Carl Sagan | Visionary Scientist

“If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reason for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”

Cannabis Culture readers born after 1980 missed the heady days of the 1960’s and 70’s, when psychedelic consciousness, direct-action civil disobedience, and the ecology movement ended the Vietnam War, drove a corrupt American president from office, and made every day Earth Day.

The most famous scientist of that tumultuous, idealistic era was Carl Sagan, a boy-wonder astrophysicist and scientific philosopher whose $8 million, 13-part television series, Cosmos, taught half a billion worldwide viewers about the 15 billion-year history of the universe.

Sagan and his third wife, Ann Druyan, co-wrote the best-selling book Cosmos; they also co-wrote the television series.

Sagan’s version of past, present, and future, which he elucidated in award-winning books, movies, essays, and public appearances, was controversial and comprehensive. The vivacious, brilliant scientist gave humans a revolutionary new template for understanding the origins of the universe and the place of the human species therein.

One of his core principals was that humans are “starstuff,” the product of a long and amazing process involving matter, energy, and time.

Sagan said that while he was not an atheist, he failed to find scientific evidence supporting the belief that humans are the most important part of the universe, or that patriarchal gods created them.

Instead of finding meaning in myths and fantasies, Sagan insisted, the measure of our lives lay in the choices we made, contextualized by the humbling admission that we are a “temporary form of life under the creation of a power beyond our comprehension.”

Despite his scientific skepticism of human-centered religions, Sagan was not a materialist or nihilist. Indeed, his ideas were more spiritual, ethical and rigorous than the ideas of many who criticized him for offending their religious-humanist sensibilities.

War, war machinery, prejudice, destruction of nature, superstition, alien abductions, political-consumerist propaganda, religious charlatans, nationalism; Sagan decried these as dangerous, insidious follies.

And as he crusaded for more science education and for application of the scientific method to every aspect of existence, Sagan challenged the human species to be more honest and gentle, and to affirm the value of all life and the universe itself; not because a punishing god commanded it, but because it made the most sense.

Despite unparalleled popularity with the masses, Sagan was attacked by other scientists, who said he was wrong for “popularizing” science, and for telling “regular citizens” to hold scientists accountable for their research and creations.

Creationists lambasted Sagan, saying he preached a “religion called scientism” that did not acknowledge the supremacy of humans or the Father God who allegedly created us. Conservative Republicans, anti-environmentalists, and military-industrial shills called him an “unpatriotic liberal.”

But Sagan’s critics made themselves look bad by attacking the gifted science orator who also possessed impeccable scientific credentials.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to an American mother and a Russian immigrant father, Sagan decided at age 12 that he wanted to be an astronomer. At age 16, he entered the University of Chicago on a scholarship. He received his first bachelor’s degree when he was 19, and then earned a second bachelor’s degree, a master’s in physics, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics by the time he was 25.

While doing research at the University of California at Berkeley, Sagan discovered the true nature of the atmosphere and surface conditions on Venus. He later discovered important aspects of the Martian atmosphere and the moons of Saturn. He taught at Stanford University and Harvard University, and was a staffer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In 1968, he became director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, where he also taught classes. Standing room only crowds always thronged his lectures.

Sagan’s ideas and warnings were prophetic, foreshadowing the development and discoveries of sociobiology, ecopsychology, and evolutionary biology. He predicted or anticipated global climate change, biodiversity loss, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, space-based weapons, and the Internet.

He was a scientist with the charisma and cache of a rock star; advising the makers of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and appearing with Hollywood celebrities and counterculture icons on behalf of progressive causes. Sagan and Druyan were the guiding lights behind the evocative feature film Contact, starring Jodie Foster. For the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Sagan was an adviser on the Mariner, Voyager and Viking unmanned space missions. He also briefed astronauts on journeys to the moon.

His resume, filled with stellar achievements, was 250 pages long.

But fate was cruel. In the early 1990’s, Sagan was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow disease called myelodysplasia. A marrow transplant from his sister temporarily saved his life, but then cancer cells invaded his body.

“I would recommend almost dying to everybody,” he told an interviewer. “You get a much clearer perspective on what’s important and what isn’t; the importance of family and of trying to safeguard a future worthy of our children.”

After a valiant struggle, Sagan died on December 20, 1996, at the age of 62.

While he was alive, marijuana users speculated that Sagan’s provocative, innovative thinking might have resulted from altered consciousness caused by marijuana.

Soon after his death, biographers and journalists made headline news by reporting that Sagan and Ann Druyan were marijuana users and legalization advocates. Much was made of an anonymous essay attributed to Sagan, in which he glowingly detailed how marijuana helped him appreciate art, music, friends, lovers, and his work.

Ann Druyan (pronounced Dree-yan) was Sagan’s last wife, and the mother of two of his five children. She was co-author or collaborator on many of Sagan’s most successful projects, and now directs or manages several production companies which are creating highly lauded scientific and cultural educational materials, space travel vehicles, and media projects. Druyan is especially proud of her role in building the Carl Sagan Discovery Center, the first children’s hospital in the Bronx.

Druyan is also a long-time board member and important fundraiser for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Sagan said of his wife: “In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is still my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.”

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Ann Druyan gave this exclusive interview to Cannabis Culture from her home in New York.

You were married to one of the 20th century’s most famous scientists, and now you are carrying Carl Sagan’s legacy forward. How did you become interested in science?

In 1974, I first met Carl. I was 25 years old. I am 51 now. My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.

And science for you and Carl has been a way of deciphering the world?

For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature.

Around the time that humans settled down and began doing large-scale agriculture, some cultures created the notion that storms, floods, lightning, disease, and even our own mortality were forms of punishment meted out by an angry god in the sky.

