Thank You Dr. Sagan

Thank you for being a tremendous and positive influence on a young girl that thought she was the only geek in the universe.

Thank you for opening a lot of eyes.

Thank you for your enthusiam!

Thank you for teaching me. I am still learning, it's amazing that your show is still running on the Science Channel and is still as wonderous as it was.

Here is a piece of art made for you.


- Susan Anastasia

Sagan's Contributions to Us

I regularly followed his TV appearances because he had such a simple yet deep understanding of our universe and could speak in terms that was straight-forward and logical. Other than that I knew little about him. However, he was explaining the sheer beauty and majesty of it one evening and it struck me as how insightful he really was as a person and scientist. He had stated that if anyone doubts the existence of a higher being or creator all one had to do was look up at the night's sky-filled array of stars. To do this he suggested you pick a clear night, lie down flat on your back, relax and stare up at the multitude of bright stars peppered across the sky. Just lie there for awhile taking it all in and realizing how incomparable a scene that was. asking yourself the question: Was it a random act or was it purposely designed and created by a superior intelligence, an infinite being we call God. To any unbeliever, he posed that challenge.

- Art Murray

Claim to Fame.

Aside from Dr. Sagan's early writings that express his belief that life beyond Earth is more likely than possible, it was his observations about the Venus' atmosphere that launched his career. In this video excerpt from 1961, Sagan expresses his assessment of the second planet's atmosphere.

A Thought

This coming December 20th marks the tenth anniversary of the passing of Carl Sagan, and upon reflection the importance of the event is less a memorial to the life of the man himself but to the memorial of what he has come to represent, if only to a few. Sagan was a theorist, a scientist—indeed, an unqualified genius by any measure. But geniuses come in many varieties and have a strong tendency to lose perspective—to be unable to see the forest because the fucking trees are in the way. Sagan’s legacy—what his life represents—is the comforting fact that a man of his brilliance will inevitably ally himself for the causes of peace, knowledge, and earnest exploration.
Most of us are resigned to a life without fame or notable accomplishment, and if we are an exception, our glory is fleeting by comparison. Carl Sagan was one of the few—those who come only every couple of centuries—who look at the world and see something that no one else has ever seen before. These are the few who look at the world and actually see it as it is. While his contemporaries saw only atoms or stars or people, Sagan saw stars occupied by people who were comprised of atoms, and it was that balance that he felt across the cosmos that he endeavored to explain to the rest of the world. That, in essence is his legacy. That is the thing that he saw that we can never hope to see, but through the lens of his life and his work.
The distillation of his logic, as I interpret it, is that we cannot live without each other, we cannot thrive without the other, and that we are mutually dependent on each other, just as the proton is mutually dependent on the electron, and the sun mutually dependent on the planets. The lesson in our time is that there is no human without place and worth, and as a logical conclusion each must be preserved in order to preserve the other—and, most importantly, to preserve the human spirit of exploration and discovery.
Carl Sagan may well be said to have discovered the meaning of life—to live and to see others live on, in order to allow future generations to answer the questions we so longed to answer ourselves.