19 Quotes Tagged: carl-sagan

"By my reckoning, I'm about 100 kilometers from Pathfinder. Technically it's called "Carl Sagan Memorial Station." But with all due respect to Carl, I can call it whatever the hell I want. I'm the King of Mars."

Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?

My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical.

Para criaturas pequenas como nós, a vastidão só é suportável através do amor.

Our individual growth represents the advancement of the species. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.

We are alive and we resonate with idea of life elsewhere, but only careful accumulation and assessment of the evidence can tell us whether a given world is inhabited.

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists -
although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'.
But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in.
Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation,

Just as there are those who accept every UFO report at face value, there are also those who dismiss the idea of alien visitation out of hand and with great passion. It is, they say, unnecessary to examine the evidence, and “unscientific” even to contemplate the issue. I once helped to organize a public debate at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between proponent and opponent scientists of the proposition that some UFOs were spaceships; whereupon a distinguished physicist, whose judgment in many other matters I respected, threatened to sic the Vice President of the United States on me if I persisted in this madness. (Nevertheless, the debate was held and published, the issues were a little better clarified, and I did not hear from Spiro T. Agnew.)

It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little about it.

XIX. yüzyılda buharlı gemi yapımına girişilince, denizlere hiç de hayırlı olmayan bir çevre kirliliği işareti ulaştı: gürültü. Ticari ve askeri gemilerin daha da çoğalmasıyla okyanuslara yayılan gürültü (özellikle yirmi Hertz frekansında) kulak ardı edilemez duruma geldi. Okyanuslararası haberleşme girişimini yürüten balinalar için anlaşmak giderek zorlaştı. Haberleşme giderek kısa mesafelere indi. İki yüzyıl önce Finback denen balina türünün anlaşması 10.000 km uzaktan mümkün olurken, şimdi bu mesafe birkaç yüz kilometreye inmiş olabilir. Balinalar birbirlerini isimleriyle mi çağırırlar? Yalnızca ses yoluyla birbirlerini tanıyabilirler mi? Balinaların haberleşme olanaklarını kestik. Milyonlarca yıl haberleşebilen yaratıkları şimdi susturduk.

İtiraf etmeliyim ki, karbona şoven denecek derecede gönül vermiş biriyim. Kozmos'ta karbon bolluğu vardır ve karbon hayat için gerekli olan inanılmayacak kadar karmaşık moleküller meydana getirir. Ben aynı zamanda, suya da şoven denecek derecede gönül vermiş biriyimdir. Su, organik kimya çalışmalarını mümkün klan ve bazı ısı derecelerinde sıvı kalabilen ideal bir çözücü oluşturur.
Bazen düşünüyorum da, acaba diyorum, benim bu maddelere karşı olan aşırı bağımlılığım, temelde bu maddelerden meydana gelmemden kaynaklanıyor olmasın? Yerküremizin oluşumu sırasında bu maddeler çok bol olduğundan ötürü müdür yapımızın temelinde karbon ve su bulunuşunun nedeni? Başka bir yerde, örneğin Mars'ta hayatın temeli başka maddelerden mi oluşmuştur?Ben su, kalsiyum ve organik moleküller koleksiyonundan oluşan Carl Sagan adlı biriyim. Sizse hemen aynı moleküller koleksiyonundan oluşmuş değişik kollektif etiketli birisiniz. Ama durum yalnızca bundan mı ibarettir? Bizde molekülden başka bir şey bulunmaz mı? Bazı kişiler bu durumu insan haysiyet ve gururunu küçültücü bulabilir. Ben kendi hesabıma, evrenin, bizim kadar karmaşık ve hassas dengeli molekül makinelerinin gelişimine olanak sağlaması açısından gurur verici buluyorum.

One consequence of this train of argument is that, even if civilizations commonly arise on planets throughout the Galaxy, few of them will be both long-lived and nontechnological. Since hazards from asteroids and comets must apply to inhabited planets all over the Galaxy, if there are such, intelligent beings everywhere will have to unify their home worlds politically, leave their planets, and move small nearby worlds around. Their eventual choice, as ours, is spaceflight or extinction.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

The scope and audacity of John Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, message to a joint session of Congress on “Urgent National Needs” — the speech that launched the Apollo program — dazzled me. We would use rockets not yet designed and alloys not yet conceived, navigation and docking schemes not yet devised, in order to send a man to an unknown world — a world not yet explored, not even in a preliminary way, not even by robots — and we would bring him safely back, and we would do it before the decade was over. This confident pronouncement was made before any American had even achieved Earth orbit.

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