This misinterpretation of reality was first questioned by the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, formed by the same culture that invented the idea of democracy. Among them was Hippocrates, one of my heroes. He noted, for example, that people believed epilepsy was a divine curse, because they didn’t understand what really caused it. Hippocrates predicted that the actual cause of epilepsy would one day be understood and as soon as it was, people would stop thinking it was divine. This is the first great footstep on the road to having a scientific understanding of the universe. Incidentally, it was another great pre-Socratic philosopher, Democritus, who said, “Life without getting high is like a road without an inn.”

A lot of people are suspicious of science, because it can so easily be turned to bad purposes.

Carl worked harder than anyone I know of to combat the misuse of science. One of his greatest dreams was of a society where everybody had enough scientific knowledge so they could influence what scientists did with their power. Carl recognized that science should not just be the property of an elite group that speaks some arcane language.

He knew that if we were to have even a little bit of democracy in this society, as many of us as possible should understand the workings, language, values and methods of science and technology so that we can’t be so easily manipulated. He took a lot of abuse from scientists who cherished their elitism.

In researching Carl Sagan for this interview, I found it almost impossible to overstate the breadth of his scientific and academic credentials.

I think Carl was so off-scale because he took so much pleasure in his work. He had a lifelong, unquenchable curiosity. He really wanted to know how the universe was put together. He followed this passion wherever it took him; across scientific disciplines and careers. In his life there was no division between work and pleasure.

His book Dragons of Eden is a masterpiece on the evolution of intelligence and the process of development that led to the three parts of the human brain. Cosmos was the most popular science book in the English language. The Cosmos television series, which we wrote together, was worldwide the most successful 13-part science program in television history. It was a hit among people of all cultures and ages. It is just become available in an updated version on digital video disc ? a 13-hour explanation of how the human species found its part in the great story of the universe.

Carl played a leading role in every single one of NASA’s missions of exploration from the beginning of the space age until his death in December 1996. He was a Pulitzer-prize winning author of more than twenty books, six hundred scientific papers, countless popular articles, television shows and a major motion picture. He probably attracted more people to read, study, teach and do science than any other individual in the history of the world.

He was one of the most conscientious citizens the planet has ever had, among the first to raise the alarm about global warming, a tireless activist against the insanity of the nuclear arms race, and an innovative scientific researcher who was a co-discoverer of the unsuspected possible climactic consequences of nuclear war.

He opened the universe for me as he did for millions worldwide. Not only was he a great scientist who pioneered the search for life and intelligence on other worlds, as well as its origin on this one, he was a leading researcher who discovered much about the atmospheres of other planets. Carl was the first to bring public attention to the dangers of our inadvertent modification of the Earth’s climate and atmosphere.

What accounted for Carl’s ability to get so many people interested in science?

When people would ask him why he went to such lengths to do public science education, why he didn’t just stay in the lab or university classroom, he would always smile and say “when you’re in love you want to tell the world.” To him, science was a series of thrilling revelations that he took to heart. That’s where he spoke from and people were moved. Science had been for most of us a hopelessly impenetrable form of boring torture. The way Carl taught, it became clear and spiritually uplifting.

He combined an awesome respect for reality with a boundless imagination; skepticism and wonder both, never one at the expense of the other. He experienced the soaring high of accepting that we humans are not the center of the universe.

A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation. For them, Carl’s view that humans are a part of creation, but not the crown of creation, is an unbearable bummer. Carl felt that seeing us as a part of the fabric of nature is a much bigger and more inspiring perspective. For him it was a liberation. To others it was threatening. The creationists were certainly offended.

Was Carl criticized and persecuted for his scientific-political activities?

During the 1980’s we were arrested three times at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site while protesting US underground nuclear testing. This kind of activism cost him many of the glittering prizes and honors that he might have gotten if he had played along with things he thought were wrong. He turned down three invitations to dine at the Reagan White House. He couldn’t be co-opted. His opposition to the Star Wars swindle drew a lot of fire. I wish the world had a Carl Sagan now to publicly argue against the new Star Wars proposals. He could spot the phony technical arguments of the Department of Defense and bust them publicly in a way that we could all grasp.

I wish there was someone now to challenge the current President’s flagrant disregard for the environment. We were told that when Russia’s President Gorbachev visited the White House, he told Reagan how much he admired Carl’s work. Reagan, who was famous for being grandfatherly and mellow, became uncharacteristically harsh.

Carl took on the military-industrial complex. He campaigned around the world for an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction. To him it was a perversion of science. So yes, it’s true that Carl was frequently denounced by televangelists, astrologers and The Wall Street Journal. Even so, it wasn’t much of a price to pay. He was the happiest person I ever knew.

My impression is that Carl had a spiritual side to him. Is that accurate?

Perhaps his greatest contribution was to teach a new sense of the sacred. It came out of his fidelity to the scientific method and his courage in wanting to see how the universe was really put together, rather than imposing his fantasies, his personal ego needs, his programming, on the universe.

It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can’t give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.

Science reveals a universe far grander, larger and older than our ancestors ever dreamed. Part of Carl’s genius was to re-unite the wonder of spirituality with the rigorous skepticism of science. What resulted was the answer to an ancient yearning that freed us of the need to lie to ourselves.

You co-authored books with him, and acted as a partner in many of his most famous projects. Could you describe your professional collaboration with Carl?

One of our first collaborations was in 1977. I was Creative Director of the Voyager Interstellar Message. This message was encoded in golden phonograph records affixed to NASA’s Voyager I and II spacecrafts. It consists of 27 pieces of music, 118 images, greetings in 59 human and one whale language, and an audio history of Earth.

The Voyager records have traveled farther than any other objects touched by humans on board the fastest moving spacecraft we’ve ever created. They move at 38,000 miles per hour. The discs have a shelf life of 1 billion years. They include Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, Louis Armstrong performing Melancholy Blues, Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was The Night, Bach and Beethoven, a Japanese shakuhachi flute piece, a Bulgarian shepherdess with pipes like Aretha Franklin, a Senegalese instrumental, Peruvian pan pipes, an Indian vocal raga that raises goose bumps and much, much more. Many people have told me that the Voyager collection was their first exposure to what we now call “world music.” I called it Earth’s Greatest Hits.

