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posted by NOVA Staff on June 29, 2009
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Neil deGrasse Tyson will be on tonight's episode of The Colbert Report at 11:30PM/10:30C on Comedy Central. Tune in.
Here's video from when Neil went on the show last year.
Don't be confused. In this clip, Neil says that NOVA scienceNOW airs every Wednesday night. That was true last year, when this aired. This year, the show airs every Tuesday night at 9 PM, right after your regularly scheduled, hour-long NOVA.
Want your own question answered? Put it in a video and post it here on YouTube. We'll have NOVA scienceNOW's experts answer selected submissions.
This is a rare opportunity, so come up with questions, make a video, and send it in.
Cosmic Perspective from NOVA scienceNOW, July 10, 2007 Download (7.1 MB)
Neil deGrasse Tyson: And now for some final thoughts on subatomic particles.
We learn early in school that there is such a thing as atoms and that all of matter is composed of them. A little later, we learn that atoms--a word, by the way, from the Greek atomos, meaning indivisible--are themselves composed of even smaller particles, the familiar electrons, protons, and neutrons.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the same age as NASA, and both have come a long way in 50 years.
Cosmic Perspective from NOVA scienceNOW, July 30, 2008 Download (10.7 MB)
Neil deGrasse Tyson: And now a birthday greeting from me to NASA.
Happy birthday, NASA! Did you know we're the same age? In the first week of October, 1958, you were born by an act of Congress, while I was born of my mother in the East Bronx.
I was three when your first astronaut orbited the Earth. I was 10 when you landed on the moon. And I was 14 when you stopped going to the moon altogether.
Find out why we can't live with asteroids and we can't live without 'em.
Cosmic Perspective from NOVA scienceNOW, October 3, 2006 Download (7.8 MB)
Neil deGrasse Tyson: It's a curious fact of nature that severe asteroid impacts on Earth can devastate the ecosystem, leaving most life extinct. Countless tons of Earth's crust get cast high into the atmosphere, while soot from widespread fires cloaks the planet, knocking out the base of the food chain and sending a wave of extinction across the tree of life. Sounds bad? It is. But the loss of so much life also pries open fresh niches that allow new forms of life to thrive.
For the famous K/T impact, 65 million years ago, the one that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, as much as two-thirds of all species were wiped out. But among those creatures that did survive, we find our mammal ancestors, a mere twig in the tree of life. But without dinosaurs to dine upon them, these early mammals could evolve into something more ambitious, like modern-day primates, like people.
Asteroids: You can't live with 'em, and you can't live without 'em. And that is the Cosmic Perspective.
Learn how the masses reacted after NASA announced in 2004 that it had cut funding to repair Hubble. Cosmic Perspective from NOVA scienceNOW, July 9, 2008 Download (12.3 MB) Neil deGrasse Tyson: And now for some final thoughts on telescopes in space.
At the moment, there's about a dozen telescopes of different sizes and
shapes out there in space, each providing a clear view of the cosmos.
Most, from the public's point of view, perform their duties anonymously.
Not so the Hubble Space Telescope, the beloved Hubble telescope, with
its crisp, colorful, stunning images of the cosmos. Hubble came of age
in the 1990s, just when public access to the Internet was growing
exponentially. Students in high school today have never known a time
without the Hubble. This marvelous instrument brought the universe into
our backyard, our living room, our computers' screen savers, with
images so beautiful they don't even need captions. You're content just
looking at them.
Many people fear information that might contain bad news beyond their
control, but such fear forfeits the opportunity to solve the problem.
Here's how scientists approach bad news and uncertainty.
Cosmic Perspective from NOVA scienceNOW, July 2, 2008 Download (11.8 MB)
Neil deGrasse Tyson: And now for some final thoughts on bad news.
Many
people fear new information that might contain bad news beyond their
control. But to fear bad news by hiding from it forfeits any
opportunity to solve the problem.
Suppose the enterprise of
science shunned bad news. We would never cure disease or mitigate
disaster. We would crouch with our head in the sand, ceding our fate to
forces we imagine to be beyond our control.
