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Lawmakers and top military officials on Wednesday expressed fears that friction with Russia could someday leave the United States without the power to launch rockets into space. Reliance on a single Russian engine to launch many critical military satellites could come back to haunt the U.S., officials said, if tensions between the two nations continue to rise. “If you consider space a national security priority, then you absolutely have to consider assured access to space a national security priority,” Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force’s space command, testified in a joint Senate committee hearing on Wednesday. “Given that...

Cosmos Scrubs Religion's Positive Influence from the History of the Scientific Revolution Casey Luskin March 25, 2014 5:45 AM | Permalink We live in interesting times. On the one hand, we're constantly assured that science and religion don't conflict. At the same time, we're told -- sometimes by the same people -- that religion hinders science. Perhaps this is to be expected. Materialists want to project a religion-friendly image because popular culture expects it, while at the same time they make arguments that they hope will ultimately erode religious belief. This requires a tricky balancing act, on vivid display in...

The newest episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" dove into all things big and small including the history of modern science. Aired Sunday night (March 23), the third episode of the reboot of Carl Sagan's beloved TV show "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" explains how knowledge of the workings of gravity, comets and the solar system changed the way that humans look at the stars and science.

If the United States wants to avoid falling like the Roman Empire, it must avoid “overconsumption” and distribute resources equally, according to a study funded by NASA. “The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent,” reads the NASA-funded report published in the Ecological Economics journal. “Two important features seem to appear across societies that have collapsed,” the study adds. “The stretching of resources...

On ABC, America’s Funniest Home Videos garnered a 1.4, down 7 percent from a 1.5 adults 18-49 rating for its most recent original. ......................................................... Cosmos earned a 1.9 adults 18-49 rating down 10 percent from a 2.1 for last week’s premiere.

Last night, I watched the second episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" (the reboot of the 1980 series). It was entitled, "Some of the Things That Molecules Do." One of the things Tyson dealt with in this episode was evolution. Now, I myself do subscribe to the theory of evolution, but I found Tyson's treatment to be offensive, condescending, and smarmy. I thought it was an in-your-face chip-on-the-shoulder response against skeptics of evolution. I thought this was supposed to be a science show, not a political show. But this is just my opinion. What is your opinion? If you missed...

On Sunday night, the premiere of the science documentary series "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" on the Oklahoma City Fox affiliate KOKH was briefly interrupted by a local news promo. These things happen all the time on TV. Big deal, right? Well, it just so happens that host Neil deGrasse Tyson was referring to the theory of evolution just as the accidental preemption occurred. As first reported by the left-leaning website Raw Story, in the omitted portion, Tyson explained how "three and a half million years ago" humans "stood up and parted ways" from our biological "ancestors."

"Cosmos- A SpaceTime Odessey" --Tonight in 'Rivers of Life' Neil deGrasse Tyson Covers Evolution and Mass Extinction Events Tonight, the second of 13 episodes of "Cosmos- A SpaceTime Odessey" hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson airs at 9 pm tonight on Fox and at 10 pm Sunday night on the National Geographic channel. Tonight's episode is "The Rivers of Life" and covers evolution and natural selection processes that have made life on Earth as we know it today, and also covers mass extinction events such as asteroid impacts with our planet that have drastically altered the course and progress of...

“A man can be a Christian to the end of the world, for the simple reason that a man could have been an Atheist from the beginning of it. … But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of the worms who eat [man], or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover.” – G. K. Chesterton Cosmos is back on television again, in a reincarnated form hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson in place of the late Carl Sagan (host...

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. – Dr. Carl Sagan Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, is a sequel to the PBS program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, hosted by Dr. Carl Sagan in 1980. Unlike the PBS version, this has big names behind it: Seth MacFarlane, creator of successful comedy programs like “The Family Guy”, Brannon Braga, producer and writer for “Star Trek”, and astronomer Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who is far more famous as a science personality than Sagan was when he hosted the original Cosmos. They are all backed...

...We're shown Bruno sneaking around and are told that "He dared to read the books banned by the Church." The book in question was On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, which he keeps hidden under his floorboards....Tyson tells us that this (meaning reading Lucretius) "was his undoing." That's very interesting, since papal legate and cardinal Nicholas of Cusa had read and commented on Lucretius in the 15th century, formulating ideas that would later be picked up by Bruno, and was widely read and respected. As the poor Giordano secretly reads his precious book, THE CHURCH! bursts into his room...

I missed the big Carl Sagan thing when it happened. I was in high school when Cosmos came out, we lived in the country and if you wanted to watch a different television network, you had to go up into the attic and turn a giant antenna with a pipe wrench. Sports and girls and D&D were more of a priority than television. .................................................... Then suddenly we get a claim that Giordano Bruno is responsible for the concept of the universe - because he read 'banned' books. Lucretious wasn't science - there was no scientific evidence for his claim that...

“Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” premiered yesterday night.* This reboot is an update on the original series, which was produced by (possibly) the most beloved astronomer of the 20th century, the late Carl Sagan. The series initially ran in September of 1980, and Sagan subsequently turned it into a book. This was all 34 years ago. Even now, the words Sagan etched into his book are continuously shared across various social media outlets, which is a testament to truly how awe-inspiring the presentation was, and still is. However, anyone who is familiar with science knows that it progresses at an...

Like a lot of people, "Rocket Boys" author and former NASA engineer Homer Hickam tuned into last night's premiere of "Cosmos," a reboot of Carl Sagan's 13-part science series. Unfortunately, he wound up being disappointed. The show's rather inauspicious beginning probably didn't help:

Like many of you here, I was looking forward to watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey last night. But, also like many of you here, I was not looking forward to Obama's anticipated long-winded introduction, therefore I set my DVR to record the show, so that I could fast-forward through the intro. (some of you even declined to watch the show because of this intro) However, when it came time to watch the show, I was pleasantly surprised, and a little bit embarrassed at my overreaction. The dreaded intro lasted less than 30 seconds! Well, whaddaya know. Obama finally gave us...

We're all the same in many respects, and one of those is that we all have an ego. It's a part of being human, but few people take it as far as the media craving attention that President Obama seeks out. I understand that all politicians have a healthy ego as that's to be expected in today's political climate. Most politicians are attention seekers and love having the spotlight on them. However, I find it astounding that in a city seething with narcissistic politicians, Obama finds a way to outdo them all. He just can't seem to stop himself from...

Check out the trailer for COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey, a 13-part docu-series debuting in 2014 on FOX!

Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson: Same Old Product, Bright New Packaging If there was any doubt that the rebooted Cosmos series, which premiered last night, would be politically charged and have a materialistic ideological message, consider what viewers saw in its first sixty seconds. The opening featured President Obama giving a statement endorsing the series. That's not necessarily bad, except for what happened next. Immediately following President Obama's endorsement, the show replayed Carl Sagan's famous materialistic credo from the original Cosmos series that "The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be." Does it violate the...

The Fox TV network says President Barack Obama will introduce the debut episode of the science series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.” The 13-part program is a reboot of astronomer Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking 1980 “Cosmos” series. It debuts 9 p.m. EDT Sunday on stations including Fox and National Geographic Channel. …

It might seem strange to say it, but I am a global warming skeptic because of Carl Sagan. This might seem strange because Sagan was an early promoter of the theory that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are going to fry the globe. But it’s not so strange when you consider the larger message that made Sagan famous. As with many people my age, Sagan’s 1980 series “Cosmos,” which aired on public television when I was eleven years old, was my introduction to science, and it changed my life. “Cosmos&88221; shared the latest developments in the sciences of evolution, astronomy,...