Designing these golden records felt like we were building a Noah’s ark of world culture. There were six of us on the message team. We’d call people and ask for tapes of their best cricket song or school yard chants, but when we told them it was for an interstellar message there’d be either a long, long pause or a click. We consulted musicians, composers, ethnomusicologists and scientists.

We’ve sent along a needle and record player on both spacecraft. We engraved hieroglyphics explaining how to play the records, along with our address in the Milky Way galaxy to give the finders some clue as to where we are.

If you were to come back to this planet a billion years from now you wouldn’t recognize the surface of our planet because it would have been dramatically changed by large-scale geological processes, but that music would still be playable and revealing of who we were. Hand engraved on each record are the words: “For the makers of music, all worlds all times”.

One of your colleagues told me that you put something very personal into the Voyager messages.

I asked Carl if there was any possibility that if I meditated while I was hooked up to a machine that records brain activity, that someday that data might be deciphered by the putative extraterrestrials. Carl looked at me with a big smile and replied, “A billion years is a long time, Annie. You might as well do it.”

So, on a gorgeous June day, I went to Bellevue Hospital in New York City and was hooked up to a bunch of sophisticated machines while I meditated about the history of life on earth, about the danger we found ourselves in back in 1977 with a planet infested with 50,000 nuclear weapons, and about what I was learning about love. It was the very week that Carl and I had fallen in love with each other.

I was recording this meditation hooked up to a computer the size of a room with scores of technicians recording EKG, EEG, REM, and every neuronal impulse. That hour of meditation was compressed into a minute of sound and included on the Voyager Record. I feel comforted and awed knowing that 500 million or even a thousand million years from now, something of that ecstatic June and our love for each other may survive and be known by another form of intelligent life.

Did you mention cannabis in the Voyager messages?

There is no direct reference to cannabis, but there is a photograph of an elderly man from central Asia who is smoking up. We don’t know exactly what the contents of his very fancy pipe might be, but it may have been cannabis.

We might also speculate about what was coursing through the bloodstreams of some of the scientists, engineers, artists, composers and musicians who made the Voyager Message possible. Louis Armstrong, who loved marijuana, is featured on the record.

Marijuana is something both you and Carl cared deeply about?

Yes, and I know that sometime in the not too distant future, we will look back on the fact that we persecuted people for marijuana use the way we looked at the idea of putting homosexuals in prison, or persecuting ethnic minorities. It’s a barbaric policy that people who should know better are somehow content to abide.

How can we tolerate this war? What does it say about us as a people? America has a population of 280 million, a tiny fraction of the world’s population. Yet we have 25% of all the people imprisoned on the planet. What does it say about “the land of the free?” And a significant percentage of people in prison are there for nonviolent drug offenses?

Recently, US courts sentenced a quadriplegic man, and an armless, legless woman, to jail for small quantities of marijuana. As if people in those circumstances were somehow too free, and needed further restraints on their freedom.

You’ve gone public with your call for marijuana law reform, just as your husband did several years before he died.

About ten years ago, a caller asked Carl on the Larry King radio show if he was for legalizing marijuana. He didn’t hesitate to say yes. My recollection is that Larry followed up by asking Carl if he had ever smoked marijuana, and he again said yes. We thought there would be some fallout, but there was none. We didn’t hear anybody say that Carl Sagan was a bad person because he used marijuana, and indeed marijuana was a wholly positive part of his life.

In our culture you generally only learn about a famous person’s marijuana use in the context of their disintegration, usually because of an arrest or enrollment in some treatment program. I think it’s worthwhile to take note of a life so fully realized as Carl’s was, a life in which marijuana was significant and positive, rather than a problem.

You’re very open about your marijuana advocacy, even though other people in your position might have kept it hidden. How has this affected your life?

When it became publicly known that Carl and I used marijuana, I expected some harassment, but we didn’t get any. What was surprising is the people who would come up to me and say “thanks” for being up front about marijuana. They were not hippies, they were regular working people who had to worry about urine tests, whose jobs required they wear a uniform. They had to hide their marijuana use from society and even their own children.

I’m not talking about changing the image of marijuana users from hippies to yuppies. I want to show that all kinds of people - hard-working blue-collar people, scholars, people from all walks of life, the backbone of the country - they smoke marijuana!

It’s safe to say that Carl’s vital and energetic approach to life clashed with drug war propaganda that says “marijuana users are losers.”

Absolutely. In my experience, responsible marijuana use is compatible with a healthy, fulfilled life; one of honesty, ethics and accomplishment. Carl’s marijuana use never impinged on any aspect of his responsibilities, and I think it’s illustrative to recall that he taught at Cornell, ran the Laboratory for Planetary Studies, mentored graduate students who have become among the most influential leaders in their scientific fields, edited the highly regarded scientific journal Icarus, co-founded The Planetary Society, edited its beautiful and informative bulletin for 16 years, wrote and edited countless books, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize, co-wrote a landmark award-winning television series, wrote countless articles and speeches on wide-ranging topics, participating in every NASA mission, volunteer teaching at public schools and the list goes on.

Carl’s life itself was a challenge to drug war lies. He was as completely developed a human being as I have ever met, and he smoked marijuana. The superlative nature of his life is significant evidence that counters those who say marijuana prevents people from maximizing their potential. If there’s an “amotivational syndrome” associated with pot use, we certainly don’t see any evidence of that in Carl’s life. And I believe there are a huge number of responsible citizens who use pot appropriately and contribute enormously to our society. The question is, why are they so passive in the face of unreasoning persecution?

That passivity has been one of your main concerns as a member of the board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

I’ve been a NORML board member for nearly a decade. Those of us involved with NORML have often wondered why people don’t contribute more, why they don’t help the cause more. Some of those who are sympathetic to our cause are afraid to affiliate with us. Marijuana reform advocates are a victim of a kind of McCarthyized propaganda campaign that includes professional, economic and legal penalties for people who try to change the laws. Some people are afraid to write checks to NORML or even to be on our mailing list.

