Carl Sagan
He traced his analytical inclinations to his mother, who had been extremely poor as a child in New York City during World War I and the 1920s,[15] and whose later intellectual ambitions were sabotaged by her poverty, status as a woman and wife, and Jewish ethnicity."[15] Sagan believed that he had inherited his sense of wonder from his father, who spent his free time giving apples to the poor or helping soothe tensions between workers and management within New York City's garment industry.One, titled America of Tomorrow, included a moving map, which, as he recalled, "showed beautiful highways and cloverleaves and little General Motors cars all carrying people to skyscrapers, buildings with lovely spires, flying buttresses—and it looked great!"[18] Sagan also saw one of the fair's most publicized events: the burial at Flushing Meadows of a time capsule, which contained mementos from the 1930s to be recovered by Earth's descendants in a future millennium.As an adult, inspired by his memories of the World's Fair, Sagan and his colleagues would create similar time capsules to be sent out into the galaxy: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record précis."[19] Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World (1996) included his memories of this conflicted period, when his family dealt with the realities of the war in Europe, but tried to prevent it from undermining his optimistic spirit.Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice [...] a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest [...] an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.But his fascination with outer space emerged as his primary focus, especially after he had read science fiction by such writers as H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, stirring his curiosity about the possibility of life on Mars and other planets.[21] According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, Sagan's efforts in his early years to understand the mysteries of the planets became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten.[31][32][33][34] During his graduate studies, he used the summer months to work with planetary scientist Gerard Kuiper, who was his dissertation director,[3] as well as physicist George Gamow and chemist Melvin Calvin.[35] In 1958, Sagan and Kuiper worked on the classified military Project A119, a secret United States Air Force plan to detonate a nuclear warhead on the Moon and document its effects.[42] The denial has been blamed on several factors, including that he focused his interests too broadly across a number of areas (while the norm in academia is to become a renowned expert in a narrow specialty), and perhaps because of his well-publicized scientific advocacy, which some scientists perceived as borrowing the ideas of others for little more than self-promotion.I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...[51] Sagan and his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules.Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to understand the cosmos better—simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the Universe.[78] The adult Sagan remained a fan of science fiction, although disliking stories that were not realistic (such as ignoring the inverse-square law) or, he said, did not include "thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures.The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. ...Sagan later conceded in The Demon-Haunted World that the prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared."[86] In his later years, Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for asteroids/near-Earth objects (NEOs) that might impact the Earth but to forestall or postpone developing the technological methods that would be needed to defend against them.In 1995 (as part of his book The Demon-Haunted World), Sagan popularized a set of tools for skeptical thinking called the "baloney detection kit", a phrase first coined by Arthur Felberbaum, a friend of his wife Ann Druyan.Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of human civilization in a nuclear holocaust was conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of Cosmos, called "Who Speaks for Earth?"Sagan had already resigned[date missing] from the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board's UFO-investigating Condon Committee and voluntarily surrendered his top-secret clearance in protest over the Vietnam War.[101] Following his marriage to his third wife (novelist Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active—particularly in opposing escalation of the nuclear arms race under President Ronald Reagan.[102][better source needed] When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985—the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda and refused to follow suit.When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.A wide range of educated opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not only proponents such as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics like astronomers William Hartmann and Donald Menzel.[149] After suffering from myelodysplasia for two years and receiving three bone marrow transplants from his sister, Sagan died from pneumonia at the age of 62 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle on December 20, 1996.In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface."Carl was an incredible visionary, and now his legacy can be preserved and advanced by a 21st century research and education laboratory committed to enhancing our understanding of life in the universe and furthering the cause of space exploration for all time", said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin.[176] The 2014 Swedish science fiction short film Wanderers uses excerpts of Sagan's narration in 1994 of his book Pale Blue Dot, played over digitally-created visuals of humanity's possible future expansion into outer space.
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Pale Blue Dot
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On it, everyone you ever heard of... The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. ...
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Carl Sagan, Cornell lecture in 1994
Carl Sagan (disambiguation)SeattleLake View CemeteryUniversity of ChicagoSearch for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)CosmosVoyager Golden RecordPioneer plaqueThe Dragons of EdenContactPale Blue DotThe Demon-Haunted WorldLynn MargulisLinda SalzmanAnn DruyanDorionKlumpke-Roberts AwardNASA Distinguished Public Service MedalPulitzer Prize for General NonfictionOersted MedalCarl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of ScienceNational Academy of SciencesPublic Welfare MedalAstronomyastrophysicscosmologyastrobiologyspace scienceplanetary scienceCornell UniversityHarvard UniversitySmithsonian Astrophysical ObservatoryUniversity of California, BerkeleyThesisDoctoral advisorGerard KuiperDavid MorrisonClark ChapmanJames B. PollackOwen ToonChristopher ChybaSteven Soterastronomerplanetary scientistscience communicatorextraterrestrial lifeamino acidsextraterrestrialgreenhouse effectHarvardpopular scienceBroca's Brainpublic televisionLibrary of Congressskeptical scientific inquiryscientific methodexobiologyPlanetary StudiesEmmy AwardsPeabody AwardHugo AwardmyelodysplasiapneumoniaRahway High SchoolBensonhurstBrooklynKamianets-PodilskyiRussian EmpireReform JewstemplekosherDepressionWorld War IJewish ethnicityShadows of Forgotten Ancestors1939 New York World's FairAmerica of TomorrowcloverleavesGeneral Motorsphotoelectric celltuning forkoscilloscopeFlushing Meadowstime capsuleWorld War IIHolocaustHitlerAmerican Museum of Natural HistoryManhattanHayden Planetariummeteoritesgrizzly bearH. G. WellsEdgar Rice BurroughsAstounding Science Fictionhard science fictionmass hysteriaflying saucersbar mitzvahRahway, New JerseymoleculesNative Americans' first contact with EuropeansvaledictorianRobert Maynard HutchinsCollege of the University of ChicagoGreat BooksSocratic dialoguecomprehensive examinationsearly entrance to collegeundergraduateH. J. Mullerorigins of lifeHarold Ureygraduate studiesdissertation directorGeorge GamowMelvin CalvinInternational Astronomical UnionProject A119United States Air ForceTop SecretNaturelife on other planetsaward-winningRobert DrewMiller Fellow