Customer Reviews
A COSMOS copy? 
2008-06-29
Maybe I was spoiled by Sagan's COSMOS that was produced 30 years ago, but this video really didn't impress me. I found the host somewhat distracting and a little bit of a ham in the way he presented things. As for the content, very little of it is anything new. Like one other reviewer said, a lot was missing from this video (and I haven't even read the book). They could have used some of the time they "wasted" on the anecdotal details of discovery to include more material. Most of the stuff in the video are things that we've known for a long time, with one or two newish ideas. I would recommend watching this if you can catch it on TV, and maybe as a purchase if you can get it for just a few $$.
Origins 
2007-10-30
There are two DVD's the first is outstanding the second is not nearly as great. However, I'm really glad I purchased this DVD..
Expanding your mind with the Universe 
2007-09-23
This four-part Nova series is an engrossing and exciting learning experience. Scientists, geologists, astronomers and astro-psysicists show how to surmise our origins from the big bang, galaxies, black holes, pulsating stars, elements, planets with life and then the one celled bacteria, dna, and from that creatures of higher intelligence and curiosity.
One interesting item among many is why we study the comets and asteroids so much. It finally became clear how important they are to life on earth -both creating and changing. Creation of life and and extinctions were described much faster than imagined. The new theory on the moon's creation is fascinating - we now have moon rocks to verify part of the theory.
It is beautifully animated, written and described for a layman and each series a logical progression. How life began - and the recipe are in this series. The ultimate in wonder and easily understood by most from 10 years to 100 years. How we came to be is deeply interesting and a miracle.
A must see.
MUST for everyone 2007-03-28
Excellent introduction to the origins of life and universe. Must for all.
At fantastic look at the evolution of earth and its place in the Universe! 2007-02-15
The NOVA four-part series, Origins, is the perfect gift for a lay person who's interested in the evolution of earth and its unique place in the Universe. I found myself totally engrossed in the development of our planet, learning things that I never knew. I had no idea that our moon was created when another planet struck earth billions of years ago, or that the oceans on our planet were actually formed from the ice on comets that hit earth during its formative years. I didn't know that life on our planet began from the microbes that came here attached to the comets and astroids that struck earth. I didn't know that it was because of having a planet the size of Jupiter in our solar system that we were actually shielded from the vast majority of destructive astroids that travelled through our system. This enabled life on earth to continue without too many major interruptions. I didn't know that scientists have already discovered other solar systems within our galaxy that have planets and the possibility of life. And, these are just a few of the things discussed by Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson as the host and narrator of Origins. This is a show with a wealth of information geared to people of all ages with an acute interest in our planet and the universe. The only complaint I have is that some of the computer animations were showed over and over again, especially in Parts 1 & 2. Other than that, Origins is an excellent series that teaches the viewer about astronomy, biology and geology in a way thats informative and highly entertaining and never boring! A great gift for kids who are just getting started in their quest to understand the origins of life.
Sensational... A+ 2007-01-23
Who would have predicted that a hot spot left over from the Big Bang would eventually lead to our galaxy the solar system the Earth -- and to us? Origins explore how the universe and our planet began amid chaos and eventually gave birth to the first stirrings of life.Join cutting edge scientists on a voyage deep into the Earth with a space probe designed to capture the earliest observable snapshot of the Big Bang. Then watch as astronomers test an ingenious new way to detect distant planets that may harbor life and discover that every atom in our bodies and practically every bit of matter in the earth was made in the heart of stars.Hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (shown) Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History Origins Presents Starling new findings that attempt to explain just how Earth life and the universe all began.System Requirements: Running Time 240 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 783421380394 Manufacturer No: WG38039
An astonishing ending! 2006-11-22
What a great story and an ending! I was so excited about the conclusion of this 2 hr program that I coudn't sleep at all.
