Posts tagged carl sagan
Fierce...Flawless...
In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’
OHMYGLOB.
Okay, so the Pale Blue Dot tribute at the top there has me getting seriously wet in the eyes here.
seriously.
Typical offerings of pseudoscience and superstition - this is merely a representative, not a comprehensive list - are astrology; the Bermuda Triangle; “Big Foot” and the Loch Ness monster; ghosts; the “evil eye”; multicolored halolike “auras” said to surround the heads of everyone (with colors personalized); extrasensory perception (ESP), such as telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, and “remote viewing” of distant places; the belief that 13 is an “unlucky” number (because of which many no-nonsense office buildings and hotels in America pass directly from the 12th to the 14th floors - why take the chance?); bleeding statues; the conviction that carrying the severed foot of a rabbit around with you brings good luck; divining rods, dowsing, and water witching; “facilitated communication” in autism; the belief that razor blades stay sharper when kept inside small cardboard pyramids, and other tenets of “pyramidology”; phone calls (none of them collect) from the dead; prophecies of Nostradamus; the alleged discovery that untrained flatworms can learn a task by eating the ground-up remains of other, better educated flatworms; the notion that more crimes are committed when the Moon is full; palmistry; numerology; polygraphy; comets, tea leaves, and “monstrous” births as harbingers of future events (plus the divinations fashionable in earlier epochs, accomplished by viewing entrails, smoke, the shapes of flames, shadows, and excrement; listening to gurgling stomachs; and even, for a brief period, examining tables of logarithms); “photography” of past events, such as the crucifixion of Jesus; a Russian elephant that speaks fluently; “sensitives” who, when carelessly blindfolded, read books with their fingertips; Edgar Cayce (who predicted that in the 1960s the “lost” continent of Atlantis would “rise”) and other “prophets,” sleeping and awake; diet quackery; out-of-body (e.g., near-death) experiences interpreted as real events in the external world; faith-healer fraud; Ouija boards; the emotional lives of geraniums, uncovered by intrepid use of a “lie detector”; water remembering what molecules used to be dissolved in it; telling character from facial features or bumps on the head; the “hundredth monkey” confusion and other claims that whatever a small fraction of us wants to be true really is true; human beings spontaneously bursting into flame and being burned to a crisp; 3-cycle biorhythms; perpetual motion machines, promising unlimited supplies of energy (but all of which, for one reason or another, are withheld from close examination by skeptics); the systematically inept predictions of Jeane Dixon (who “predicted” a 1953 Soviet invasion of Iran and in 1965 that the USSR would beat the U.S. to put the first human on the Moon) and other professional “psychics”; the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ prediction that the world would end in 1917, and many similar prophecies; dianetics and Scientology; Carlos Castaneda and “sorcery”; claims of finding the remains of Noah’s Ark; the “Amityville Horror” and other hauntings; and accounts of a small brontosaurus crashing through the rain forests of the Congo Republic in our time.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
And of course, the invisible fire-breathing Dragon in your neighbour’s garage.
(via incomprehensibleuniverse)
This list cracks me up and scares me to death every time.
(via project-argus)
That must be the longest sentence I ever read.
(via astrotastic)
diet quackery is on this list.
I’m tearing up.
Dammit, why were you so perfect? and dammit, why are you not still around?
(via astrotastic)
Him and Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan
(Source: prochoi)
We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.
(Source: silverblueberry)
Almost everything under the “Ann Druyan” tag here on tumblr is this quote of hers addressing how people ask her if Carl had some kind of deathbed conversion. The more I read it, the more I feel that the story it conveys is somewhat ghoulish. (don’t get me started on how the things she does herself are often ignored for just this one story. another rant for another day.)
I mean, people have the nerve to ask someone that lost the love of her life if losing him was enough to make her see their way of thinking? That’s fucking awful! How exactly is that supposed to be comforting in any way? Its selfish, is what it is.
That said, all the versions I have seen of this story, of Ann having to publicly tell people that no, she is fairly certain that she will never see him again, even in the midst of discussing what must be an awfully painful subject, she is graceful and clear. Not once have I heard of her handing some jerk their ass on a platter for thinking that their faith entitled them to try and capitalize on her pain, though I would be in her cheering section if she did. I can only hope to be that strong of a person.
(Source: the-softly-spoken-magic-spell)
cwnl:
(text cut for reasons that will be explained later)
I love it when my ships are canon :D
(Source: ikenbot)
I would have liked to see the way Carl and Ann acted around each other when they first met.
