Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Saganwas an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 November 1934
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.
It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization.
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth.
Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.
What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding we are a little lonely, and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet, the Earth.... In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.
Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.
There is a lurking fear that some things are not meant to be known.
We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, Heaven is placid and fluffy, and Hell is like the inside of a volcano. In many stories, both realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or devils. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.
Valid criticism does you a favor.
We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.
We are all made up of star stuff.
We are the universe experiencing itself.
I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.
There are lots of ways to communicate what we know, but few ways to communicate what we feel. Music is one way to communicate emotions.