Web Video / Symphony of Science

"I'm not very good at, uh, singing songs, but, uh, here's... here's a try..."

— Carl Sagan

Symphony of Science is a Web Original series of music videos created by John Boswell ("melodysheep"). Most of the videos consist of autotuned quotes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, along with quotes from other scientists who vary with each video.

Songs in the series:

List and links

• A Glorious Dawn (Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking)
• We Are All Connected (Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye)
• Our Place in the Cosmos (Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Michio Kaku and Robert Jastrow)
• The Unbroken Thread (Carl Sagan, David Attenborough and Jane Goodall)
• The Poetry of Reality (Michael Shermer, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers)
• The Case for Mars (Carl Sagan, Robert Zubrin, Brian Cox, and Penelope Boston)
• A Wave of Reason (Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Phil Plait, and James Randi)
• The Big Beginning (Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tara Shears)
• Ode to The Brain! (Carl Sagan, Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye, Oliver Sacks)
• Children of Africa (Jacob Bronowski, Alice Roberts, Carolyn Porco, Jane Goodall, Robert Sapolsky, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and David Attenborough)
• The Quantum World (Morgan Freeman, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, and Frank Close)
• Onward to the Edge! (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carolyn Porco, Brian Cox)
• The Greatest Show on Earth! (David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, and Bill Nye)
• The World of the Dinosaurs (Alice Roberts, Bill Nye, Nigel Marvin, and Dallas Campbell)
• We Are Stardust (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Feynman, and Lawrence Krauss)
• Our Biggest Challenge (Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley, and Isaac Asimov)
• Secret of the Stars (Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, and Lisa Randall)
• Monsters of the Cosmos (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Morgan Freeman, Michio Kaku, Lawrence Krauss)
• Waves of Light (Brian Cox)
• Beyond the Horizon (Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Emily Lakdawalla, Carl Sagan)
• Timelapse of the Entire Universe (Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, David Attenborough)
• Timelapse of the Future (David Attenborough, Craig Childs, Brian Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michelle Thaller, Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Mike Rowe, Phil Plait, Janna Levin, Stephen Hawking, Sean Carroll, Alex Filippenko, and Martin Rees.)

High quality originals of all videos can be downloaded from the project's website.

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Tropes used in this series

• Apocalypse How, Class X-4: What Time Lapse of the Future ultimately leads to, the destruction of the universe though entropy. Though it's a Foregone Conclusion.
• Apocalypse How, Class X-5: Discussed in Future, in the form of speculating that any universe that fails to produce intelligent life capable of producing a Pocket Dimension is doomed to the same kind of cold, lonely fate as the one we're in now.
• Clip Show: Melodysheep is up-front about stitching together pre-existing video as the visuals to portray events, ranging from assorted documentaries, to fictional portrayal of disasters that haven't yet occurred like Deep Impact and 2012. A full list of the sources used is always in the video description.
• Dark Reprise:
  • The music from "Our Story in 1 Minute", showing a brief history of the Earth, returns as part of the first song in Timelapse of the Future, "Sun Mother"... which plays while showing the DESTRUCTION of Earth.
  • "Ether" from Future first plays when black holes first begin to take over as the dominant structures of the universe, and is reprised as the second half of the penultimate song, "The Rising Dawn Bellows Like Thunder", playing as the last ever supermassive black hole, the last remaining thing in the universe, breathes its last.
• Eldritch Abomination: "Monsters of the Cosmos" portrays black holes as this. It's stated that within them, time stops, space makes no sense and the accepted laws of physics break down.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "Timelapse of the Entire Universe".

• Natural End of Time: The entire premise of Timelapse of the Future involves getting to this point.

• Time Abyss: Black holes in Timelapse of the Future. For more than half of the video, even as the speed of time continues to double every five real-time seconds, they're the only objects in the universe.
• What We Now Know to Be True: Inverted with the topic of proton decay. Future assumes it to be true, but acknowledges that it might not be, and that time will take a very different path than what's portrayed if it turns out that protons are eternal.

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