It would have been really cute ;-;
the wedding of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
So, I’m about to spam y’all with awesome and sweet photographs of Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan. Something about their relationship just makes me melt, and Carl gets so much attention while Ann was his collaborator on every large scale project that he is known for. She carries on his legacy in her own way, as an amazing writer, speaker and thinker in her own right.
So, prepare for the spam of awesome.
(Source: prochoi)
Damn, he was tall.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s First Meeting with Carl Sagan
(Source: geeksaresexy.net, via shalkadoctor)
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - Master Post
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.
Episode 1: Shores of the Cosmic Ocean
Dr. Carl Sagan goes deep into space with the help of special effects to visit star clusters, supernovas, pulsars, quasars, and exploding galaxies. At the conclusion, he takes viewers to a re-creation of the 2,000-year-old Alexandrian Library. (with a brief foreword by Ann Druyan)
Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
In this episode, Dr. Sagan explains the history of the universe, and talks about the evolution of living organisms from the simplest microbes to humans. This comprehension of origins is necessary to understand what life forms might be found elsewhere in the universe.
Episode 3: Harmony of the Worlds
The life of Johannes Kepler, the first modern astronomer (who also wrote the first science fiction novel), is profiled. His influence on today’s views on planetary motion is explored.
Dr. Sagan takes viewers into the Venusian atmosphere to deliver a lesson on possible repercussions of the greenhouse effect. The noted author and astronomer explains complex subjects in an engaging and informative manner that is not difficult to understand. Accessibility to the subject enabled millions of viewers to appreciate the series. Through the magic of special effects, he also explores the Solar System to observe the effects of dramatic cosmic events on other objects in space.
Episode 5: Blues for a Red Planet
Dr. Sagan uses special effects to travel to Mars, as seen by authors of science fiction novels. He then contrasts this with pictures of the surface of Mars taken by the Viking spacecraft.
Here Dr. Sagan takes a look at the Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn, and compares the excitement to the adventuring spirit of the early Dutch explorers who traveled unknown seas for the first time. Their discoveries led to further knowledge of previously unheard of wonders and riches, comparable to the invaluable data retrieved by the spacecraft.
Episode 7: Backbone of the Night
In this episode, viewers examine these early endeavors to comprehend the night sky. The stars were thought to be campfires in the heavens, and the great expanse of stars known as the Milky Way was the “backbone of the night.” Dr. Sagan goes back to his childhood elementary school where the question “What are stars?” is the subject of discussion.
Episode 8: Travels in Space and Time
Through the magic of special effects, the viewer goes on a journey to observe the evolution of stars over millions of years, then sees a simulation of other stars with their orbiting planets. In Cosmos, Episode 8: Travels in Space and Time, Dr. Sagan also travels to Italy and introduces the young Einstein as he ponders beams of light and their speed.
Dr. Sagan presents a remarkable look at the life cycle of stars, using computer animation and space art. Cosmos, Episode 9: Lives of the Stars depicts the collapse of stars which precedes the formation of neutron stars and black holes. Dr. Sagan then guides the viewer five billion years into the future, when the Sun will flare out, encompassing the earth in its explosive death.
Dr. Sagan goes to India to check the Hindu cycles of cosmology. Then, thanks to computer simulation and other special effects, he falls into a black hole, only to emerge in New Mexico as he demonstrates The Very Large Array, the 27 radio telescopes listening to outer space.
Episode 11: Persistence of Memory
Dr. Sagan discusses the human brain, guiding the viewer through a maze of a brain model to demonstrate the intricacies of thought. He compares the intelligence of a whale to that of a human, and offers an explanation of how all the information needed for survival is stored in human genetic material and brains, and in books.
Episode 12: Encyclopaedia Galactica
Dr. Sagan takes the viewer to Egypt to puzzle over hieroglyphics, then to Arecibo Observatory, where the largest radio telescope in the world resides. He then invites the audience to imagine what another civilization in space would be like.
Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth?
Dr. Sagan makes use of the special effects that have illuminated previous shows to take the viewer back 15 billion years to the Big Bang, and marks the major steps leading to the modern-day view of space. He tells the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, one of the first women scientists, who became a martyr. To conclude, Dr. Sagan delivers a monologue on the responsibility of mankind not just to earth, but to the cosmos, the source of our being.
(youtube links and descriptions lifted from this reddit page, collected in one tumblr post for ease of sharing)
Saved here for later.
(Source: itsvondell)
The light photons that we see reflecting off of the Andromeda galaxy (above) started their journey 2.5 million years ago… when humans were a twinkle in the eye of the cosmos. How do we know this? Because Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away and light travels at a constant speed.
For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the Moon. It reads: ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’ As the United States was dropping 7.5 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.
(Source: nonreductivesoul, via )