Everything about Carl Sagan totally explained
Carl Edward Sagan (
November 9 1934 –
December 20 1996) was an
American astronomer and
astrochemist and a highly successful popularizer of
astronomy,
astrophysics, and other
natural sciences. He pioneered
exobiology and promoted the
Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
He is world-famous for writing
popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series, which has been seen by more than 600 million people in over 60 countries, making it the most widely watched
PBS program in history. A
book to accompany the program was also published. He also wrote the novel
Contact, the basis for the 1997
Robert Zemeckis film of the same name starring
Jodie Foster. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated
skeptical inquiry,
secular humanism, and the
scientific method.
Education and scientific career
Carl Sagan was born in
Brooklyn,
New York to a
Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was a
garment worker; his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, "the mother she never knew", in Sagan's words.
Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in
New Jersey in 1951. He attended the
University of Chicago, where he received a
A.B. with general and special honors (1954), a
S.B. (1955) and a
S.M. (1956) in
physics, before earning a
Ph.D. degree (1960) in
astronomy and
astrophysics. During his time as an undergraduate, Sagan spent some time working in the laboratory of the
geneticist H. J. Muller. From 1960 to 1962 he was a Miller Fellow at the
University of California, Berkeley. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sagan lectured annually at
Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to
Cornell University. He became a full Professor at Cornell in 1971 and directed the Laboratory for
Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981 he was Associate Director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell.
Sagan was a leader in the U.S.
space program since its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an adviser to
NASA. One of his many duties during his tenure at the space agency included briefing the
Apollo astronauts before their flights to the
Moon. Sagan contributed to most of the
robotic spacecraft missions that explored the
solar system, arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the solar system that could be understood by any
extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into
space: a
gold-
anodized plaque, attached to the space probe
Pioneer 10, launched in 1972.
Pioneer 11, also carrying the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs throughout his lifetime; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the
Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the
Voyager space probes in 1977.
At Cornell, Sagan taught a course on
critical thinking until his death in 1996 from a rare bone marrow disease. The course had only a limited number of seats. Although hundreds of students applied each year, only about 20 were chosen to attend each semester. The course was discontinued immediately after Sagan's death, but was later resumed by Professor
Yervant Terzian in 2000.
Scientific achievements
Carl Sagan was central to the discovery of the high
surface temperatures of the planet
Venus. In the early 1960s, no one knew for certain the basic conditions of Venus' surface and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report later depicted for popularization in a
Time-Life book,
Planets; his own view was that the planet was dry and very hot, as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a surface temperature of 500 °C (932 °F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first
Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project.
Mariner 2 confirmed his views on the conditions of Venus in 1962.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that
Saturn's moon
Titan and
Jupiter's moon
Europa may possess oceans, a subsurface ocean, as in the case of Europa, or lakes, thus making the hypothesized water ocean on Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft
Galileo. Sagan also helped solve the mystery of the reddish haze seen on Titan, revealing that it's composed of complex
organic molecules constantly raining down to the moon's surface.
He furthered insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on
Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely hot and dense with crushing pressures. He also perceived
global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through
greenhouse gases. 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. He studied the observed color variations on Mars’ surface, concluding that they were not seasonal or vegetation changes as most believed, but shifts in surface dust caused by
windstorms.
Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of
extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of
amino acids from basic chemicals by
radiation.
He is also the 1994 recipient of the
Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the
National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare."
Scientific advocacy
Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with
radio telescopes for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms. So persuasive was he that by 1982, he was able to get a petition advocating
SETI published in the journal
Science, signed by 70 scientists, including seven
Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also helped Dr.
Frank Drake write the
Arecibo message, a radio message beamed into space from the
Arecibo radio telescope on
November 16,
1974, aimed at informing extraterrestrials about Earth.
Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal
Icarus for twelve years. He co-founded the
Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 1,000,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the
SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the
American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the
American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
At the height of the
Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of
nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of
life on Earth. He was the last of five authors — the "S" of the
"TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper hypothesising a global
nuclear winter following nuclear war. He also co-authored the book
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.
Sagan erroneously warned in January of 1991 that so much smoke from the
Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia...." He acknowledged the error in
The Demon-Haunted World: "as events transpired, 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."
In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near Earth objects that would impact the Earth. ( ) When others suggested creating large nuclear bombs that could be used to alter the orbit of an NEO that was predicted to hit the Earth, Sagan proposed the Deflection Dilemma: If we create the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth, then we also create the ability to deflect an asteroid towards the Earth - providing an evil power with a true doomsday bomb.
Social concerns
Sagan believed that the
Drake equation suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations pointed out by the
Fermi paradox suggests
technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly. This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a
cataclysm and eventually becoming a
spacefaring species.