Entertaining/Mind Blowing 
2006-08-10
This package contains 2 DVD's and about 4 hours of programming. The production quality is excellent for an educational series. The producers especially loved the visual animation of the earth colliding with a Mars sized planetesimal approximately 50 million years after the formation of the earth which resulted in the moon and a larger earth, because they used the graphic 5 or 6 times on the 1st two episodes(disc 1). The Earth was spinning 4 times faster in the early days and the moon was 6 times closer. The young sun was weaker and the atmosphere had only 1% Oxygen but within a few hundred million years there was solid crust and large volumes of liquid water. 6 hour days and up to 200 foot tidal pulls on the earth's crust by the moon's gravity with each rotation. Another concept the producer's absolutely loved was that it took almost 3 billion years for single celled photo-synthetic bacteria to bring the level of Oxygen in the atmosphere up enough to turn the planet from red to blue. When you think about it, that is a pretty awesome thing ! So for 21 hours of the 24 hour day analogy, the surface of planet earth was either lifeless(the first 600 million years (3.4 hours) or dominated by these single celled photo synthetic bacteria. Only in the last 3 hours did everything else evolve. There's more on the 1st two episodes including tests to confirm exploding meteors supplying the material for the spark of 1st life on the planet due to peptide formation from the pressure of impact on amino acids. Episode 1 Disc 2 is goes into great detail on the possibility of extra-terrestrial life and episode 2 deals with the making of a detailed map of the universe 380 thousand years after the Big Bang(13.7 billion years ago) when everything had finally cooled down enough to emit visible light. There are enough details in these two discs to make you think. It seems we owe our existence to serendipity as much as to inevitability. If Jupiter was not where it is for ie.,(deflecting comets and asteroids away from Earth) life would have been either extinguished or sent back to square I too many times for us to have evolved. If the earth hadn't collided with that mars sized planetesimal to form the moon we'd have a very wobbly planet with wild temperature swings. If the earth was as small as mars it's molten core would have hardened within half a billion years and it's atmosphere swept away by the solar wind. Ironically The asteroid that got through Jupiter's shield and supposedly finished off the dinosaurs was a huge stroke of luck because it allowed mammals to evolve freely eventually leading to us. Questions remain unanswered by these episodes such as, 'Why wouldn't aliens evolve faces ?' Why wouldn't other earthlike worlds have as much time for evolution as ours did ? You figure with a gas giant shield properly placed, a similar planet with a large moon in a sunlike starred solar system like ours, the time frames would be similar. The best argument put forth on this disc in my view against other technologically proficient life in the universe is the rarity of it here,(out of 100's of millions of speices in the history of multi-cellular life only we've achieved it). We could be as rare in the universe as 1 per every galactic cluster every 500 million years or less. If it were significantly more common we probably would have heard from them by now. To throw a bone to the Creationists, our existence for all practical purposes is a miracle ! As far as 'The Big Bang' or 'The Hyper-Expansion' of a super dense, super small mass to produce everything we know. It's just a theory supported by current science. We still have no clue as to where this mass came from. That would be the unanswerable question and left to whatever your concept of God is !
My kids loved this 2006-07-21
I showed excerpts from this series to my ninth-grade science classes and got lots of positive feedback. My own kids liked it as well. Lots of good "probable case scenarios." Will drive creationists crazy.
Highly Enjoyable Scientific Speculation 2006-06-26
I really enjoyed this Nova series and think that Neil DeGrasse Tyson did a great job as host (fortunately, my local library has many fine Nova and other PBS productions). His engaging narration echoed the drama of what the early Earth must have gone through. We see simulations of constant meteroroic and asteroidal impacts and collisions on a then-toxic Mother Earth. He references Earth's evolution to a 24-hour period, with us humans coming along about 30 seconds before midnight.
We ponder the evidence for non-Earth life within our own Milkyway and learn how spiffy instruments let us deduce the gravitational pull that only planets could have over their corresponding stars. If a star is wavering, then scientists will check that out as a sign of the star's gravitational interaction with an orbiting planet.
With deductive skills that surpass Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes combined, these modern scientific detectives have culled for themselves a wealth of probable scenarios about how life first began (electrically charged meteorites and space debris introduced our planet to the building blocks of protein), how the moon was formed (gravity and colliding sperical bodies), how Earth's atmosphere went from toxic to biospheric (oxygen-producing bacteria morphed our planet's atmosphere from a noxious 1% oxygen component to a hospitable 21%), and how time plays the key role in accommodating and tracing the "origins" of life.
The early Earth was violent, volatile, and fiery (with lava oceans and molten rock; molten metals made their way into the planet's core--this hot core has many implications, including life itself); a far cry, says one scientist, from a Garden of Eden. (Even the Garden of Eden would depend on the planet's initially harsh conditions that would eventually--4.3 billion or so years later--lead to lush vegetation and life as we know it.)
The Earth is home to fantastic biodiversity, representing the unlimited imagination of God. I am in no way less impressed if God chose billions of years to bring about life as we know it than if God accomplished the task in less than a week. We're only splitting hairs to worry about time frames and "modus operandi" (to quote another reviewer) in terms of accommodating our belief systems. Personally, I believe that God took his time creating the necessary conditions for life to originate and evolve. I'm glad that this program examines "the long and winding road" version of creation.