How can individuals fight against the drug war?

I’d like to see us get off the defensive and be more assertive. It’s mostly poor people, or people with very bad luck, who get caught up by drug laws. A lot of people in the suburbs, with respectable jobs, are somewhat insulated from the injustices of the drug war. I’d like to see them stand up and register their opposition.

I am convinced there are more marijuana smokers than fundamentalist Christians, for example, but the fundamentalists are far better organized, more dedicated, more willing to spend time and money for what they believe in. (Of course they are not persecuted for their beliefs.)

They are a potent cultural and political force, while marijuana smokers are comparatively passive and too easily intimidated into silence. The secrecy and dishonesty is pernicious, it corrupts and corrodes human relationships and the marijuana experience itself.

What can NORML do to help the cause?

I wish more people knew how dedicated the people at NORML are. Keith Stroup and Allen St Pierre have been working at this for a long time. They could both be doing something else that would be far easier and personally much more lucrative.

Right now, it feels as if their hard work is beginning to pay off. Our work with Governor Gary Johnson in New Mexico seems to be getting some results. We are forging new relationships, working with groups across the political spectrum. NORML is trying to cultivate a better relationship with the grassroots activists who don’t have much money to work with. But we are also seeking to change the public’s perception of the stereotypical marijuana user. We don’t want people to only be known for marijuana use when they are on their way to jail. And there’s nothing bad about the pot-smoking hippie image, but we also need to show that all kinds of people use marijuana.

What has cannabis meant to you? What did it mean to your husband?

It’s a sacrament and we treated it as such, with respect. Our species has an ancient history of experience with marijuana. Our ancestors knew how to integrate marijuana use into the life of their community; to find a balance. That’s what we tried to do. Not that we had any rigid rules for use. There was plenty of spontaneity; but no abuse. I have used it since I was a teenager in the ‘60’s, and it has never interfered with my health or productivity.

For me it has been a gateway drug, but not a gateway to anything destructive, but to a more glorious understanding of my part of the fabric of nature and to an ever-deeper relationship with my family. Carl and I both found it put us in a state of mind that made us more receptive to new ideas, more sensitive to other people’s feelings, more able to focus on the great natural pleasures of life.

Throughout our lives, there were long periods of time when we didn’t have any marijuana. We didn’t jones for it. I know there are people who have problems becoming dependent on it. We never experienced any such problems.

In the two years of suffering leading up to Carl’s death, he had radiation and chemotherapy during the course of three torturous bone marrow transplants. His physicians prescribed Marinol. He tried it several times and he hated it. He found it stupefying. He said that Marinol’s effects were everything you don’t want ? it deadens you, it makes you sleepy, and you can’t function. He used medical marijuana during that period, and it helped him control nausea, have an appetite, and it lifted his spirits.

Medical marijuana definitely helped Carl, who wrote two books during this period, and we collaborated on the movie Contact. His doctors told me he was the most forward looking patient they’d ever seen, never once complaining, always trying to get back to work. They told me they had precious few patients who could read books during bone marrow transplants, much less write them.

Have you had any cannabis moments that you care to share?

Carl and I shared a love for Bob Marley’s music. I was thrilled to be invited to Bob Marley’s birthday celebration last year at his house on Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica. I got the invitation because I was asked on CNN if there was anything I wish I had included on the Voyager records, and I said, “Yes, Bob Marley’s song No Woman, No Cry.” I then went into a riff on what the song meant to me. Somebody from the Bob Marley Foundation heard what I said on CNN, and invited me to participate in the Jamaican celebration.

But it turned out to be an unsettling event. Rita Marley was magnificent; it was such an honor to meet her, but the actual celebration felt somewhat co-opted by people whom I think Bob Marley would not have felt at home with. For example, we were only served alcohol, and it was this glittering party full of glamorously dressed people, with almost all the rastas locked outside the gate. The Marley image had been taken over by the chamber of commerce, turned into an icon of tourism, mutated into a kind of universal theme park version of Bob Marley.

I told Rita I felt it was somewhat depressing to see how Bob’s image had been sanitized. The Bob Marley these people were talking about would not have been a threat to anybody. I wanted to hear about the “get up-stand up” Bob Marley.

Rita said, “You must get up there and speak.” At first I refused, because I was an outsider and there as a guest, but she said, “No, no, no ? you have to get up and say this to everyone.”

So she went to the microphone and introduced me, saying, “This lady has something to say about what’s missing here.” About half the people in the audience welcomed what I said. I could see it in their faces. They were saying, “Yes, yes!” But a third of the audience was giving me these really hard looks, like they wanted me to shut up about the real Bob Marley: a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, and a man of ganja.

I admire your candor, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken from your exciting schedule. We’ve talked a lot about the past, and about your husband, but please tell us about your current endeavors. I understand that some of them are “out of this world.”

I founded a company called Cosmos Studios that supports bold, original scientific research, clean technology and educating the widest possible audience about the romance of scientific discovery. We most want to communicate the spiritual power of science’s central revelation; our oneness with the universe.

Our first project was updating and re-releasing the Cosmos series in VHS and DVD formats. We’ve also released a compact disc of the music from the Cosmos series. We have four new television projects in production and a half a dozen more in development. These projects strive to embody the values and insights that we learned from Carl.

Our most ambitious undertaking so far will be the launch of Cosmos I, the first solar sail in history. It’s been known for many years that you could use big reflective sails to get up to speeds that would make interstellar travel feasible. A solar sail is a spacecraft powered by light. If our current understanding of physics is correct, the only way we can get to the stars is on a vehicle powered by sunlight and, once you get too far from the sun, by lasers. Theoretically, solar sails can travel ten times faster than NASA’s Voyagers, making it possible to travel across the incomprehensibly vast distance between us and the nearest star.