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, called "Who Speaks for Earth?". Following his marriage to his third wife (novelist
Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active — particularly in regard to the escalation of the
nuclear arms race under President
Ronald Reagan.
In March 1983, hoping to blunt the momentum of the
nuclear freeze movement, Reagan announced the
Strategic Defense Initiative — a multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive
defense against attack by
nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars" program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection required, and far more expensive to build than for an enemy to defeat through
decoys and other means — and that its construction would seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and the
Soviet Union, making further progress toward
nuclear disarmament impossible.
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. In response, American
anti-nuclear and peace
activists staged a series of protest actions at the
Nevada Test Site, beginning on
Easter Sunday of 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people, including such notable figures as
Daniel Ellsberg and
Martin Sheen, engaged in acts of
civil disobedience and were arrested. Carl Sagan, who had been arrested for participating in an
anti-war protest during the
Vietnam War, was himself arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a
chain-link fence at the Test Site.
Popularization of science
Sagan's capability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos — simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the earth in comparison to the
universe. He delivered the 1977/1978
Christmas Lectures for Young People at the
Royal Institution. He hosted and, with Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part
PBS television series modeled on
Jacob Bronowski's
The Ascent of Man.
Cosmos covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the
origin of life and a perspective of our place in the
universe. The series was first broadcast by the
Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, winning an
Emmy and a
Peabody Award. According to the NASA Office of Space Science, it has been since broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people.
Sagan also wrote books to popularize science, such as
Cosmos, which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of
A Personal Voyage, and became the best-selling science book ever published in English;
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a
Pulitzer Prize; and . Sagan also wrote the best-selling
science fiction novel
Contact, but didn't live to see the book's 1997
motion picture adaptation, which starred
Jodie Foster and won the 1998
Hugo Award.
From
Cosmos and his frequent appearances on
The Tonight Show, Sagan became associated with the
catch phrase "billions and billions." Sagan never actually used the phrase in
Cosmos series, however his frequent use of term
billions, and distinctive delivery with emphasis on the “b”, made him a favorite target of performers and comedy routines of
Johnny Carson,
Gary Kroeger,
Mike Myers,
Bronson Pinchot,
Harry Shearer and others. Sagan took this in good humor, and his final book was entitled and opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catch phrase. The
indefinite and fictitious number Sagan has arisen in popular culture to indicate a count greater than 4 billion.
He wrote a 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. He appeared on
PBS'
Charlie Rose program in January 1995. Sagan also wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by
Stephen Hawking,
A Brief History of Time.
Sagan caused mixed reactions among other professional scientists. On the one hand, there was general support for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of
scientific skepticism and against
pseudoscience; most notably his
debunking of the book
Worlds in Collision by
Immanuel Velikovsky. On the other hand, there was some unease that the public would misunderstand some of the personal positions and interests that Sagan took as being part of the scientific consensus.
Late in his life, Sagan's books developed his skeptical,
naturalistic view of the world. In, he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of critical thinking and the
scientific method. The compilation,, published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on
abortion, and his widow Ann Druyan's account of his death as a
skeptic,
agnostic, and
freethinker.
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow
Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a new book,, in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the
natural world.
Personal life and beliefs
In 1966, Sagan was asked to contribute an interview about the possibility of extraterrestrials to a proposed introduction to the film . Sagan responded by saying that he wanted editorial control and a percentage of the film's takings, which was rejected.
In 1994,
Apple Computer began developing the
Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name "
Carl Sagan", the in-joke being that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 would make Apple "billions and billions."
Sagan wrote frequently about
religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about many conventional conceptualizations of
God. Sagan once stated, for instance, that "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's such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it doesn't make much sense to
pray to the law of
gravity." Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations as seen in
Cosmos, was "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (This was actually based on a nearly identical earlier quote by fellow
CSICOP founder
Marcello Truzzi, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." The quote is also known, under different wording, as the principle of
Laplace — attributed to Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827), a
French mathematician and astronomer: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."
Sagan married three times: to biologist
Lynn Margulis, mother of
Dorion Sagan and
Jeremy Sagan, in 1957; to artist
Linda Salzman, mother of
Nick Sagan, in 1968; and to author
Ann Druyan, mother of Alexandra Rachel (Sasha) and Samuel Democritus (Sam), in 1981. His marriage to Druyan continued until his death in 1996.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met who was smarter than Asimov himself. The other was
computer scientist and expert on
artificial intelligence,
Marvin Minsky.
Sagan was a user of
marijuana. Under the
pseudonym "Mr. X", he wrote an essay concerning cannabis smoking in the 1971 book
Marihuana Reconsidered, whose editor was Sagan's close friend
Lester Grinspoon. In his essay, Sagan wrote how marijuana use had helped to inspire some of his works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, Grinspoon disclosed this to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of this biography,
Carl Sagan: A Life, in 1999, brought much media attention to the issue of the use and legalization of marijuana.
