There’s a certain discipline involved. We can’t just go off shouting ‘little green men’ every time we detect something we don’t at first understand, … - Carl Sagan
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There’s a certain discipline involved. We can’t just go off shouting ‘little green men’ every time we detect something we don’t at first understand, because we’re going to look mighty silly when it turns out to be something else. Special cautions are necessary when the stakes are high. We are not obliged to make up our minds before the evidence is in. It’s permitted to not be sure.
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About
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect. He testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect will change the earth's climate system.
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Wikimedia Commons, NASA/JPL (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Native Name:
Carl Edward Sagan
Alternative Names:
Sagan
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Carl E. Sagan
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Carl E Sagan
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C. E. Sagan
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C.E. Sagan
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C E Sagan
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C. Sagan
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C Sagan
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Sagan C
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Sagan C.
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Sagan C. E.
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Sagan CE
There is child abuse, and there are such things as repressed memories. But there are also such things as false memories and confabulations, and they are not rare at all. Misrememberings are the rule, not the exception. They occur all the time. They occur even in cases where the subject is absolutely confident - even when the memory is a seemingly unforgettable flashbulb, one of those metaphorical mental photographs.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond measure — in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.
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"[an encounter in space] "Some celestial event. No — no words — no words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful...I had no idea. I had no idea.