This spring, we’ll be launching a sub-orbital test flight that will be lifted on an ICBM launched from a Russian sub in the Berents Sea. The test launch will determine whether two of the Mylar sails, which are like the petals of a huge flower some seventy feet across, will open properly. We plan to launch the actual craft in the fall. It should be visible to the naked eye. The budget for the entire mission is $4 million.

We are proud to be launching a symbol of the potential of alternative energy sources, working with former adversaries, turning their broadest sword into a means of peaceful scientific exploration, and pioneering space travel.

I’d like to ride on a solar sail and smoke a joint in space! It seems that freedom, the freedom to use a god-given plant, the freedom to define one’s own sense of what is sacred, the freedom to do ethical science, is something that meant a lot to you and Carl.

One of the great promises of America, one which we have yet to fully live up to, is the promise of freedom, the promise that we can explore our creativity and push the limits of human potential. America’s founders invented a constitution that granted new freedoms, but now we lead the world in oppressing people’s freedom to alter consciousness.

For us, it has been a religious issue. Religious freedom shouldn’t be limited to established religions. Marijuana can certainly be a means to a qualitative religious experience. It helps you appreciate the complexity and beauty of the universe. If we really believed in religious freedom we’d say that there are millions of people who derive something spiritual and meaningful from this marijuana. They should have the right to enjoy what they consider sacred. Smoking marijuana can be an aperture to a deep appreciation of what is holy, beautiful and sacred. We should encourage people to do this wisely, instead of persecuting them.

I’ve spoken with you several times, and I’ve been impressed by your dedication to Carl Sagan’s legacy. But I also sense that you are still grieving for him, and may never get over the loss.

I miss him but I accept the fact of his death. I’m mostly left with an overwhelming sense of my good fortune to have him in my heart for the rest of my life. I try to stay alert to the great beauty of being alive.

But for you, it was like losing a precious dream.

Carl and I were like two euphoric, ecstatic sea mammals moving through oceans at great speeds without having to worry about impediments or dangers, without having to use turn signals to alert the other to a change in direction. We appreciated each other completely and missed few chances to tell each other how honored and happy we felt to be on the same tiny planet in this unimaginably vast universe during the same epoch in the whole sweep of cosmic evolution. It seemed like a miracle to us.

Carl apparently didn’t believe that Carl Sagan would live on, in some discreet but non-physical form, after his death. Are there any ways in which you feel, however, that Carl might still be said to be alive?

I do not believe that Carl is still alive in any supernatural way. My understanding of science and reality tells me that most likely, when we die, we end, that’s it. We’re gone.

Yet, there is a way in which he is still alive. When you spend 20 years with somebody day and night, you have their voice in your head ? not in some supernatural way or like a mental illness, where you hear voices ? but your loved one’s voice and their way of thinking, through years of experience becomes imprinted in your brain. Carl’s magnificent laugh is in my head and so he is with me in that way.

And we created two wonderful children who are distinct individuals, but who already manifest some of Carl’s most wonderful qualities. He lives in them and all the countless people who tell me he changed their lives for the better.

If the universe is indeed 12.5 billion years old and the most you as an individual can hope for is 100 years, and there’s more billions of years to come, the only victory is to live fully and completely, to be totally alive every moment you’re here. Do whatever you can to make this planet less brutal and squalid. Ask questions that make a difference, work for justice. Make your short burst of life count.

The reason I was able to survive the grief of Carl’s death is that the authenticity of what we experienced together was so pure. I learned that if you really love someone you should be very nice to them, because what’s really going to haunt you after they die is the times you were grumpy to them, or didn’t take an opportunity to show your love.

If you feel like what was between you was totally cool, that you did everything you could with the time you had, that you lived fully and ethically, then your sadness is tempered by thankfulness.

via Cannabis Culture

Stay Curious! | Watch the Carl Sagan Tribute Series, amp; Carl Sagan’s (Remastered) Spaceship Of The Imagination, Reid Gower’s ‘Sagan Series’, Callum C. J. Sutherland’s Carl Sagan Archives Enjoy. Ad Astra Per Aspera.

pay attention to it. There’s a lot of breadcrumbs (links) to follow. It’s a cosmic goodie-bag of awesomeness that I’ve infused within the article, published by Cannabis Culture, which I’ve edited for all of you.

Cosmos Will Get a Sequel Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson

More than three decades after it aired, Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking, brilliant 13-part TV series Cosmos:A Personal Voyage will finally get a sequel.

Cosmos, which originally ran in 1980 and was rerun many times over the following decade, is widely regarded as one of the first, and best, TV shows to make science accessible to everyone. You can watch the show now on Hulu, but despite its brilliance it is still a show from more than 30 years ago, and you can tell — the special effects are primitive by today’s standards, but more importantly some of the content has been superseded by discoveries in the intervening years.

So, it’s high time someone made a sequel to it, and now someone is! In partnership with Sagan’s colleagues Ann Druyan (who is also his widow) and Steven Soter, Seth MacFarlane — yes, that Seth MacFarlane — is going to produce a new 13-part series to serve as a sequel and modern update to Sagan’s masterpiece.

Taking over the hosting duties will be none other than well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has served as host of NOVA ScienceNOW on PBS for the past five years, so he has plenty of experience making science accessible to the general public. It would be difficult to think of anyone who would be better able to succeed the late, great Carl Sagan.

The folks working on it will take their time and do it right — it’s not scheduled to air until sometime in 2013.

The producers of the show say the new series will tell “the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time.” They go on to boast: “It will take viewers to other worlds and travel across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.”

That’s the good news. The bad — or at least, potentially bad — news is that, because of MacFarlane’s involvement, the series will air in prime time, and on Fox.

Now, in one way I’m all for showing it in prime time on a major network, because it’ll be that much more likely that people who routinely ignore the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel and, yes, PBS will actually see it.

I’m less thrilled, though, that it will have to compete with other, more mainstream prime-time shows — and it’ll be on Fox, which doesn’t have the greatest track record for giving shows a chance to pull their ratings up once they go down.

