Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer and science popularizer. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Research for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is globe-famous for his popular science books and a television series Cosmos, which he co-wrote and conferred. Within his works, he often advocated a scientific method.

Education and scientific career

Carl Sagan was natural within Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Jewish; his father, Sam Sagan, was the garmentmaker & his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a lady of the house. Sagan attended a University of Chicago, where he received the bachelor's degree (1955) and an expert's degree (1956) in natural philosophy, prior to earning his doctor's degree (1960) in uranology & astrophysics. He taught at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University.

Sagan became the good professor at Cornell inside 1971 and directed a laboratory there. He contributed to virtually all of the unmanned space missions that explored our solar system. He conceived a idea of adding an inalterable & universal message in ballistic capsule, destined to leave a solar system, that could be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that will buy it. the number 1 message that was actually sent into space was a gold-anodized plaque, attached to the space probe Pioneer 10. He continued to refine his designs & a virtually all elaborate such message he helped to produce was a Voyager Golden Record that was sent out by having a Voyager space probes.

Scientific achievements

Sagan was among a number one to hypothesize that Titanand Jupiter's moon Europa may possess oceans (a subsurface ocean, in a pack of Europa) or even streams, lakes, and wells throughout, so making the hypothesized a water system ocean in Europa possibly inhabitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean was late indirectly confirmed per ballistic capsule Galileo.

He furthered insights on a atmosphere of Venus, seasonal changes on Mars, and Saturn's moon Titan. Sagan established that a atmosphere of Venus is pleasantly hot & heavy. He as well perceived global warming as a growing, man-synthetic danger & compared it to the natural development of Venus into a hot life-hostile planet across greenhouse gases. He suggested that a seasonal changes in Mars were due to windblown dust, does'nt to vegetation changes, when others experienced projected.

Scientific advocacy
Sagan was the advocator of the seek for extraterrestrial life. He urged a scientific community to listen by owning big radio reflector for signals from either intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms. He advocated sending probes to more planets. Sagan was Editor of Icarus (a professional journal concerning planetary search) for Twelve years. He cofounded a Planetary Society and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees.

He was easily referred to as the joint author of the scientific paper that predicted nuclear winterwould follow nuclear war. Sagan famously predicted that smoky oil fires within Kuwait (placed by Saddam Hussein's army) would are causal agents for an ecological disaster of melanise clouds. Out atmospherical physicist, Fred Singer, dismissed Sagan's prediction as nonsense, predicting that the smoke would dissipate within a matter of times. Within his book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan gave a listing of errors he got mass produced (including his predictions all about a results of the Kuwaiti oil fires) for instance of how else science is tentative.

Social concerns

Sagan believed that a Drake equation suggested that a big total of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, however that a want of grounds to believe of such civilizations (a Fermi paradox) suggests that technological civilizations tend to kill themselves like quickly. This caused his interest around identifying & publicizing ways that humanity can kill itself, by using the hope of avoiding such destruction & yet becoming a space-faring coinage.

Sagan, the life-womb-to-tomb follower of liberalism, became more politically active when marrying leftist Ann Druyan and performed acts of civil disobedience at nuclear weapons sites during a Nuclear freeze era. He spoke retired against President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or a "Star Wars" program, which he felt was technically impossible to build & perfective tense, far extra expensive to produce than for an enemy to kill across decoys & more means, & destabilizing to Cold War nuclear weapons disarming progress.

Carl Sagan was an inspiring user of marijuana, although he never publicly admitted it during his life.

Popularization of science

Sagan's capability to convey his ideas allowed numbers of population to better read a cosmos. He delivered a 1977/1978 Christmas Lectures for Young People at the Royal Institution. He wrote (using Ann Druyan, eventually his third married woman) & narrated a extremely popular 13 section PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (modeled on Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man); he also wrote books to popularize science, like Cosmos, which reflected & expanded upon occasionally of the themes of The Individual Voyage, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a Pulitzer Prize, and ''Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Sagan besides wrote a right-selling science fiction novel Contact'', but never lived to view a book's 1997 motion picture adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award.

