Carl Sagan: Difference between revisions
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Long before the ill-fated tenure process, [[Cornell University]] astronomer [[Thomas Gold]] had courted Sagan to move to [[Ithaca, New York]] and join the faculty at Cornell. Following the denial of tenure from Harvard, Sagan accepted Gold's offer and remained a faculty member at Cornell for nearly 30 years until his death in 1996. Unlike Harvard, the smaller and more laid-back astronomy department at Cornell welcomed Sagan's growing celebrity status.<ref>{{cite book |title=Carl Sagan:A life |first1=Keay|last1=Davidson |publisher= John Wiley & Sons |year=1999 |isbn=0-471-25286-7 |page=213 }}</ref> Following two years as an associate professor, Sagan became a [[Professor|full professor]] at Cornell in 1970, and directed the Laboratory for [[Planetary science|Planetary Studies]] there. From 1972 to 1981, he was associate director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research (CRSR) at Cornell. In 1976, he became the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences, a position he held for the remainder of his life.<ref>{{cite book |title=Conversations with Carl Sagan |edition=illustrated |first1=Carl |last1=Sagan |first2=Tom |last2=Head |publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-57806-736-7 |page=xxi |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC&pg=PR21 Extract of page xxi]</ref>
Sagan was associated with the U.S. space program from its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to [[NASA]], where one of his duties included briefing the [[Apollo program|Apollo]] [[astronaut]]s before their flights to the [[Moon]]. Sagan contributed to many of the [[robotic spacecraft]] missions that explored the [[Solar System]], arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a [[gold]]-[[anodized]] [[Pioneer plaque|plaque]], attached to the space probe [[Pioneer 10]], launched in 1972. [[Pioneer 11]], also carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the [[Voyager Golden Record]] that was sent out with the [[Voyager program|Voyager]] space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the [[Space Shuttle]] and the [[International Space Station]] at the expense of further robotic missions.<ref name="CharlieRose">{{cite interview |last=Sagan |first=Carl |title=An Interview with Carl Sagan |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soF-aS169bw |work=''[[Charlie Rose (TV series)|Charlie Rose]]'' |publisher=[[PBS]] |location=New York |date=January 5, 1995 |accessdate=August 30, 2013}}<youtube width="200px" height="120px">soF-aS169bw</youtube></ref>
=== Scientific achievements ===
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[[File:Sagan Viking.jpg|thumb|right|Sagan with a model of the [[Viking program#Viking landers|Viking lander]] that would land on [[Mars]]. Sagan examined possible landing sites for Viking along with Mike Carr and Hal Masursky.]]
Sagan was invited to frequent appearances on ''[[The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YKCA_XNuh4|title=Carl Sagan on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (full item, 1980)|first=|last=I Han|date=July 14, 2015|publisher=|via=YouTube}}
<youtube width="200px" height="120px">2YKCA_XNuh4</youtube></ref>
After ''Cosmos'' aired, he became associated with the [[catchphrase]] "billions and billions", although he never actually used the phrase in the ''Cosmos'' series.<ref name="BandB">[[#Sagan & Druyan 1997|Sagan & Druyan 1997]], pp. 3–4</ref> He rather used the term "billions ''upon'' billions."<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Shapiro |editor-first=Fred R. |editor-link=Fred R. Shapiro |others=Foreword by [[Joseph Epstein (writer)|Joseph Epstein]] |title=The Yale Book of Quotations |year=2006 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |location=New Haven, CT |isbn=978-0-300-10798-2 |oclc=66527213 |lccn=2006012317 |page=660 }}</ref> Carson, however, would sometimes use the phrase during his parodies of Sagan.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIbbTHQmPkE|title=Carl Sagan (Cosmos) Parody by Johnny Carson (1980)|first=|last=24fpsfan|date=December 22, 2012|publisher=|via=YouTube}}<youtube width="200px" height="120px">iIbbTHQmPkE</youtube></ref>{{efn|[[Richard Feynman]], a precursor to Sagan, was observed to have used the phrase "billions and billions" many times in his "[[The Feynman Lectures on Physics|red books]]". However, Sagan's frequent use of the word ''billions'', and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b{{'"}}, in order to distinguish the word from "millions"),<ref name="BandB" /> made him a favorite target of comic performers, including [[Johnny Carson]],<ref>{{cite journal |editor-last=Frazier |editor-first=Kendrick |editor-link=Kendrick Frazier |date=July–August 2005 |title=Carl Sagan Takes Questions: More From His 'Wonder and Skepticism' CSICOP 1994 Keynote |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |volume=29.4 |url=http://www.csicop.org/si/show/carl_sagan_takes_questions |location=Amherst, NY |publisher=The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry |accessdate=March 25, 2010}}</ref> [[Gary Kroeger]], [[Mike Myers]], [[Bronson Pinchot]], [[Penn Jillette]], [[Harry Shearer]], and others. [[Frank Zappa]] satirized the line in the song "Be in My Video", noting as well "atomic light". Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled ''[[Billions and Billions]]'', which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catchphrase, observing that Carson was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.<ref name="BandB" />}}
