Billions and billions (Jeffrey Mazo, International Institute for Strategic Studies)
On Sunday night, 9 March, a new 13-part science documentary series on US television was introduced with a video message from President Obama. The first episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, was shown simultaneously on 10 networks in the Fox group and will appear on more than 200 channels in 181 countries. The show is a follow-up to the most successful and influential science documentary series of all time: Carl Sagan’s 1980 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which has been seen by more than 750 million people, and is now available online.