see is white, and appears to have no color. However, white light is actually composed of ALL colors.  When light is translated through a different medium at exactly the proper angle, the colors separate and make a rainbow.  This happens with a prism, as well as with raindrops.

Interestingly enough, there is more light than in the visible spectrum.  Radio waves are a form of light, as well as X-rays that you've likely seen in the hospital.  Those are a few examples of other forms of light in the section beyond visible light, called the infrared spectrum.

Check out the live tweets below!

#Cosmos E4: There Is a Light That Shines

(I live tweet Cosmos every Sunday. For all of my Cosmos recaps, please click here)

Episode 4 of Fox's Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson focuses on the Herschel family of scientists, Einstein's theory of Relativity, and the speed of light as nature's fundamental constant.

Patrick Stewart voiced astronomer William Herschel, who was one of the main scientists in this episode. William, and his son John, contributed to our understanding of stars and the light that they give off. Light from distant objects takes a while to reach us on earth, so the light that we see is very old - we are effectively looking back in time. The light from stars that we see are probably already dead.

The only issue I had with this episode was that they didn't mention Caroline Herschel, who was an amazing astronomer in her own right. Otherwise, this was my favorite so far in the series.

To see the light in a different path, check out Common's hit single "The Light" from the Like Water for Chocolate album (2000).

For more, check out the Storify below!

#Cosmos E3: Know The Ledge

(For all of my Cosmos recaps, please click here)

For the next 12 or so Sundays, join me on Twitter (@ShareefJackson) as I livetweet the show Cosmos.  The most recent episode "When Knowledge Conquered Fear", deals mostly with comets. Ancient civilizations saw comets as messages from God of impending doom. It took scientists like Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley, and Isaac Newton to prove that comets were a part of the solar system whose travel patterns can be predicted with startling accuracy.

Knowledge is power, and also inspires great music. Check out Eric B and Rakim's "Know the Ledge" off of the soundtrack to the movie Juice. After that, check out the Storify of my tweets below!

Check out the tweets below!