Now, maybe the fact that MacFarlane is involved — and Joss Whedon isn’t — will help. I certainly hope so.

You can find out more about the plans for the series.

(Source: spaceplasma, via applepiesfromscratch)

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey | Seth Macfarlane

The Family Guy creator makes millions with his crass humor. But his next project will shock even his most hardened fans: He’s bringing Carl Sagan’s Cosmos back to television.

Seth MacFarlane came in 74th on this year’s Celebrity 100 by making people laugh. But sitting in a booth at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, the 38-year-old creator of the hit Fox cartoon Family Guy is surprisingly distracted by the cackles emanating from a nearby table. “What I wouldn’t give for a sack of manure,” he says in a dead-on Woody Allen impersonation.

Usually it’s MacFarlane who is getting the yucks. His animation empire, which includes American Dad and The Cleveland Show, generates more ad revenue for Fox than the venerable Simpsons. (All four shows are bundled on Sunday night for what Fox accurately calls Animation ­Domination.) Family Guy alone has earned more than $200 million for Fox.

MacFarlane’s sense of humor spares no sacred cows—abortion, diarrhea and matricide represent some of his lighter fare. A typical gag: Stephen Hawking having sex with his similarly disabled wife. The biggest part of MacFarlane’s genius, however, might be his business model. As the creators of the The Simpsons have learned over the past 20 years, channeling racy humor through the prism of animation means the cast never has to age, and MacFarlane is able to keep an outsize share of the profits—$36 million over the past 12 months, FORBES estimates—for himself.

The son of a teacher, MacFarlane drew cartoons from the age of 2. He studied animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and worked on cartoons like Johnny Bravo until 1999 when Fox picked up Family Guy. The rise and fall and rise of the show about a clan from Quahog is now the stuff of Hollywood legend. After getting a big post-Super Bowl push, Family Guy failed to find a large audience. It didn’t help that Fox repeatedly changed the night it aired. After two seasons the network gave up on the show.

But not on MacFarlane. He started developing his second show, American Dad. Meanwhile, Family Guy started to attract a large fan base on DVD and in reruns. In 2005 Fox made the surprising decision to bring the show back. The first new episode attracted 11 million viewers, and a hit was reborn. The Cleveland Show, launched in 2009, gave MacFarlane a cartoon troika on Sundays with the Simpsons as his formidable lead-in.

This year MacFarlane is trying to leverage his TV animation success in new areas. His first movie project, Ted, hits theaters this July. The $65 million film, which MacFarlane wrote, directed and kind of stars in, is not a huge departure from his Family Guy brand of humor. It tells the story of a man (Mark Wahlberg) whose teddy bear came to life when he was a child, with the two still living together as cursing, dope-smoking best buds. MacFarlane voiced Ted and acted the role using motion capture technology. “A character like Ted couldn’t be on TV,” says MacFarlane.

His second initiative is further out there, at least for him. The man who never met a toilet or sex joke he didn’t like is deeply concerned that the U.S. has lost its passion for science. No one seems to care about the space program. Evolution has somehow become a debatable fact. “The resistance to science is idiotic,” says MacFarlane, sipping on a coffee that he declares way too fancy. “Those people shouldn’t be allowed to have antibiotics. Give us back your TVs and the dentures.” But MacFarlane is serious, putting his money and his clout with Fox, where his mouth is. Fox plans to air a reboot of the 1980s PBS science show Cosmos, one of the most popular and least hip programs ever made. MacFarlane is also spending his money to help get late Cosmos host Carl Sagan’s substantial collections of letters, notes and drawings into the Library of Congress. “I never met Carl Sagan, but this is my way to give something back to him for all of the things he gave to me,” says MacFarlane.

MacFarlane’s path to Cosmos started with the Science & Entertainment Exchange, an organization set up by Airplane director Jerry Zucker to help Hollywood work with scientists to ensure shows like CSI are factually correct. Through the group he met the famous astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. “He said he was going to host Cosmos, and he was trying to sell the show to a cable science network,” says MacFarlane. “I said, ‘Let me take you into Fox and we’ll see what happens.’”

Fox might seem like a strange network to host a reboot of Cosmos. The show was one of the most popular ever on PBS, but much of its success depended on viewers buying into Sagan’s poetic vision of space as the exhilarating new frontier for exploration. Not exactly the kind of show you’d expect on a network dominated by shows like American Idol and MacFarlane’s naughty cartoons. “It’s not going to be the biggest money earner,” admits Kevin Reilly, head of entertainment at Fox Networks. “But it could have a cultural impact.”

Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow and the force behind the new Cosmos, says that the network has agreed to make the show using cutting-edge visual technology (the original was one of the first to use green screens) and is letting her have control over the content of the show. “Seth was already a hero in our household because of Family Guy,” says Druyan, who has two sons. “I knew he would be someone with a skeptical nature and an impatience with superstition and nonsense.”

Perhaps in penance, the king of animated lowbrow hopes the show will help inspire better programming on TV. “The trend today is vampires, zombies, angels, all the stuff that puts me right to sleep,” says MacFarlane. “It’s too bad because it’s so much less interesting than the diversity of stories you can tell with science.”

photo: Emily Shur

“But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous & so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & it’s much more meaningful…
The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

― Ann Druyan

Comet Pan-STARRS Near the Moon Tonight: How to See It

Many stargazers attempting to view the Comet Pan-STARRS on recent nights have been thwarted by the comet’s low position in the western sky. But tonight (March 12), the thin crescent moon will lend a hand.

Over the past weekend countless observers across in North America and Europe tried — and for the most part failed — to see Comet Pan-STARRS, in part due to its low altitude above the west-northwest horizon. The bright glare of the evening twilight sky just is also a hurdle, since it can as make the comet harder to see just after sunset.

