Joel Schlosberg has an excellent idea: on December 20, the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death, there will be a blogathon to commemorate what Sagan did for humanity. It’s also been endorsed by Carl’s son, Nick Sagan. There will also be a version of the blog carnival Skeptics Circle the day after the blogathon which will be dedicated to Carl too.
I was profoundly affected by Sagan’s work, as have millions — billions — of others. I will think carefully about what I want to write for this. If you have a blog, astronomy or otherwise, consider writing something as well. Sagan brought joy and wonder into our lives, and he made it OK for scientists to popularize science. We owe him so much.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
I can think of several “billion” reasons why you have to like him.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
I might have to set up a blog and write a single post just so I can offer a contribution to this.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
I have few heroes, but Carl Sagan is one to me. I appreciate any scientist who takes the time to make science accessible to all (and yes, I’m talking to you too, Phil).
I don’t think it is enough for scientists to do their work and talk amongst themselves. Sure, discoveries will be made, but if our scientific information is not communicated to the public, in some respects, I think it is as if science is not being done at all.
So a tip of the spoonful of neutron star matter goes to Carl and to Phil and the relatively small handful of scientists engaging the public. Bravo and thank you.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
To the extent that mass media can affect a person’s life, for me, three things come to mind: The televising of the Apollo Moon Landings, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and The Hubble Deep Field. Since I came to terms with the fact that being as astronaut was not going to happen, Carl Sagan’s television show inspired me to become an astronomer.
He taught me the importance of being a critical thinker, and caring about the planet we live on. I’ll most definitely put up a post on my page on the 20th.
Then the Hubble Deep Field was taken. I made a video about what that meant to me and posted it on YouTube. I dedicated it to Carl.
Here’s the video: http://deepastronomy.com/hubble-deep-field.html
God, I miss Carl.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Carl got me started in science writing and ultimately in research. He (along with a couple of others) was a profoundly moving mentor.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Hmmm… I wrote a set of COSMOS “attention sheets” I use with high school students. One for each of the 13 episodes. Tends to keep the young minds from wandering too far during the show; they answer questions during each episode.
I’ll see if I can’t get my shtuff together and post a page like this but for COSMOS. I’m sure many of you out there (and way out there) in the blogosphere can express the admiration and appreciation we share for Carl better than I can. But you might not have ready-to-go COSMOS lesson plans.
We should all do what we can.
December 18th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Did Sagan really affected billions through his work? I’m not from the USA, and I just heard of the guy this autumn. There are only about 300 million Americans, after all, and I’d venture many of you haven’t been affected by him to any discernible degree.
I’m not trying to piss on Sagan, since I heard of him he’s already one of my favourite dead scientist (that’s saying a lot), but raising his influence up to ludicrous levels seems to demean him somehow.
A great inspirator and scientist, educator and communicator, but not a great influence in billions of lives. Come on.
December 18th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Wow.
Mr. Ekeli, does the word “flame bait” mean anything to you?
December 18th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Actually, Tomas is right.
Sagan isn’t that famous to the people of the British Isles and Ireland (for example). Patrick Moore is far better known.
I like Sagan, but it’s a big world.
December 18th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Our international friends are at something of a disadvantage here. They did not see COSMOS or the many times Carl sat in on The Johnny Carson Show. They might not be familiar with Johnny Carson, or his “billions and billions” parody of Sagan, at all.
Just a 70s/80s American pop-culture reference on BA’s part. He’s pretty good at math, so he knows Sagan didn’t *really* affect billions of people.
December 18th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
BTW, Sir Patrick Moore is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ‘Sky at Night’ program! That’s another anniversary worth celebrating.
(I’ve never seen Johny Carson. I don’t even know what he looks like.)
December 18th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Gee, I wish you’d posted this yesterday, Phil. I still might have something to contribute, but it will be more difficult now.
