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Biography of Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Short biography:

Name Story by: Carl Sagan

Education: University of Chicago

Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York, USA

A place of death: USA, Seattle

Carl Sagan- American astronomer and astrophysicist: biography with photo, popularizer of space, famous books, Mariner launch, Viking, Galileo, Apollo, Cosmos.

One of the leading astronomers of our time, Dr. Carl Edward Sagan was born November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his bachelor's degree in 1955 and his master's degree in 1956 from the University of Chicago. Sagan taught at Harvard University in the early 1960s. He moved to Cornell in 1968 where he became a professor in 1971. During its brief biographies Sagan also played a leading role in NASA's missions to other planets: Mariner, Viking, Voyage, and Galileo. He has received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and twice for Distinguished Public Service and the Apollo Space Program Achievement Award.

Carl Sagan, perhaps better known for his work on the TV series Cosmos. The series won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award and became the most watched series in public television history. It was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 70 weeks and was the best-selling science book ever published in English.

Dr. Sagan was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Planetary Science Laboratory at Cornell University. He played a leading role in the Mariner, Viking, and Voyage planetary expeditions, for which he received the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Outstanding public service. Dr. Sagan was also a research assistant Nobel Prize in the field of genetics Muller. His research on the origin of life began in the 1950s. The Masurskaya Award from the American Astronomical Society reads: "His outstanding contribution to the development of planetary science. As a scientist in astronomy and biology, Dr. Sagan has made constructive contributions to the study of planetary atmospheres, the planet's surface, Earth history, and exobiology. Many of the most productive planetary scientists working today are his current and former students and colleagues.

Dr. Sagan has published over 600 scientific papers and popular articles. He has authored and co-authored or edited over 20 books, including Dragons of Eden, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize in 1978. His book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision for Humanity's Future in Space has appeared on bestseller lists around the world. Reading his abridged version on audiocassette was nominated for a Grammy and was cited as one of the "two best audiobooks of the year." Sagan also published Demon-Ghostworld: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which became Sagan's eighth New York Times bestseller. Along with his By his wife, Ann Druyan, he co-produced a Warner Bros. motion picture based on the novel Contact.

Sagan was also one of the founders of the Planetary Society. This organization, which has about 100,000 members, is the largest spatial interest group in the world. The Society supports the main research programs: the study of near-Earth asteroids, the study of Mars. Sagan was invited as a Distinguished Scientist to the California Laboratory. He was also an editor at the Journal, where he published many articles on science and disease, which overcame him in 1996.

Carl Edward Sagan (Seigen; English Carl Edward Sagan listen)) is an American astronomer, astrophysicist and an outstanding popularizer of science.

Sagan was a pioneer in the field of exobiology and gave impetus to the development of the SETI project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is internationally known for his non-fiction books and television mini-series Space: A Personal Journey. He is also the author of the novel Contact, which was based on the film of the same name in 1997.