But fret not, comet lovers! Weather permitting, observing conditions will improve by this evening, since Comet Pan-STARR’s position above the horizon will be noticeably higher and the moon can be used as a benchmark to point your way.

Clear western view essential
The best suggestion I can make is for your Tuesday night comet watch is to first find an observing site with the least amount of any obstructions in the direction of the western part of the sky. [How to see the comet]

If you end up successfully catching a glimpse of them, the moon and the comet will not be any higher than 10 degrees above the horizon. That is about the size of your clenched held out at arm’s length.

If you have a house or some trees in your line of sight, then you’re going to have to find some other viewing site.

Step 1: Find the moon
In order to boost your chances of seeing Comet Pan-STARRS, be sure to arrive at your viewing site in time to see the sunset. Take note of where on the horizon the sun sets.

Now wait about 30 minutes as the sky slowly begins to darken. Truthfully, it will still be rather bright looking toward the west a half hour after the sunset … this was one of the main problems people have had in recent days in trying to see the comet.

However, first things first: Let’s locate the moon. Take your clenched fist and measure off 10 degrees up from that point on the horizon where the sun disappeared about a half hour before. Now look a bit to the right from the top of your fist. That’s where the crescent moon will be.

Seeing the moon will be a bit of a challenge in itself because it will be very narrow, appearing only about 28 hours after passing its new phase. Because of this, the lunar disk will be only 1-percent illuminated. It will be oriented with its bright sliver down, resembling a cup or a thin smile on the sky.

If you can’t see the moon with your unaided eye, then use binoculars. Once you pick it up with binoculars you should be able to find it without optical aid.

Finding Comet Pan-STARRS
With the moon found in the evening sky, it is time to use it as a guide to spot Comet Pan-STARRS.

The comet will be located about 5 degrees to the left of the moon. Once again, you might not initially see it with your eyes, so use binoculars if you need to. Five degrees measures roughly “half a fist” in length.

You’ll know Comet Pan-STARRS when you see it. It will appear as a bright, star-like “head” with a short, stubby tail extending from the head upwards and slightly to the left from the bright end. Like the moon, once you find it with binoculars, you should, with time, be able to make it out against the bright twilight sky.

Comet Pan-STARRS and the moon should be visible for about a half hour before they disappear into the murky haze always located near the horizon.

Not so ‘Great Comet’?
Comet Pan-STARRS was discovered in June 2011 by a team of astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (or PAN-STARRS), a telescope in Hawaii. The comet is officially designated as C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) and is thought to take more than 100 million years to make a single orbit around the sun.

Right now the brightness of Comet Pan-STARRS, according to viewers who spotted it in the Southern Hemisphere, ranks at about first-magnitude on the astronomy brightness scale. That is about as bright as the brightest stars.

Normally, a comet as bright as this would be categorized as a “Great Comet “, but most observers feel that Pan-STARRS does not fall into this category because it’s not visible against a fully dark sky. The bright twilight background is working against making it a prominent eye-catching sight.

And the comet’s dust tail is not breathtakingly long, but rather, short and rather stubby. To the naked eye, not much of the may be visible at all, though in big binoculars or small telescopes, some say that Pan-STARRS is a rather impressive sight.

Comet Pan-STARRS is one of at least three comets in the night sky currently thrilling stargazers. Another comet (the Comet Lemmon) is currently visible to observers in Southern Hemisphere, while the third object is Comet ISON.

Comet ISON is a promising celestial object that was discovered by amateur astronomers in 2012 and is expected to make its closest approach to the sun in late November. The comet will be only 800,000 miles (1.2 million km)from the sun at its closest point, and could put on a dazzling night sky spectacle. But it could also fizzle out, NASA scientists have said.

NASA astronomers and stargazers around the world are regularly tracking Comet ISON, as well as comets Pan-STARRS and Lemmon as they shine in the night sky.

Keep Looking Up: How To Spot Comet Pan-STARRS in March 2013

Catching Comet Pan-STARRS: Photos & Sky Maps For Stargazers

Stay Curious! | Know Your Comet/Astronomy History, Read ‘Comet’ by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan | ‘Comet’ Audio Reading Snippet for Audible.com

“A Glorious Dawn” With Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

via Simon Kregar: Just received an email from Patrick Fish from the Sagan Appreciation Society, who forwarded a picture of this to Ann Duyan.

She replied “Please tell Simon I think he captured Carl and us together”. Squeee! :-)

Copyright Simon Kregar 2012

At the Solar System’s Edge: Q&A with Voyager Chief Scientist Ed Stone

In December, scientists announced that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a strange, new realm at the far outer reaches of the solar system.

+ Voyager 1 is knocking on the door of interstellar space, more than 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion kilometers) from Earth. The new discovery showed that the probe has not yet exited the solar system, though researchers think this momentous event should happen relatively soon.

+ Voyager 1 is the farthest-flung manmade object in the solar system. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, launched in 1977 to study the giant planets Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. After conducting this “grand tour,” the spacecraft kept flying, streaking through unstudied realms on the way to interstellar space.

SPACE.com caught up with Voyager project scientist Ed Stone briefly in December, at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Stone, a physicist at Caltech in Pasadena who has worked on Voyager since its inception in 1972, discussed the mission and what it will mean when Voyager 1 finally pops free into interstellar space. [Voyager: Humanity’s Farthest Journey (Video)]

SPACE.com: So these latest results are something of a curveball. It seemed like Voyager 1 was getting close to leaving the solar system, and now you find out there’s yet another layer to cross. Were you guys disappointed to learn this?

Stone: Oh, no — you’re never disappointed. You just try to figure it out. As a scientist, that’s what you do, right? You’re learning something.

SPACE.com: When do you think Voyager 1 will break free into interstellar space?

Stone: It’s probably a couple of years. It could be sooner, obviously, but if you ask me, I would say a couple of years.

SPACE.com: And what’s that based on?

