Product Description

He is a living legend, whose book A Brief History of Time became an instant best seller. Now, his genius is fully revealed in this new series that will treat you to the latest and most profound advances in cosmological thought in true down-to-earth Hawking fashion. Encompassing Hawking's matchless point of view, these six programs spin an intergalactic detective story, rich with mystery, unexpected twists and astonishing revelations. Titles are: "The Big Bang," "On the Dark Side," and "Black Holes and Beyond."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29425 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-11-14
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 360 minutes

Amazon.com
Stephen Hawking, author of the bestselling A Brief History of Time, presents here some of the most astonishing scientific advances in cosmological thought. Interviews with renowned researchers combined with strikingly artistic cinematography set the stage for this down-to-earth production on the mysteries of our universe. Relive the ingenuity of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Hubble, and Einstein in Seeing Is Believing. Despite diagnosis with ALS, Hawking completed his Ph.D., developing a theory describing the precise conditions for the Big Bang. The history of chemistry, the periodic table, and Curie's radiation experiments in Cosmic Alchemy allowed Einstein's theory of relativity and revelations about the relationship between energy and matter. On the Dark Side delves into antimatter (proof that dark matter does exist), nutrinos, and nutrino hunters. Thanks to radio astronomy, SETI--the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence--is currently looking for alien communications in Black Holes and Beyond. Learn about quasars and the theoretical ramifications of black holes to the laws of physics. An Answer to Everything challenges Hawking and other prominent scientists to try to resolve the mystery of how the Big Bang began. Hawking's series is easy to follow, but it doesn't skimp on scientific detail or shy away from challenging concepts. An outstanding tour of the universe! --Tara Chace

Customer Reviews

3 stars for information content, 1 star for replay-ability
Let me start out by saying that I read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and really enjoyed it. But, then what a sad disappointment this series turned out to be. One could turn off the picture and just listen to the audio and get about as much interesting information. I realize that Dr. Sagan raised the bar pretty high but the makers of this documentary didn't even seem to care. Watch video sequences repeated over and over - sometimes not even relating to the narration that drones on in the background. Squint hard to see what is going on in the darkly lit sets as the camera super-slow pans into something that is supposed to be significant...but really isn't. I watched the entire series just waiting for a sequence that would capture my imagination. It never happened. As for replay-ability? I defy anyone who have made it through the entire series to watch it again. Dr. Hawking deserves better.

Lack of Visual Aids
Stephen Hawking's Universe covers all the important points in Cosmology, but when one buys a video documentary on the subject, one expects more than just lucid explanations by talking heads (or even a head that uses a computer to talk). I was disappointed that for all the good work put into the making of SHU, the visual component was so poor; why not just make it into an audio book instead? Most of the time, throughout the entire series, the same set of bland, information-free starfield images and lame optical tricks (we're not even talking cheap computer animation!) accompany narration of (relatively) deep, conceptual scientific ideas. The rare instances in which camera footage is included -- say, to show a scene at an earth-based telescope -- quench the viewer's thirst for visual aid only long enough to underscore the series' basic dearth of such resources. Better luck next time, Stephen.

Good Narration, Shame About the Visuals
This video series covers all the basic ideas of cosmology in an interesting and easy to understand manner, with a strong historical focus. The narration, describing this, is very interesting and well thought out. However, the visual aspect is appalling. Most of it consists of out of fucus shots of things that have nothing to do with the program, irrelvant images of star fields, shots of people walking around, shots of empty rooms and other irrelevances. When people are interviewed, they are often shown in very dim surroundings, making their faces hard to see. All in all, the visual elements are just hopeless and add nothing to the video. Towards the end, I didn't even bother looking at the screen but just listened to the audio. I lost nothing by doing this. All in all, Professor Hawking might as well have written another book.