Honors for Carl

[serai]

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NASA inaugurates the Carl Sagan Fellowship for Exoplanet Research

Carl joins Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble to form a trio of prestigious NASA Fellowship honorees.


How wonderful, and long overdue. He was an extraordinary man who changed our way of viewing the universe and our place in it. If nothing else, he should be remembered for making the connection between the planet Venus and our own, and hammering home the point again and again that if we didn't change our silly childish ways, our lovely world will end up just like our neighbour.

I know I've said it before, and maybe you're tired of hearing it, but...


I miss him. So much, so very, very much.

Comments

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. After all the news we've been getting about exoplanets and now water being found billions (billions and billions! :D) of light years away in freakin' quasars, it's good to know that Sagan's name is going to be attached to what it should be attached to.

I can't wait to get into Tyson's books, either! I have the feeling that he's going to end up one of my faves, as well.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Billions and billions, ahaha! You know he never actually said that, right?

Years ago, a friend of mine who owned a science fiction bookstore started making the effort to immortalize Carl by creating a new word:

"sagan" (n.) 1. Unit of measure, representing an enormous number of unspecified size, i.e. "billions and billions". Tonight the sky is clear enough to see a whole sagan of stars.

I've used it ever since. He was so enormously cool, he deserves his own word!

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

Yes, but 'twas the title of his last book. :)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yep, it was. He did have a sense of humor about the whole thing. :D

[celandine-g.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the announcement. I so agree with you about Carl Sagan. I remember his many television programs and appearences vividly--such a wonderful, enthusiastic educator. And there are still wonderful astronomy-based programs on TV--following in his footsteps. I marvel at them.

Such a legacy he has left us and yes, he is very much missed. Sigh.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, I wanted so much to be a scientist, especially an astronomer. But I have no head for math; dealing with number beyond basic math and algebra gives me a headache. So I thought I'd always be shut out of that world.

But when I was a teenager, Cosmos appeared, and I began to see Carl all over the place. He was a guide and teacher for me. He stood at the door of science, held it open and said, "Okay, maybe you can't live in there. But you can look in and see what's going on. Really, you can. It's okay."

I get a little teary thinking about it. He changed the way I saw myself, and gave me a little more confidence in my ability to learn and understand. How could I ever run out of gratitude for that?

[celandine-g.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is amazing how much you can learn and understand without the math. I suppose understanding the math makes it exquisite but I did research in biophysics (at NIH) for many years without really getting too deeply into the numbers (although my partners usually understood it)--so it can be done.

But how wonderful that Sagan opened all that up for you. I loved Cosmos too; it was truly inspired. And there are still wonderful things out there on the National Geographic channel or the Science Channel--I love hearing about The Universe and all the modern Cosmology theories--all presented without much math, which is great. It is sometimes utterly mind-boggling but I enjoy hearing about it anyway.

The more I learn about the magnitude of the universe, the space where the light hasn't reached us yet, trillions of galaxies, the world of black holes, and wormholes, and the possibility of 11 dimentions and infinite parallel universes existing within our same time and space--I truly wonder if the entity that created all this is really that concerned about gay marriage in California (or any other state). Do you suppose that entity stays up nights worrying about it? LOL. Hard to believe...