Light and Enlightenment Featured on Next COSMOS, 4/6

Tune in this Sunday, April 6 to "Hiding in the Light," the 5th episode of COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey, an American Science documentary television series.

About Hiding in the Light:

The Window on the Past in the Ship of the Imagination reveals a two thousand year old Chinese movie, the violent suppression of free thought and speech by China's ?rst emperor and makes us an eyewitness to the world's ?rst book-burning. We visit the Europe and North Africa of the 11th century, to the golden age of Islam, when Arabic was the language of science. While there, we meet Ibn al-Haytham, the brilliant physicist who ?rst understood how we see and how light travels.

Perhaps his greatest invention was the scienti?c method, itself. This episode is about the various meanings of light and enlightenment, including William Herschel's chance discovery of the infrared. It is also the true fairy tale of the 19th century penniless Bavarian orphan who was rescued by a Prince. He grew up to discover the signature hidden in the light of every star and to found the Science of astrophysics. This man's top secret discoveries in a carefully guarded ancient abbey would confound another genius (the hero of Episode 9) decades later and ultimately lead to one of the keys to the cosmos.

About COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey:

The new series is presented by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was inspired by Sagan as a young college student. COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey loosely follows the same 13-episode format and storytelling approach that the original Cosmos used, including elements such as the "Ship of the Imagination", but features updated information since the 1980 series and extensive computer-generated graphics and animation footage to augment the narration. Presented by FOX Sun 9/8c and National Geographic Mon 9/8c

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