Sagan and UFOs
Sagan had some interest in
UFO reports from at least 1964, when he'd several conversations on the subject with
Jacques Vallee. Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question, Sagan thought scientists should study the phenomenon, at least because there was widespread public interest in UFO reports.
Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived as the
logical and
empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the
abduction experience. Sagan rejected an
extraterrestrial explanation for the phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and
pedagogical benefits for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a legitimate topic of study."
In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review the
Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO investigation project. The committee concluded Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific scrutiny. The result was the
Condon Committee (1966-1968), led by physicist
Edward Condon, and their still-controversial final report, formally concluded that there was nothing anomalous about UFO reports.
Ron Westrum writes that "The high point of Sagan's treatment of the UFO question was the
AAAS's symposium in 1969. A wide range of educated opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not only proponents as
James McDonald and
J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics like astronomers
William Hartmann and
Donald Menzel. The roster of speakers was balanced, and it's to Sagan's credit that this event was presented in spite of pressure from
Edward Condon".
Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of
Cosmos) and he recognized a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon. However, Westrum writes that "Sagan spent very little time researching UFOs ... he thought that little evidence existed to show that the UFO phenomenon represented alien spacecraft and that the motivation for interpreting UFO observations as spacecraft was emotional".
Death and legacy
After a long and difficult fight with
myelodysplasia, which included three
bone marrow transplants, Sagan died of
pneumonia at the age of 62, leaving behind a wife and five children on
December 20,
1996, at the
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in
Seattle, Washington. Sagan was a significant figure, and his supporters credit his importance to his popularization of the
natural sciences, opposing both restraints on science and reactionary applications of science, defending
democratic traditions, resisting
nationalism, defending
humanism, and arguing against
geocentric and
anthropocentric views.
After landing, the unmanned
Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the
Carl Sagan Memorial Station on
July 5 1997. Asteroid
2709 Sagan is also named in his honor.
The 1997 movie
Contact, based on Sagan's novel of the same name and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl."
On
November 9,
2001, on what would have been Sagan’s 67th birthday, the
NASA Ames Research Center dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. "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. Ann Druyan was at the center as it opened its doors on
October 22,
2006.
Sagan's son,
Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the
Star Trek franchise. In an episode of 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. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you."
Sagan has at least two awards named in his honour: the
Carl Sagan Memorial Award presented jointly since 1997 by the
American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the
Planetary Society; and the
Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science presented by
Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP). Sagan himself was the first recipient of the CSSP award in 1993.
Sagan's student
Steve Squyres led the team that landed the
Spirit Rover and
Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.
On
December 20,
2006, the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, a blogger, Joel Schlosberg, organized a Carl Sagan "blog-a-thon" to commemorate Sagan's death, and the idea was supported by Nick Sagan.
(External Link
) Many members of the blogging community participated.
Awards and honors
Bibliography
By Sagan
Planets (LIFE Science Library), Sagan, Carl, Jonathon Norton Leonard and editors of Life, Time, Inc., 1966
Intelligent Life in the Universe, I.S. Shklovskii coauthor, Random House, 1966, 509 pgs
UFO's: A Scientific Debate, Thornton Page coauthor, Cornell University Press, 1972, 310 pgs
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. MIT Press, 1973, 428 pgs
Mars and the Mind of Man, Sagan, Carl, et al., Harper & Row, 1973, 143 pgs
, Jerome Agel coauthor, Anchor Press, 1973, ISBN 0-521-78303-8, 301 pgs
. Ballantine Books, 1974, ISBN 0-345-33689-5, 416 pgs
Other Worlds. Bantam Books, 1975
Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Sagan, Carl, et al., Random House, ISBN 0-394-41047-5, 1978
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, 1978, ISBN 0-345-34629-7, 288 pgs
Cosmos. Random house, 1980. Random House New Edition, May 7, 2002, ISBN 0-375-50832-5, 384 pgs
The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War, Sagan, Carl et al., Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985
Comet, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, 1985, ISBN 0-345-41222-2, 496 pgs
Contact. Simon and Schuster, 1985; Reissued August 1997 by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1-56865-424-3, 352 pgs
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Ann Druyan editor, 1985 Gifford lectures, Penguin Press, 2006, ISBN 1-59420-107-2, 304 pgs
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, Richard Turco coauthor, Random House, 1990, ISBN 0-394-58307-8, 499 pgs
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, Ann Druyan Coauthor, Ballantine Books, October 1993, ISBN 0-345-38472-5, 528 pgs
. Random House, November 1994, ISBN 0-679-43841-6, 429 pgs
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Ballantine Books, March 1996, ISBN 0-345-40946-9, 480 pgs
, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, June 1997, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pgs
About Sagan
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