Just as there are billions and billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, there are billions and billions of voices here on our little home planet, Earth. The voices swarm the airwaves, our televisions, social media, and of course, our heads. And while it can all be a bit overwhelming at times, there is one voice out of those billions, which, while no longer with us in body, will forever sooth us in spirit. And that is the endlessly optimistic, sane, and scientific voice of astronomer, physicist, and science communicator, Carl Sagan.
On this day in 1934, Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, and now is the perfect time to celebrate the great scientist’s body of work—and his indefatigable hope for humanity—by tapping into one of the many gifts he was born with: his deeply comforting voice.Here are three clips and quotes from Sagan’s Cosmos series, based on his eponymous book, both of which are monumental contributions to scientific literacy, and to the pursuit of scientific truth:
“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us… We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
“Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future.”
“We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.”
How are you celebrating the day one of the greatest scientific educators in history was born? Are you as happy as we are to have his sane voice to help combat all of the insanity out there? Let us know in the comments below.
Images: Wikimedia / JPL