From either Cosmos & his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, Sagan became associated with a catch phrase, "billions and billions." (He never actually utilized that sentence within Cosmos, however his distinctive delivery & frequent utilise of billions manufactured this the preferred sentence of Johnny Carson and others, doing the numerous lovesome impressions of him. Sagan took this inside skillful humor, & his final book was entitled Billions & Billions - look at beneath.) A humourous unit of the Sagan has now been coined to have for any count of at least 4,000,000,000.

He wrote the sequel to Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by The New York Times. Carl Sagan besides wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time.

Sagan presents a speculation on the origin of the swastika symbol in his book, Comet. Sagan hypothesized that the comet approached so approximately Globe within antiquity that a jets of flatulence video away from it were seeable, bent per comet's rotation. A book Comet reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties; virtually all come variations in elementary comet tails, however the endure shows a comet nucleus sustaining foursome bent arms extending from either it, showing a hakenkreuz.

Sagan driven mixed responses among more agent man of science. On one h&, there was general trend lines for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among a general public, and his positions in favour of skepticism and against pseudoscience; most notably his debunking of the book Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. Then agawithin, there wwhen a few unease that a public would misunderst& occasionally of the personalized positions & interests that Sagan took as existence a portion of the scientific consensus, like than his stand individual views, and there was a bit of unease, which occasionally guess to have been motivated in a share by agency jealousy, that scientific views contrary to people that Sagan took (like on the hardship of nuclear winter) were not existence sufficiently presented to the public.

Sagan's arguments against Velikovsky's catastrophism keep around been criticized by a bit of of his colleagues. Dr. Robert Jastrow of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies wrote: "Professor Sagan's calculations, in effect, ignore the law of gravity. Here, Dr. Velikovsky was the better astronomer." His comments on the Kuwait oil well fires during the 1st Gulf War were shown late to exist as withwithin error; Sagan himself acknowledged his error in print.

Late inside his life, Sagan's books developed his skeptical, realistic watch of the globe. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he presented tools for even touching arguments & detecting fallacious or fallacious ones, au fond advocating wide apply of the scientific method. A compilation, Billions & Billions: Thoughts in Life & Demise at a Prevent of the Millennium, published fallowing Sagan's dying, contains essays written by Sagan, like his views in abortion, and Ann Druyan's account of his dying as a non-believer.

Personality

Within 1994, Apple Computer began developing a Power Macintosh 7100. It chose a internal code title "Carl Sagan," inside honor of the uranologist. Though the task title was strictly internal & never utilized publically marketing, while Sagan learned of this internal usage, he sued Apple Computer to apply a different task title — more projects experienced list prefer "Cold fusion" and "Piltdown Man", and he was displeased at existence associated using what he considered pseudoscience. Though Sagan misused a lawsuit, Apple engineers complied by using his demands anyway, renaming a task "BHA" (Butthead Astronomer). Sagan sued Apple for libel above a freshly title, claiming that it subjected him to contempt & ridicule. Sagan misplaced this causa too; however, a 7100 saw a second title vary: it was okay, known as "LAW" (Lawyers Come Wimps).

Sagan is regarded by virtually all as an atheist or agnostic, observing statements like: "The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

Sagan married threefold; a noted life scientist, Lynn Margulis (mother of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan) in 1957, creative person Linda Salzman (mother of Nick Sagan) in 1968, & creator Ann Druyan (mother of Sasha and Sam) around 1981, to whom he remained married until his demise.

Legacy

When an extended & hard fight using myelodysplasia, Sagan died at the age of 62, in December 20, 1996, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. Sagan was the significant digit, & his supporters credit his importance to his popularizatiin of the natural sciences, opposing two restraints on science & reactionist applications of science, defending popular traditions, resisting nationalism, defending humanism, & arguing against geocentric and anthropocentric views.

A landing places of the remote-controlled Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, around honor of Dr. Sagan in July Five, 1997. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is also known as within his honor.

A 1997 movie, Contact (look at above), according to Sagan's novel of a equivalent title, & finished fallowing his dying, ceases by owning the dedication "For Carl."

