Carl Sagan played a leading role in the American space program since its inception. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA beginning in the s, he briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperature of Venus a massive greenhouse effect , the seasonal changes on Mars windblown dust and the reddish haze of Titan complex organic molecules.
For his work, Dr. Asteroid Sagan is named after him. He received 22 honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the U. NASA explorations eventually proved he was right. Sagan was born in and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
He graduated from the University of Chicago in with a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics, then taught at Harvard and Cornell, where he became the director of Cornell's Laboratory for Planetary Studies and the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences. Some of Sagan's most memorable contributions occurred outside the classroom. During the s and s, he was NASA's astronaut whisperer. He offered advice to the Apollo crew before their journeys to the moon and conceived experiments for other planetary expeditions, including an interstellar record designed to greet the unknown inhabitants of deep space.
And that's just one cool thing on our list. For 10 years, it was the channel's most-watched show in the U. It showcased Sagan's ability to explain complex principles in a way that viewers could easily understand.
The show won over millions of viewers, too. Thanks to million fans tuning in from 60 different countries, "Cosmos" still reigns as the world's most-watched series from American public television. His overemphasis of the "b" in "billions" was deliberate; to make sure the word was not mistaken for "millions. It was Johnny Carson, host of "The Tonight Show," who cemented Sagan's relationship with "billions and billions" of galaxies. Sagan appeared as a show guest more than two dozen times, and Carson's popular impersonation of him repeating the phrase, made a lasting impression — one Sagan was never able to shake.
It was copied by other comedians and satirized in a Frank Zappa song. In Sagan's perhaps sarcastically titled book, " Billions and Billions ," he wrote, "Oh, I said there are maybe billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers But I never said 'billions and billions.
For a while, out of childish pique, I wouldn't utter or write the phrase even when asked to. But I've gotten over that. So, for the record, here goes: 'Billions and billions. Perhaps taking the meaning of "high in the sky" to another level, Sagan secretly then not-so-secretly advocated that marijuana use was beneficial. In an essay he authored in at age 35 under the name "Mr. X," Sagan outlined marijuana's positive effects on his sensibilities.
Marijuana, wrote Sagan, made music, art, food and sex better [source: Wing ]. It wasn't until three years after Sagan's death that the author of " Carl Sagan: A Life " revealed him as the author of the pro-pot post.
However, Sagan had already revealed himself as a marijuana advocate years earlier. During at least one interview , Sagan said he supported the legalized use of marijuana by the terminally ill. It seems madness to say, 'We're worried that they're going to become addicted to marijuana. And then these celestial-bound twin craft did something even more extraordinary: They transported our message to the universe. The spacecraft were part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission , and each carried a gold-plated disc designed to survive for a billion years in the hopes an alien civilization might receive it as a greeting.
The recorded sounds spanned many possibilities, including the first words uttered to a newborn, greetings in 59 different languages, and music from new and ancient civilizations. It was Sagan who came up with the idea to add a message to the universe, a "bottle cast into the cosmic ocean," as he put it.
Although Sagan's voice isn't heard on the record, he was certainly a part of its creation. The recording also captured one of science's most famous love stories, the one between Sagan and the project's creative director, Ann Druyan.
Next, we'll discuss how their personal voyage began with this interstellar one [source: Krulwich ]. It was the summer of , and Sagan's newest brainchild was coming to life. For months, he and Ann Druyan — a writer and producer working as the Voyager recording's creative director — had been amassing a very special collection.
He is eager to meet you. I will be happy to make the arrangements if you wish to visit with him. I indicated to you that I have discovered a planet between Venus and the earth. I also explained that I am in Attica Correctional Facility and am unable to check out this discovery further without your assistance.
With their right hemisphere Safety is to send an officer immediately. Sagan was a compulsive dictator, delivering his thoughts into a tape recorder that never seemed far from his lips.
He also liked marijuana. Sometimes the pot and the dictation would be paired. Why not? Because the seeds are so large that they cannot be carried by wind, insects or birds.
A high launching platform is necessary so that the coconuts will settle far from the tree. The higher the tree, the further the coconut lands. Therefore, the competition among coconuts accounts for the high height of palm trees which live in environments where there is not a dense competing foliage of other species. To optimize the throw distance, the coconut must be spherical, which it is. But if I permit myself to remember him closely—his sense of humor, say, or his passionate egalitarianism—the facade crumbles and I want to weep because he is gone.
There is no question that language can almost free us of feeling. Perhaps that is one of its functions—to let us consider the world without in the process becoming entirely overwhelmed by feeling. If so, then the invention of language is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. Much of science is, as Sagan himself noted, prohibitive in nature, setting limits on what is and is not physically possible—thou shall not go faster than the speed of light, and so on.
Beyond that, the scientific community as a social and even political entity has a number of clear and well-enforced, if unwritten, rules, including, Thou shalt not speculate, thou shalt not talk about things outside your immediate area of expertise, and thou shalt not horse around on late-night TV talk shows. It seemed like a kind of unsolicited slight. Sagan became gravely sick with the blood disorder myelodysplasia in , and underwent a bone marrow transplant from his sister, Cari.
Sagan, then 60, wanted everyone to understand that although he was facing the possibility of a premature death, he would not seek comfort in some traditional religious belief in an afterlife. In , a man wrote to him asking about the distance to heaven. Nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about 10 billion light years. One light year is almost six trillion miles. With best wishes Consider, for example, eclipses.
Sagan became agitated after reading a new book by the legendary skeptic Martin Gardner, whom Sagan had admired since the early s. It suggested that perhaps there was a singular God ruling the universe and some potential for life after death.
Where we differ is over whether the leap of faith can be justified in spite of a total lack of evidence I interviewed Sagan that spring in Seattle, where he was undergoing medical treatment, and although chemotherapy had ravaged his body he had lost none of his volubility or his enthusiasm for science, reason and the wonders of the cosmos. He felt confident that he could beat his disease. While he was in Seattle, his secretaries sent a fax daily to Druyan with a rundown on the mail, calls that had come in, speaking invitations, requests for interviews, requests to contribute a piece of writing to some upcoming anthology.
Sometimes Sagan would annotate these faxes with a few instructions. Toward the very end he would sometimes merely cross out a paragraph. He was out of time. Sagan had a few core beliefs, including the sense that there is an order and logic to the universe, that it is fundamentally a benign place, congenial to life and even intelligent life.
His cosmos was primed for self-awareness. He sensed that humanity was on the cusp of making a cosmic connection with advanced civilizations and no doubt that a certain Brooklyn native would be in on the conversation! In effect, he believed he was fortunate enough to live in a special moment.
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