As a humorous tribute to Sagan and his association with the catchphrase "billions and billions", a {{anchor |Sagan units}}''[[wikt:Sagan#Noun|sagan]]'' has been defined as a [[List of humorous units of measurement|unit of measurement]] equivalent to a very large number – technically at least four billion (two billion plus two billion) – of anything.<ref>{{Dictionary.com|Sagan|accessdate=August 31, 2013}} Jargon File 4.2.0.</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Footprints on the Infobahn |first=William |last=Safire |authorlink=William Safire |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/17/magazine/on-language-footprints-on-the-infobahn.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=April 17, 1994 |accessdate=August 31, 2013}}</ref><ref name="annbot">{{cite journal |last=Gresshoff |first=P.M. |year=2004 |title=Scheel D. and Wasternack C.(eds) Plant Signal Transduction |journal=[[Annals of Botany]] |volume=93 |issue=6 |pages=783–784 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |format=PDF |type=Book review |accessdate=August 31, 2013 |url=http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/6/783.full.pdf|doi=10.1093/aob/mch102|pmc=4242307 }}</ref>
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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;<ref>{{cite web |url=http://science.discovery.com/convergence/cosmos/bio/bio.html?clik=fsmain_feat3 |title=Meet Carl Sagan |work=[[Science (TV network)|The Science Channel]] |publisher=[[Discovery Communications]] |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070518042909/http://science.discovery.com/convergence/cosmos/bio/bio.html?clik=fsmain_feat3 |archivedate=May 18, 2007 |accessdate=August 31, 2013}}</ref> ''[[The Dragons of Eden|The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence]]'', which won a [[Pulitzer Prize]]; and ''[[Broca's Brain (book)|Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science]]''. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel ''Contact'' in 1985, based on a [[film treatment]] he wrote with his wife in 1979, but he did not live to see the book's 1997 [[Contact (1997 American film)|motion picture adaptation]], which starred [[Jodie Foster]] and won the 1998 [[Hugo Award]] for Best Dramatic Presentation.
[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|thumb|right|300px|''[[Pale Blue Dot]]'': Earth is a bright pixel when photographed from ''[[Voyager 1]]'' six billion kilometers out (beyond Pluto). Sagan encouraged NASA to generate this image.{{quote box|align=right||title = from ''Pale Blue Dot'' (1994)|width=280px|bgcolor = lightblue|quote=On it, everyone you ever heard of...The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. . . . <br><br>Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.|source=Carl Sagan, Cornell lecture in 1994<ref name=speech>Sagan, Carl. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M Recorded lecture at Cornell in 1994], from ''Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space'', Ballantine Books (reprint) (1997) p. 88</ref>}}<youtube width="200px" height="120px">p86BPM1GV8M </youtube>]]
Sagan wrote a sequel to ''Cosmos'', ''[[Pale Blue Dot (book)|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's ''[[Charlie Rose (TV series)|Charlie Rose]]'' program in January 1995.<ref name="CharlieRose" /> Sagan also wrote the introduction for [[Stephen Hawking]]'s bestseller, ''[[A Brief History of Time]]''. Sagan was also known 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]], such as his [[Debunker|debunking]] of the [[Betty and Barney Hill abduction]]. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, [[David Morrison (astrophysicist)|David Morrison]], a former student of Sagan's, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in ''[[Skeptical Inquirer]]''.<ref name="morrison" />
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Sagan believed that the [[Drake equation]], on substitution of reasonable estimates, suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations highlighted by the [[Fermi paradox]] suggests [[Technology|technological]] civilizations tend to self-destruct. This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a [[Risks to civilization, humans, and planet Earth|cataclysm]] and eventually becoming a [[spacefaring]] species. Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of [[Risks to civilization, humans, and planet Earth|human civilization]] in a [[nuclear holocaust]] was conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of ''Cosmos'', called "Who Speaks for Earth?" Sagan had already resigned{{date?}} from the [[United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board|Air Force Scientific Advisory Board]]'s UFO investigating [[Condon Committee]] and voluntarily surrendered his [[Security clearance#Top Secret|top secret clearance]] in protest over the [[Vietnam War]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Druyan |first=Ann |authorlink=Ann Druyan |date=November 2000 |title=A New Sense of the Sacred Carl Sagan's 'Cosmic Connection' |journal=[[American Humanist Association|The Humanist]] |volume=60 |issue=6 |publisher=[[American Humanist Association]] |location=Washington, D.C. |accessdate=August 29, 2013 |url=https://www.questia.com/library/1G1-78889720/a-new-sense-of-the-sacred-carl-sagan-s-cosmic-connection}}</ref> Following his marriage to his third wife ([[novelist]] Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active—particularly in opposing escalation of the [[nuclear arms race]] under [[President of the United States|President]] [[Ronald Reagan]].