Stone: Just based on the scale, the size of things out there. We move 3.6 AU [astronomical units — the distance from Earth to the sun, or about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers)] per year, so a couple of years is like 6 to 10 AU; that’s the scale on which one might expect this to happen.

It’s just an intuitive scale idea. For it to happen in a couple of months, that’s only a few tenths of an AU — that’s hard to imagine.

But that’s not science — that’s just saying scaling sort of suggests that.

SPACE.com: What will it mean when it finally happens?

Stone: I think it’s a major milestone, that we’ve actually got a spacecraft in interstellar space for the first time. Scientifically, I think that’s important, but also non-scientifically — the idea that we have left the heliosphere, we have left the solar bubble and entered interstellar space.

SPACE.com: What are some of your favorite moments from the Voyager mission?

Stone: It’s a long list — just time after time, you go wow! I like to bookend it, because otherwise it’s impossible. One bookend is the volcanoes on Io. Before Voyager, the only known active volcanoes in the solar system were here on Earth. Then you find a moon of Jupiter is 10 times more volcanic. How can you not be surprised?

It just changes what I call this sort of terracentric view. Oceans? Well, we think there’s one on [the Jupiter moon] Europa now. But the last bookend was Triton. It’s a captured moon of Neptune; it’s 38 degrees above absolute zero, Kelvin, yet it has geysers erupting from an icy polar cap. That’s a bookend. Pretty crazy.

You start with volcanoes, you end with geysers at 38 degrees above absolute zero. So I just bookend it. But there are many things in between.

SPACE.com: Do you hope to see the Voyager mission through to the end? You’ve said the first instrument will probably die in 2020, and all of them will probably stop working by 2025.

Stone: I hope I’m around! It’s already been 40 years, but I still feel great.

image 1: NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space, which scientists are calling the stagnation region. This image shows that the inner edge of the stagnation region is located about 10.5 billion miles (16.9 billion kilometers) from the sun. The distance to the outer edge is unknown.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech

image 2: Voyager project scientist Ed Stone discusses NASA’s Voyager mission in April 2011 at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
CREDIT: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Watch: Voyager | Humanity’s Farthest Journey

Ann Druyan, Epilogue to Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

(Source: wildlydistorted)

The world needs this more than ever.

(Source: understandingtheuniverse)

scinerds:

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey is an upcoming American documentary television series. It is a follow-up to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was presented by Carl Sagan. The new series’ presenter will be Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The executive producers are Seth MacFarlane and Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow. It was originally announced that it would premiere in the 2012–13 United States network television schedule, but a Twitter update from Neil deGrasse Tyson in June 2012 indicates a Spring 2014 release. Episodes will premiere on Fox and also air on National Geographic Channel on the same night.

Development

The original 13-part Cosmos: A Personal Voyage first aired in 1980 on the Public Broadcasting System, and was hosted by Carl Sagan. The show was considered highly significant since its broadcast; Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times described it as “a watershed moment for science-themed television programming”. The show has been watched by at least 400 million people across 60 different countries.

Following Sagan’s death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series along with Steven Soter, a producer from the series, and astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, sought to create a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not just to those interested in the sciences. They had struggled for years with reluctant television networks that failed to see the broad appeal of the show.

Seth MacFarlane had met Druyan through Tyson at an event that connected Hollywood directors with scientists in 2009, and learned of their interest to recreate Cosmos. MacFarlane was influenced by Cosmos as a child, believing that Cosmos served to “[bridge] the gap between the academic community and the general public”. MacFarlane had considered that the reduction of effort for space travel in recent decades to be part of “our culture of lethargy”. MacFarlane, who at the time has several animated shows on the Fox Network, was able to bring Druyan to meet the heads of Fox programming, Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly, and helped to get the greenlighting of the show.

MacFarlane admits that he is “the least essential person in this equation” and the effort is a departure from work he’s done before, but considers this to be “very comfortable territory for [himself] personally”. He and Druyan have become close friends, and Druyan stated that she believed that Sagan and MacFarlane would have been “kindred spirits” with their respective “protean talents”. In June 2012, MacFarlane provided funding to allow about 800 boxes of Sagan’s personal notes and correspondences to be donated to the Library of Congress.

woodfordroberts asked: I'm getting married this summer and am currently thinking about readings. Is there anything written by Sagan on love? I am an atheist so am looking for something that reflects my awe and reverence for the cosmos rather than of any one particular god. It would be nice to have a sense of that on what is a very important day! Thanks

I think I can help with that, and I’m humbled you’d bring something of this magnitude in your life to me, so thank you. First, some inspiration for you.

Second, watch this.

Although I could offer up so many wonderful quotes from Carl, the simplest one I’d recommend to you is just this:

“When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.” - Carl Sagan

And a response from his wife, Ann Druyan, when speaking about Carl’s death:

“When my husband died, because he was so famous & known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — & ask me if Carl changed at the end & converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage & never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous & so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & it’s much more meaningful…

The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.“

- Ann Druyan, talking about her husband, Carl Sagan

Congratulations my friend. May you and yours celebrate each others lives together, appreciative each day of our brief significant moment in time & space.

Comets approach the Sun, flicker a few hundred times, and die like moths around a flame. But a vast repository of them waits at the periphery of the Solar System. When the present configuration of continents is unrecognizably altered, when the Earth is engulfed by the expanding Sun, when, in its dotage, our star feebly illuminates the charred remains of this planet - then, even then, the skies will still be brightened as young comets, newly arrived from the interstellar dark, make their wild perihelion passages. When the rest of the solar system is dead, and the descendants of humans long ago emigrated or extinct, the comets will still be here.

Carl Sagan|Ann Druyan, Comet

It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounding and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812 - the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly- like an arrow piercing the earth - to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, VIII, 22

[This is actually a reference to the Great Comet of 1811. It could still be seen with the naked eye in early 1812, but just barely. It was, however, a splendid object in the late fall of 1811.]

Carl Sagan|Ann Druyan - Comet, Chapter XX: A Mote of Dust