Why carl sagan is awesome

The first show aired on the Public Broadcasting Service in October of Between new episodes and reruns, the show was the most widely watched series on U. The show won an Emmy and a Peabody award and was broadcast around the world. Sagan's book of the same name Random House, stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for 70 weeks and was the best-selling science book ever published in the English language at the time.

In addition to "Cosmos," Sagan also appeared as a guest on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" 26 times, calling it "the biggest classroom in history. At Sagan's request, NASA commanded its Voyager 1 spacecraft to turn its camera on Earth, creating an image that came to be known as the " Pale Blue Dot ," one of the most famous pictures of Earth from space ever taken. Sagan used that name as the title of another book. The sequel to "Cosmos," Sagan's "The Pale Blue Dot" Random House, toured the solar system and the galaxy , arguing for the necessity of planetary science and the exploration of Earth's closest neighbors.

This book, too, was widely well-received by the general public. The story revolved around interactions between the human race and an advanced civilization of extraterrestrials. The novel sold over a million copies in its first two years of publication, and in , it was released as a major motion picture starring Jodi Foster as main character Ellie Arroway who was inspired by real-life SETI astronomer Jill Tarter.

Entertainment Inc. The production company hasn't released any details about the movie since the initial announcement. Among the items was an article so iconic, it is forever linked to Sagan's persona: one of his signature turtlenecks. While Sagan did wear a variety of clothing on "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage," he became as known for sporting a turtleneck, topped with a professorial blazer, as for his passion about the universe. On Carl Sagan Day, an unofficial annual holiday on Nov.

When Sagan died of pneumonia while battling bone marrow disease in , he left behind a vast library of his life's work in the home he and his family live in during the s. The home was in upstate New York, near Cornell, and had once been headquarters to a secret society at the university known as the Sphinx Head Tomb. Later, the Sagans moved to a bigger house but kept the former Sphinx Head Tomb as a space for he and Druyan to collaborate on projects. When Sagan got ill, it became a catchall for his scientific papers, idea-filled notes, photographs and sketches — some dating back to his boyhood.

Druyan sought out colleges and institutions to preserve the collection, but none could provide the mix of meticulous care and thoughtful exhibition she had in mind. As the two began to collaborate on a reboot of Sagan's original "Cosmos" series, MacFarlane was instrumental in preserving Sagan's legacy — all the contents of the Sphinx Head Tomb — in the Library of Congress. Apple engineers, fond of codenames, in dubbed the Power Macintosh "Carl Sagan" in reference to Sagan's supposed catchphrase, "billions and billions.

But this internal codename rubbed Sagan the wrong way. He worried that if news of the codename leaked to the public, it could be misconstrued as an endorsement. Sagan fired off a letter to Apple, insisting the company change the codename. Apple's engineers were quick to comply. They switched the codename to BHA, an acronym for "butt-head astronomer. The move prompted Sagan to sue for libel; the case was dismissed, with the judge writing that "one does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase, 'butt-head.

Sagan sued a second time, lost and began a lengthy appeal process. Sagan and Apple settled the suit in Apple engineers then changed the codename to LAW, for "lawyers are wimps. Despite its string of codenames, the never did make billions [sources: Davidson , Heisler ].

On Nov. There were speeches by loved ones, colleagues and former students, and letters from people like the late science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and then-vice president Al Gore. The highlight, however, was a surprise announcement by Eleanor Helin, who was an expert at discovering asteroids: Her most recent finding, asteroid , had been named " Asteroid Druyan.

The asteroid, named after Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan, was locked in an eternal orbit with another notable heavenly body: " Asteroid Sagan ," the asteroid already named for Sagan [source: Spangenburg ]. This was a wonderful birthday present and expression of love. On a more humorous note, scientists have paid tribute to Sagan's deathless phrase "billions and billions," by naming a unit of measurement after him.

The sagan is a number equal to at least 4 billion [source: Know Your Meme ]. Carl Sagan accomplished so much, it's difficult to think this top 10 list can do justice. The very brilliant ones figure it out so fast they never see the mechanics of understanding. After earning his doctorate Sagan began teaching at Harvard, and as a young scientist, he earned notice for research indicating that Venus endured a greenhouse effect that roasted the surface—hardly a place congenial for life.

Later he would make strides in linking the changing surface features on Mars to planetary dust storms—dashing any hope that the markings were linked to seasonal changes in vegetation. His speculative nature—freely discussing the possibility of life beneath the surface of the moon, for example—disturbed some of his colleagues.

He seemed a bit reckless, and had a knack for getting quoted in newspaper and magazine articles. His own calculations in the early s showed that there could be about one million technological, communicative civilizations in our galaxy alone.

And yet he thought UFOs a case of mass misapprehension. Among his papers is a November lecture Sagan gave in Washington as part of the Smithsonian Associates program. Do they exist? The planet Venus. The aurora borealis. Flights of birds. Lenticular clouds, which are shaped like lenses. An overcast [night], a hill, a car going up the hill, and the two headlights of the car reflect on the clouds—two flying saucers moving at great velocity in parallel!

Unconventional aircraft. Conventional aircraft with unconventional lighting patterns, like Strategic Air Command refueling operations. The list is enormous. Sagan was denied tenure at Harvard in , but was quickly scooped up by Cornell.

When not teaching and writing, he helped create plaques for the space probes Pioneer 10 and Pioneer The plaques notoriously depicted a naked man and woman, with some graphical descriptions of the position of the Earth in the solar system and other scientific information—just in case the spacecraft bumped into alien scientists out there somewhere. Drake, a frequent Sagan collaborator, was a pioneer in the search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations and was also known for the Drake Equation, which estimates the abundance of communicative aliens.

Leary was a Harvard professor-turned-counterculture-guru who had become a proselytizer for the spiritual and mental benefits of hallucinogens.

In this curiously emblematic meeting—which has been incompletely described in Sagan biographies but is now plain to see in the archives—Leary asked which star he should aim for. All the stars are too far away. But true believers are not easily deterred. In the Sagan papers, we find this note by Sagan dated April 30, It was a real trial by fire.

It felt like a kind of a long march. What I call climbing Mount Cosmos. They wanted interviews, book blurbs, annotations of manuscripts.

They wanted him to give speeches and participate in conferences. Most of all, they wanted his affirmation. Since childhood, Sagan was fascinated by the mystery of life in the universe.

Despite his temperament as a skeptical and rigorous scientist, many of his first publications were about exobiology , and on several occasions he speculated about life on Venus, Mars, Jupiter and even the Moon. Sagan did not censor himself at the time of asking questions, although he later realized that his hypotheses were unfounded.

The first, in , dealt with the study of UFOs. Two renowned astronomers, J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald, argued that unidentified flying objects were visiting the Earth and that, although there were not enough sightings to make a convincing case, the large volume of reports justified the examination and study of the subject.

On the contrary, Sagan emphasized the unreliability of the witnesses, the absence of physical evidence and the explanations that included self-deception and hallucinations. In , Sagan became a professor at Cornell University, where he directed the Planetary Studies Laboratory, and spent most of his career dedicated to research and improving public understanding of the nature of science.

In addition to his success as a science popularizer on television, he won the Pulitzer Prize in for one of his first books: The Dragons of Eden , in which he attempted to travel the path of the evolution of human intelligence. In parallel, he continued to seek contact with alien intelligences through the messages launched on the space probe Pioneer 10 and the later Voyager probes He also worked with the SETI Institute, dedicated to searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence by analyzing the waves that reach us from space.

In his final years, Sagan made his most important contributions in the fight against pseudoscience. These articles served as the basis for three final books, especially The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , a defense of science over irrationality.