Brian Cox, Particle Physicist.
Lawrence Krauss, Cosmologist.
Nowadays we are blessed (pun intended) with a whole stable full of excellent, very active, very visible science educators. Two physicists are featured here and one sample each of their many Youtube videos. I chose these two fellas and these two videos for a reason. They both explain the universe, using much of the same information, even some of the same images (see below) but with totally different styles and perspectives. And they are both phenomenal. How lucky we are.
Both discuss the measurement of the Universe, the Big Bang, supernovas, relativity. In different orders and with varying levels of detail and viewpoints. Both use one of the famous Hubble Deep Field images showing thousands of galaxies from one tiny slice of a dark spot in our sky:
Both use the supernova below to illustrate one approach to how we determine the size of the universe:
Both reference the incomparable Richard Feynman:
Both show an image of the cosmic background radiation as imaged by the Planck space observatory:
And both do a fantastic job explaining the detailed and complex physics that describes our current understanding of how the universe works and how it originated.
But way beyond the similarities of discussing the same subjects, each adds in their own additional supporting data, unique perspective and explanatory style. One smart-ass American and one typically reserved young Englishmen, both treasures.
Back in the old days, we had the incomparable Carl Sagan and Jacob Bronowski and that was about it.
Now we have Cox and Krauss plus Neil De Grasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye, Sean Carroll, Michael Shermer, David Attenborough and a host of other TV and YouTube personalities promoting science. And thanx to the Internet and YouTube we still have Sagan and Bronowski with us as well!
These are incredible times we live in where the best of our knowledge is accessible to anyone on the planet not merely through traditional education but the power of instant accessibility throuhg the smart phone in our hands and the laptop, tablet and PC at our fingertips.
And presented by working scientists like these two who are also phenomenal communicators as well.
Yup, you could say blessed.
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