Inside an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, a promptly shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, situated by the historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. the marker displays a quote from either Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you."

Within 2004, a electronic music class action Sagan freed a CD/DVD "Unseen Forces." the music was accompanied by a DVD which featured music videos format parodies of numerous of the historical sketches from either "Cosmos."

Awards and medals

Apollo Achievement Award - National Aeronautics and Space Administration Chicken Little Honorable Mention - 1991 - National Anxiety Center; a dubious accomplishment award from either an organization which is skeptical (Commonwealth spelling: sceptical) astir numbers of pessimistic appraisals of the state of the environment Distinguished Public Service - National Astronautics & Space Administration Emmy - Outstanding person achievement - 1981 - PBS series Cosmos Emmy - Great Informational Series - 1981 - PBS series Cosmos Exceptional Scientific Accomplishment Medal - National Astronautics & Space Administration Helen Caldicott Leadership Award - Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament Homer Award - 1997 - Contact Hugo Award - 1998 - Contact Hugo Award - 1981 - Cosmos Hugo Award - 1997 - The Demon-Haunted World Humanist of the Year - 1981 - awarded by the American Humanist Association In Praise of Reason Award - 1987 - Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal Isaac Asimov Award - 1994 - Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award - American Astronautical Society John W. Campbell Memorial Award - 1974 - The Cosmic Connection Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific - 1974 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal - Soviet Cosmonauts Federation Locus Poll Award 1986 - Contact Lowell Thomas Award - Explorers Club - 75th Anniversary Masursky Award - American Astronomical Society Peabody - 1980 - PBS series Cosmos Public Welfare Medal - 1994 - National Academy of Sciences Pulitzer Prize for Literature - 1978 - The Dragons of Eden SF Chronicle Award - 1998 - Contact Carl Sagan Memorial Award - Named around his honor Known as 99th "Greatest American" on the June 5th, 2005 "Greatest American" indicate on the Discovery Channel.

Related books and media

Sagan, Carl & Jonathon Norton Leonard & editors of Life, Planets. Instance, Inc., 1966 Sagan, Carl and I.S. Shklovskii, Intelligent Life in the Universe. Random Home, 1966 Sagan, Carl, Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. MIT Click, 1973 Sagan, Carl, et. al. Mars and the Mind of Man. Harpist & Row, 1973 Sagan, Carl, Other Worlds. Flyspeck Books, 1975 Sagan, Carl, et. al. Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. Random Home, 1977 Sagan, Carl et. al. The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985 Sagan, Carl, Contact. Simon & Schuster, 1985; Reissued August 1997 by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1568654243, 352 pgs Sagan, Carl & Richard Turco, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race. Random Home, 1990 Sagan, Carl, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, December 1989, ISBN 0345346297, 288 pgs Sagan, Carl, ''Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Ballantine Books, October 1993, ISBN 0345336895, 416 pgs Sagan, Carl & Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are. Ballantine Books, October 1993, ISBN 0345384725, 528 pgs Sagan, Carl & Ann Druyan, Comet. Ballantine Books, February 1997, ISBN 0345412222, 496 pgs Sagan, Carl, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Ballantine Books, September 1997, ISBN 0345376595, 384 pgs Sagan, Carl & Ann Druyan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. Ballantine Books, June 1998, ISBN 0345379187, 320 pgs Sagan, Carl, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Ballantine Books, March 1997, ISBN 0345409469, 480 pgs Sagan, Carl & Jerome Agel, Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. Cambridge University Click, January 15, 2000, ISBN 0521783038, 301 pgs Sagan, Carl, Cosmos. Random Home, Will 7, 2002, ISBN 0375508325, 384 pgs Zemeckis, Robert, Contact. Warner Studios, 1997, [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0118884 IMDB] Davidson, Keay, Carl Sagan: A Life. John Wiley & Sons, August 31, 2000, ISBN 0471395366, 560 pgs Head, Tom (editor), Conversations with Carl Sagan''. University Click of Mississippi, 2005, ISBN 1578067367, 170 pgs