[[File:US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.svg|thumb|The United States and [[Soviet Union]]/Russia nuclear stockpiles, in [[Historical nuclear weapons stockpiles and nuclear tests by country|total number of nuclear bombs/warheads in existence]] throughout the [[Cold War]] and post-Cold War era.]]
In March 1983, Reagan announced the [[Strategic Defense Initiative]]—a multibillion-dollar project to develop a comprehensive [[missile defense|defense]] against attack by [[Nuclear weapons delivery#Ballistic missile|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 such a system than it would be for an enemy to defeat it through [[Decoy#Military decoy|decoy]]s 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVUk30GFsL4|title=YouTube|website=www.youtube.com}}<youtube width="200px" height="120px">fVUk30GFsL4</youtube></ref>
When Soviet leader [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] declared a unilateral moratorium on the [[Nuclear weapons testing|testing of nuclear weapons]], which would begin on August 6, 1985—the 40th anniversary of the [[Nuclear weapon#Fission weapons|atomic bomb]]ing of [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|Hiroshima]]—the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, US [[Anti-nuclear movement|anti-nuclear]] and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at the [[Nevada National Security Site|Nevada Test Site]], beginning on [[Easter|Easter Sunday]] in 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people in the "[[Nevada Desert Experience]]" group were arrested, including Sagan, who was arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the test site during the underground [[Operation Charioteer]] and [[Operation Musketeer (Nuclear test)|United States's Musketeer nuclear test series]] of detonations.<ref>[[#Spangenburg & Moser|Spangenburg & Moser 2004]], p. 106</ref>
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August 2007 the [[Independent Investigations Group]] (IIG) awarded Sagan posthumously a Lifetime Achievement Award. This honor has also been awarded to [[Harry Houdini]] and [[James Randi]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.iigwest.com/iigawards/2006/index.html |title=The 2007 IIG Awards |website=IIG |publisher=[[Independent Investigations Group]] |location=Los Angeles |date=August 18, 2007 |accessdate=July 1, 2011}}</ref>
Beginning in 2009, a musical project known as [[Symphony of Science]] sampled several excerpts of Sagan from his series ''Cosmos'' and remixed them to [[electronic music]]. To date, the videos have received over 21 million views worldwide on [[YouTube]].<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Boswell, John |date=November 9, 2009 |title=A Glorious Dawn |medium=[[Gramophone record#Common formats|7-in (17.5 cm) gramophone record]] |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc |accessdate=September 3, 2013 |publisher=[[Third Man Records]] |location=Nashville, TN}}<youtube width="200px" height="120px">zSgiXGELjbc</youtube></ref>
The 2014 Swedish science fiction short film ''[[Wanderers (short film)|Wanderers]]'' uses excerpts of Sagan's narration of his book ''Pale Blue Dot'', played over digitally-created visuals of humanity's possible future expansion into outer space.<ref>{{cite news|last=D'Orazio |first=Dante |date=30 November 2014 |title=Wonderful short film imagines the day when we conquer the solar system |url=https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/30/7310433/wanderers-sci-fi-short-film-imagines-when-humans-conquer-the-solar-system |newspaper=The Verge |location= |access-date=19 February 2016 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=David |first=Leonard |date=1 December 2014 |title=Epic Short Film 'Wanderers' Envisions Humanity's Future in Space |url=http://www.space.com/27895-wanderers-science-fiction-short-film.html |newspaper= |location=Space.com |access-date=21 February 2016 }}</ref>
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* {{Official website|http://www.carlsagan.com/|name=The Carl Sagan Portal}}
* [http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/sagan-carl.pdf Carl Sagan (1934-1996)] Biographical memories
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ4qBBWv3b4 Sagan interviewed by Ted Turner], ''CNN'', 1989, video: 44 minutes.▼
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00scvqk/Great_Lives_Series_21_Carl_Sagan/ BBC Radio program "Great Lives" on Carl Sagan's life]
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=HoZdcomupUQC&pg=PA36 "A man whose time has come"]—Interview with Carl Sagan by [[Ian Ridpath]], ''[[New Scientist]]'', July 4, 1974
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* [https://vault.fbi.gov/Carl%20Sagan FBI Records: The Vault - Carl Sagan] at fbi.gov
* [https://archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_19630011050 "NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19630011050: Direct Contact Among Galactic Civilizations by Relativistic Interstellar Spaceflight"], Carl Sagan, when he was at Stanford University, in 1962, produced a controversial paper funded by a NASA research grant that concludes ancient alien intervention may have sparked human civilization.
==YouTube videos==
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{{Carl Sagan}}
{{PulitzerPrize GeneralNon-Fiction 1976–2000}}
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