Born in New York. In 1951 he entered the University of Chicago; in 1954 he received a bachelor's degree, in 1960 - a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics. Worked as a laboratory assistant at the University of indiana Nobel laureate, geneticist G.Möller in 1952–1953. At the University of Chicago, Sagan was greatly influenced by H. Urey and J. Kuiper. From 1960-1962, Sagan worked as an assistant at the Yerke Observatory at the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford University. From 1962-1968 he taught astronomy at Harvard University and worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. From 1968 until the end of his life he was professor of astronomy and space research at Cornell University, as well as director of the Laboratory for the Study of Planets.
Sagan's works are devoted to the physics of planets, the problems of the origin of life and the possibility of its existence outside the Earth. Sagan is the creator of the "greenhouse model" of the atmosphere of Venus, which explains the presence of high temperature on the surface of the planet. His studies of the surface of Mars are known: the scientist suggested the existence of large elevation differences on Mars, explained the seasonal changes in the contrast between light and dark areas by the transfer of dust from high-mountain areas to low-lying ones and vice versa. discovered organic molecules in Jupiter's atmosphere.
Sagan actively participated in the space exploration programs of Venus (Mariner 2, 1962), Mars (Mariner 9, 1971–1972, Viking 1 and Viking 2, 1976), Jupiter and Saturn ( Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, 1977-1981). Participated in education modeling experiments organic matter in the Earth's atmosphere, in 1963 illustrated the formation of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Sagan's views on the problems of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations are set out in the books Intelligent Life in the Universe (Intelligent Life in the Universe, 1966; co-authored with I.S. Shklovsky), Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1973), Space Communication (The Cosmic Connection, 1973).
The theme of communication with extraterrestrial civilizations was embodied in Sagan's fantasy novel Contact (Contact, 1985; Russian translation 1994). The book Cosmos (Cosmos, 1980) became a bestseller, and the 13-episode film created on its basis was seen by more than 500 million people. Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot (1994) is dedicated to the space future of mankind. Among his many awards is the Pulitzer Prize for Dragons of Eden. Reasoning about evolution human brain(Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, 1977; Russian translation 1986).
In 1979, Sagan founded the Planetary Society, which by the end of the 20th century. became the largest association of people interested in space. In 1980, the work of Sagan and his colleagues on the possible climate consequences caused a wide public outcry. nuclear war. The scientists concluded that these consequences could be much more serious than previously thought, since the products of the explosions, having risen high in the atmosphere, would absorb sunlight and this would lead to a cooling of the atmosphere in the surface layer (“nuclear winter”).
Sagan's latest book is The World, full of demons: Science as a Candle in the Dark (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996). Sagan died in Seattle, Washington on December 20, 1996.

Education and scientific career

Scientific achievements

Sagan was one of the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa might have oceans (on Europa it was assumed that the ocean was under the ice surface) or lakes. He suggested that Europa's water ocean might be habitable. Confirmation of the existence of the subglacial ocean on Europa was indirectly obtained with the help of Galileo.

Sagan also advanced understanding of the atmosphere of Venus, seasonal changes on Mars, and Saturn's moon Titan. He found that the atmosphere of Venus is very hot and dense. He also noted that global warming is a man-made danger, and drew a parallel between this phenomenon and the natural transformation of Venus into a hot, uninhabitable planet through greenhouse gases. He hypothesized that seasonal changes on Mars are due to dust storms, rather than vegetation-related processes, as previously thought.

science propaganda

Members of the Planetary Community at a meeting dedicated to the creation of the organization

Sagan proposed the idea of ​​searching for extraterrestrial life. He called on the scientific community to look for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial life using large radio telescopes. He also called for sending probes to other planets. Sagan was editor-in-chief of Icarus (a professional journal dedicated to planetary exploration) for 12 years. He was a founding member of the Planetary Society and a member of the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute.

Carl Sagan is known as a co-creator scientific work, which predicted that a nuclear winter would come as a result of a nuclear war. Sagan predicted that the smoke from burning oil in Kuwait (set on fire by Saddam Hussein's army in the 1st Gulf War) would cause ecological catastrophe in the form of black clouds. A retired atmospheric physicist, Fred Singer, dismissed Sagan's prediction as preposterous, predicting that the smoke would clear within days. In his book A World Full of Demons: Science as a Candle in the Dark ( ) Carl Sagan gave a list of the mistakes he made (including his prediction of the Kuwait fires effect) as an example of how every claim in science requires hard evidence and lots of experimentation.

Social activity

Thanks to the series "Cosmos" and frequent appearances on the popular television show "Today" ( The tonight show), Sagan became associated with the phrase "billions and billions". He never actually used the phrase on Cosmos, but the fact that he often used the word "billions" made the phrase "billions and billions" a favorite catchphrase of TV show host Johnny Carson and others, creating a warm impression of Sagan. . He took it with humor and titled his latest book Billions and Billions. A playful measure of Sagan has even been created, which can be any number over 4 billion.

Sagan wrote a sequel to the novel "Cosmos" - "Blue Spot: A look at the cosmic future of mankind" ( ), which was featured as a Significant Book of 1995 by The New York Times. Sagan wrote the foreword to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. A Brief History of Time).