Last night (Sunday) I was at a little Christmas party held by my brother-in-law. He’s the production and media manager for the San Francisco Symphony (you’ll see where I’m going with this in just a couple more sentences). Those of you who watch PBS may have seen the recent 3-part “Keeping Score” series hosted by the musical director, Michael Tilson-Thomas. The producer/director of the series was David Kennard. The series was a big hit and David was there along with his wife and other folk.
If the name isn’t familiar, he’s been a force in science and culture programming for about three decades. He was the senior producer for “Cosmos” and also did a little BBC series you may have heard of called “Connections” with James Burke.
Anyway, I spent about half an hour gabbing with him about all sorts of stuff, but if I’d known about this blogathon, I could have whipped out my digital recorder (don’t leave home without it!) and asked him for some remembrances of Cosmos and Carl specifically.
I don’t have a blog, but I might be able to still contact him and supply some input for yours, Phil. Contact me off line and I’ll see what I can do.
- Jack
PS – He actually lives much closer to you (Marin) than me. Maybe you can make the 1/2 hour car ride down and interview him yourself.
December 18th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Oops, I forgot to include the link to this guy’s other work. I think most of you have seen a lot of his productions and not known it:
http://www.inca-productions.com/kennardport.htm
December 18th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Ah, Carl, another great communicator. What I remember most about him was his sheer joy in knowing. He communicated that passion most eloquently. I miss him,,,
GAry 7
December 18th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Carl’s teaching could bring peace to the world if everyone understood his teachings. Someday everyone will shrug off this nonsense of religion and know the truth of our real destiny.
- Brian
December 18th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I read that Cosmos was seen by over a billion people. It’s been translated into many languages, and it was shown around the world. I’ll see if I can dig up some numbers.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
0.5 billion according to
http://www.seasky.org/spacexp/sky5e08.html
That’s still a large number.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
In actuality , Sagan might have indirectly affected billons of people . It was him who awoke myself , and undoubtedly millions of other Americans to the dangers of Nuclear Winter . This is one of the reasons American Foreign Policy shifted in the 80’s .
December 18th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
I’m on board with the idea. I’ll be posting on Wednesday.
December 18th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
“Actually, Tomas is right.
Sagan isn’t that famous to the people of the British Isles and Ireland (for example). Patrick Moore is far better known.”
Just about everyone I knew in the UK in the early ’80s watched Cosmos on the BBC and Carl became as well known as Patrick. Maybe those born since about 1978 haven’t heard of him though. Have there been any repeats in the UK? I left for Australia in ‘83.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:14 am
As a representative of “those born since about 1978″ in the UK, I can confirm that the vast majority of us don’t know who Carl Sagan is. I do know who he is because I read/hear people like the BA and the Slackerpedia Folk talk about him in awe. It really does sound as though he did lots of good stuff in the US. It is a pity that his programmes have not been repeated for us.
I suspect that this lack of awareness probably goes both ways. As well as Patrick Moore, another great UK communicator is David Attenborough (brother of Richard Attenborough) who has been broadcasting top quality natural history programmes for about 50 years. People in the UK all know him and love his many programmes. However, I suspect that most people in the US are unaware of him (illustrated by the fact that the BA didn’t recognise him in the video clip he linked to in this post back in June).
December 19th, 2006 at 4:34 am
OK, I understand now (I didn’t get the reference, but it kind of emphasizes my point) that billions and billions is a quote or something of Sagan’s.
I did not know this, and I did NOT try to start a flame-war here.
Still, though, my comment holds. Something I like about realists is their sense of scale. If numbers are in the tens, hundreds, millions, billions or whatever scale a realist will tend to refer to them in those terms, not in some wildly exaggerated manner.
Eh, I get a sense I’m being a spoil-sport here.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:28 am
Easy enough to miss, if you don’t know the reference. The joy of “inside” jokes. (Hey, it’s “inside” to the people who never experienced Cosmos or, more importantly, Johnny Carson’s send-up of Sagan.)
