(It was Carl Sagan's birthday last week!)
What is your favorite Sagan quote?
Tags:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Certainly, whenever I am writing a manuscript dreaming that it could make it to Science or Nature, I remember this particular quote!
Pale Blue Dot is my all-time favorite! For me, it’s a true expression of the spirituality of science. Here, I want to cite a book excerpt in which Carl talked about his inquisitiveness about stars and universe when he was an elementary school kid. I just love the way he expressed it.
“I went to the library. I asked the librarian for a book on the stars. She came back and gave me a book. I opened it. It was filled with pictures of people like Jean Harlow and Clark Gable.
I was humiliated. I gave it back to her and said, "This wasn't the kind of stars I had in mind." She thought this was hilarious, which humiliated me further. She then went and got the right kind of book. I took it—a simple kid's book. I sat down on a little chair—a pint-sized chair—and turned the pages until I came to the answer.
And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... And while I didn't know the [inverse] square law of light propagation or anything like that, still, it was clear to me that you would have to move that Sun enormously far away, further away than Brooklyn [for the stars to appears as dots of light]....
The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. [It was] kind of a religious experience. [There] was magnificence to it, grandeur, and a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.. ”
- from “Carl Sagan A Life” by Keay Davidson
Wow Anushree.. How wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing this!
Thanks Betul. That wonderment has never left me too :)
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"
My day neither begins nor ends without this...it's just beautiful..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wupToq...
Started by Gina Misra in SAGANet Discussions. Last reply by Charles Ivie Feb 7. 153 Replies 12 Likes
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