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What our customer's say!

"I bought this for my grandkids", There are three shows that I loved when I saw them on television, and I wanted to share them with my grandchildren. One was "The Earth is Born" from "Origins"; a 2 hour History Channel special called "How the Earth Was Made"; and "Beyond the Big Bang" from "The Universe, Season I". I felt that it was worth buying the series to get all three of these shows. "The Earth is Born" and "How the Earth Was Made" supplement each other. Even though they are both wonderful shows, the subject is so big that neither covers everything. I think my 12 and 14 year old grandchildren will especially enjoy "Origins" and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

"A COSMOS copy?", 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", 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", 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", Excellent introduction to the origins of life and universe. Must for all.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Highly Enjoyable Scientific Speculation", 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.

"But What About DNA?", What about DNA? This is the question I raised after seeing this documentary. It's the very foundation of life, the programmed instructions for everything that makes us who we are physically. I wished this video had addressed the incredibly long odds of how this marvelous program came into being. It poses a major challenge to the Big Bang concept.

The Origins of Life DVD was well put-together, with good music, great commentary, and excellent special effects. The history of the universe was portrayed as an explosion of the universe out of a dot smaller that the one at the end of this sentence. Everything, including you and me, eventually came out of this explosion called the Big Bang. It took perhaps 20 to 30 billions of years for the energy and chemicals to combine in just the right ways to make this happen. It was aided by earthquakes, volcanoes, bombardments from space, undersea eruptions, and so on. Little-by-little creatures came into being, and one creature eventually evolved into another, depending on its environment. Eventually, we see the world as it is right now, a miracle of scientific processes and enough chance and time. Or so the story goes, or does it really? How does DNA come down to us?

I was astonished in reading Phillip Johnson's `Darwinism on Trial' last year, that the odds of a single DNA module coming together accidentally over the supposed 15 to 30 billion year age of the universe are unimaginably long. Our human DNA contains about 3-billion lines of information in a given sequence. The odds of this happening accidentally are 1/10 (raised to the 40,000th power), which is a 1 divided by 10, raised to a power of 40,000 zeroes. Dr. Francis Crick, the co-founder of DNA, came up with this number 20 years ago or so, and, to my knowledge, hasn't been challenged down from that level. Think of the chances of immediately picking out the one red dime out of a universe (the size of ours) that is full of dimes, and you are not even close to the odds for accidental DNA. The odds are off the charts!

I also read `Origins/Skeptics' which was written by DNA evolutionist scientist Robert Shapiro who thinks the odds are immeasurably greater: 1/10 (raised to the 100,000,000,000th power). Shapiro still believes DNA evolved somehow, but says we have no idea at this point how it could have happened scientifically. I respected his candor and scientific approach.

In Phillip Johnson's book, I found that Indian astronomer and poet Dr Chandra Wickramasinghe is perhaps the leading advocate of an idea called panspermia, the theory that life on earth originated from outer space. It either came in rocks exploded from somewhere like Mars (undirected panspermia), or even in spaceships sent by advanced civilizations elsewhere (directed panspermia). I'm sure this theory is a reaction to the incredibly long odds that DNA occurred accidentally, and life emanating from somewhere else doesn't mitigate those odds. He recently retired, but I'm sure you can get plenty of information from the web on him since he is very promotional about what he believes. You can easily google articles about him and his theory (recently regarding the shuttle disaster and the red rain). By the way, does this sound like astronomy or Star trek? You guessed it: I don't have a lot of respect for this theory.

Finally, I read Stephen Hawking's fascinating A Brief History of Time. In this book, Hawking postulated that if time were imaginary, thus there would be no real beginning of time, and time would essentially be infinite. Instead of the singularity called the Big Bang, there would be a smooth Einsteinian space-time continuum with no rupture at the beginning. If there is no beginning of time, then DNA would, of course, essentially have an infinite amount of time to come about. Also, of course, if matter is eternal, the necessity of a First Cause is removed. The problem is that the imaginary time is, well, imaginary. Imaginary numbers are those that contain the square root of -1; there is no number that can be multiplied by itself to make -1. If it were true, we would have a time without temporal qualities, like before, during, and after, beginning, end, etc. Imaginary time doesn't exist and is not time at all. Hawking, in fairness, is not dogmatic about imaginary time's role in the origin of the universe, but just floats it as a possible concept.

I'm sure you get the idea. DNA is too important to ignore when it comes to the subject of origins. The video should have addressed it since it is a major challenge to the Big Bang Theory.



"Origins, the DVD experience", The book version of "Origins", which I think Scientific American or maybe The Economist rightfully recommended as THE essential general science book for 2005 is the next step from David Bodanis's equally splendid e=MC2. And because it's one step up, it's just a tad harder, especially if you're also an economist/accountant/car dealer who'd really like to understand quantum mechanics (and maybe basic string theory and how it's possible to cope with dimensions beyond the currently now unfashionable four) but skipped science at school and uni.

For this particular (nano scale) niche market, the DVD was a big disappointment because it didn't even hint at the exitance or relevance of the reeeealy interesting bits like anti-matter, dark energy & matter and the current inability of anyone to reconcile Alberts General Theory with the sub atomic or even why it matters.

However, all's not lost as the really smart 10 year old (not mine) who watched section 2; part 1 with me was totally enthralled as I imagine any one of any age who hadn't thought about or encountered astrophysics before would be.

So the questions are;
was it OK or better? YES
do I want my money back? NO
will I watch it again? YES
would I lend to anyone? only with a cash deposit upfront
would I recommend it? ABSOLUTELY
will it drive the creationists into an early demise? ABSOLUTELY!

'nuf said.




"Life, at the beginning", I thought this Nova program was very entertaining. It is a lively
presentation and helps answer many questions about the origins
of life. I feel it is an excellent choice for the whole family
and something that is well worth veiwing.

"A pale imitation of the BBC miniseries, NOVA shame on you!", Check out the BBC's "Hyperspace" or "The Planets" if your looking for a good miniseries on the origins of our Solar System, the Universe, etc... Don't waste your time on this series by NOVA. Either one of the above is far superior to the "Origins" series.