FYI, Sagan one time in the Cosmos series says “billions” to emphasize over millions, and that gets picked up by anyone imitating Sagan as a recognizable speech pattern.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:29 am
Anyone not familiar with Sagan should read “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”. He’s got a lot of other good works, but that one is particularly about critical and skeptical thinking.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:33 am
To those who are not familiar with Carl Sagen: get a hint of his qualities by checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
His quote there is truly inspirational.
Cosmos was sent here on Norwegian television those many years ago. I remember how inspirational it was to us in the amateur astronomy world here and surely to many others judging by how popular the series was. Though I admit the nowegiam voice over was irritating at times. I recorded the series on VHS and later lost it when I *foolishly* lent it to an aquaintance (never lend books or video tapes to others – I learned that the hard way).
In ‘89 I was with a group of Norwegian amateur astronomers in LA for the Voyager Neptune encounter. While our group was visiting JPL he passed us in a corridor. Such a small thing, but I can still remember the feeling of awe after all these years.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:25 am
I’m certainly on board with this. I’ve posted my story of the time I met Sagan and startled him with the news that my work supervisor had no idea who he was. And this was in 1987, when Sagan could hardly have been more famous.
The Unknown Sagan
December 19th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Zeno, that’s a great story. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to reading all the Sagan blogothon tributes out there.
“Cosmos” is on every Tuesday night on The Science Channel, but I also have the DVD set; I find it uplifiting to watch. Sagan is someone who just exudes joy in learning and gaining knowledge. It’s sad that he died relatively young – if he were alive today he’d be a year younger than my father with so much more life left in him. We need more Sagan-like scientists, or just Sagan-like people in general.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:15 am
“I suspect that this lack of awareness probably goes both ways. As well as Patrick Moore, another great UK communicator is David Attenborough (brother of Richard Attenborough) who has been broadcasting top quality natural history programmes for about 50 years. People in the UK all know him and love his many programmes. However, I suspect that most people in the US are unaware of him (illustrated by the fact that the BA didn’t recognise him in the video clip he linked to in this post back in June).”
Best not to generalize from one data point. Many of us DO know of Patrick Moore and David Attenborough. It has been my pleasure to read Patrick Moore’s works, and have met him several times. And, I’m one of those colonials, you know.
December 19th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I recognize the Mars Viking lander in the picture since I had the fun of working on that project back in the 70″s. As an engineer I was always amazed how Carl could make most complex theories understandable to us mere mortals. He deserves all the accolades.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:45 am
Spacewriter, just in case you weren’t being tongue-in-cheek about the “colonials” comment, I really am about the last person to think of anyone in that way. The British Empire did many bad things to subject and control people around the world. Do we (as a nation) still come across as having an imperialist attitude? I hope not but I suspect that we do.
I really wasn’t talking down to anyone or trying to be nasty and I’m really sorry if it came across in that way. You are right that the BA is only one data point and it was wrong of me to take him as representative of the “interested public” in the US. It was a poor attempt to give an example to justify why those of us under 30 in the UK might not be aware of the great Carl Sagan. In fact, I generally don’t expect folks in the US (or France or Nigeria etc) to be aware of UK factual programming presenters because I don’t expect other countries to show much (or any) of our TV or play our radio programming; they generally make their own.
I am aware that Patrick Moore’s books are sold in the US but I wasn’t aware of his TV programmes being shown (I think they have been shown in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa at various times). So, I didn’t expect him to have had much impact into the popular conciousness as opposed to that of amateur/professional astronomers. In the UK, Patrick has appeared on many kids programmes and chat shows over the years so pretty much everyone knows who he is here. He is the main image of an astronomer (mature man with white hair and monocle) in the minds of most of the UK population. Of that I’m pretty sure because I’ve sampled a large number of random people over the past 10 years
December 20th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I owe him more than I can repay. He helped save me from a life of superstition.
January 9th, 2007 at 4:19 am
I’m 19 years old and have known the name Sagan for what seems like a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered how truly amazing the man really was. It made me really sad when I realized how blind most of the world is to the knowledge that Sagan was so eager to spread. The man was truly one of a kind, and I think this world will really miss him.