The Cosmos of Carl Sagan

Ever since I was a small child I have loved science fiction. I love science fact even more. Carl Sagan was a great influence on me growing up. He influenced me to search for the truth. I watched his shows on PBS almost religiously. My brother and I studied the stars in our back yard just like Sagan did on his show. Sadly, when I began this paper I did not realize how much he accomplished in his life time. The more I research the more I do not know about the man who taught me what a googolplex was.

A googol, by the way, is a one followed by one hundred zeros. A googolplex is a one followed by ten to the power of one hundred zeroes.

If you were to attempt to write the googolplex out in long form, you would need more paper than there are trees on the planet, no matter how small you wrote. However, members of the Procrastinators Club decided to write a program that would count to a googolplex.

From the time it began, Sagan led many of the studies for the American space program. He briefed astronauts before their flights to the Moon. His experiments could have been found on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo space voyages.

He discovered that a green house effect was the reason for the high temperatures on Venus. He also found that the surface of Mars changed due to violent dust storms, not seasonal vegetation as once believed. Further, he proved that complex organic molecules were the caused the reddish haze on Titan.

Sagan also won a long string of awards. These include the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service, and the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. Further more he won the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. Let us not forget his Pulitzer Prize and his Emmy and Peabody award winning television show, Cosmos. Should this list of awards not impress you, then you should know that he also served as Chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I personally did not realize what a busy person he was during his life. How on Earth did he have time for all of this? Wait, that's it! He must have discovered the secret of time and just forgot to share it with anyone.

Sagan's legend lives on today. As a co-founder of the Planetary Society in 1980, even today he influences people to reach out to the farthest star and learn the truth about what is out there. The hundred thousand plus member group spans into over one hundred forty countries. You too can join this nonprofit society by going to the URL http://www.planetary.org. Membership for a U.S. citizen is only thirty dollars and only twenty if you are a student.

Sagan was also a television celebrity. It was from this medium that I remember him so well. Cosmos was a thirteen part award winning series in which he explained the mysteries of the universe in term even I as a five year old could understand. Everything from the Big Bang theory to what may happen in millions of years from now was laid out in simple terms. His book "Cosmos," a spin off from the series, spent seventy weeks in the best seller's lists, fifteen of which were at number one. However, despite his fame, his true calling was that of teacher. He was Professor of Astronomy and Space Science at Cornell University from 1971 up until his death in December of 1996.

Strangely enough his personal life was not quite so successful. His mother, Rachel Sagan, was reputed to be unstable and overly mothering. His first wife, biologist Lynn Margulis, divorced him once she could no longer stand his "torture chamber shared with children." Three of his five children shared extremely strained relationships with him. Even his happiest and third marriage to Annie Druyan cost him his good friend Timothy Ferris as she was engaged to be married to Ferris. Finally, he was unwilling to reconcile with his best friend o his own deathbed.

Apple once asked Sagan if they could use his name as a codename for one of their lines of computers. When he refused the memos around Apple were reported to refer to him as BHA or Butt Head Astronomer. Once he learned about this he attempted to sue the corporation, which was eventually thrown out of court. Even his own colleagues felt that he was far more famous than he was a true scientist. Conversely, many feel this is based in jealousy and the fact they just did not get what he was trying to explain.

Beyond all of this, he was probably most remembered for his research into extraterrestrials. Not just that life existed outside of our world, but that they were intelligent and there were other exotic biologies, technologies and societies. As noted in his book "Pale Blue Dot," he felt that we were a small part of the universe and that other life was out there and all we had to do was look.

He was a strong supporter of SETI or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. In fact, he was a board member at the time of his death. The board even went so far as to endow a chair in his honor called the Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe. Dr. Christopher Chyba currently holds this chair. The SETI statement of purpose says "The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research, education and public outreach." Sounds to me just like a cup of tea to Sagan.

The more I read the more I want to know about this man. I now want to go out and buy all of his books just to know more. Again, after twenty five years he has whetted my thirst for knowledge. Strange how true the old saying is, "the more I learn the more I do not know."