Carl Sagan suggested the origin of the swastika symbol in his book The Comet ( comet). He hypothesized that the comet approached the Earth in ancient times at such a distance that the jets of gas emanating from it, bent under the influence of rotation, were visible to the naked eye. In The Comet, Sagan gives a copy of an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows a variety of comet tails, mostly simple tails, but in the last image, the comet's nucleus is drawn with four curved rays emanating from it, depicting a swastika.

Sagan caused conflicting feelings among other professional scientists. On the one hand, he received widespread support for the popularization of science and his stance in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience, as can be seen from his exposé of Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision ( Worlds In Collision). On the other hand, there has been some concern among scientists that personal scientific views and Sagan's interests will be taken by the public for the views of the entire scientific community. Some believe these concerns stem from professional concerns that views opposed to Sagan's (eg, questioning the severity of nuclear winter) are not getting the attention they deserve in society.

Sagan's arguments against Velikovsky's "catastrophe theory" were criticized by some of his colleagues. Dr. Robert Chastrow of NASA's Institute for Space Studies wrote:

“Professor Sagan's calculations ignore the laws of gravity. In this, Dr. Velikovsky was the best astronomer.”

In more late period Sagan's life, his books presented a skeptical and naturalistic approach to the structure of the world. In A World Full of Demons: Science as a Candle in the Dark ( The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark) he described methods for testing hypotheses and finding false and deceptive ideas, essentially calling for the widespread use of the scientific method. In Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Edge of the Millennium, published after the author's death ( ) contains essays written by Sagan reflecting his views on abortion and more, as well as an account by Ann Druyan that Sagan died an atheist.

Personality

In 1966, Sagan was asked to be interviewed about the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations for the preface to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sagan replied that he wanted editorial control of the film and a percentage of the box office, which he was denied.

In 1994, Apple Computer began developing new version your Power Macintosh 7100 computer. The company chose the name "Carl Sagan" as the product's internal codename in honor of the famous astronomer. Although the product's internal name was strictly confidential and was never used in public, when Sagan found out about it, he sued Apple Computer, demanding that it use a different name, as other projects had names like "Cold Fusion" ( cold fusion) and "Piltdown Man" ( Piltdown Man). Sagan did not want to be associated with pseudoscience. Although he lost the case, Apple engineers obeyed Sagan's wishes and renamed the project "BHA" - "Stubborn Astronomer" ( Butthead Astronomer). Sagan is suing Apple again for making fun of him. He lost this time too, but the name of the 7100 project underwent another change, now it was called "LAW" - "All Bore Lawyers" ( Lawyers Are Wimps).

Many considered Sagan an atheist or an agnostic, based on his statements such as this:

“The idea of ​​God as a huge white man with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and controls all things, even as small as the flight of a sparrow, is ludicrous. But if under the word God the set of laws of physics that govern the universe is implied, then such a God exists. The idea of ​​such a God does not give emotional satisfaction ... offering prayers to the law of gravity does not make sense.

Sagan was married three times: in 1957 to the famous biologist Lynn Margulis (mother of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan), in 1968 to the artist Linda Saltzman Sagan (mother of Nick Sagan), in 1981 to the writer Ann Druyan (mother of Sasha and Sam) , to whom he was married until the end of his days.

Heritage

Sagan died of pneumonia caused by a two-year battle with bone marrow disease at the age of 62 on December 20, 1996, at the Cancer Research Center. Fred Hutchison of Seattle, Washington. Sagan was an outstanding personality. Supporters of Sagan appreciated the importance of his efforts to popularize natural sciences, his speeches as against restrictions on Scientific research, and against the reactionary use of the fruits of science, the defense of democracy, opposition to nationalist ideas, the defense of humanism, for the denial of geo- and anthropocentric views.

Landing site of the unmanned vehicle, the first rover Mars Pathfinder was renamed "Carl Sagan Memorial Station" in honor of Dr. Sagan on July 5, 1997. The asteroid 2709 Sagan was also named after him.

The 1997 film The Contact, based on Sagan's novel and completed after his death, ends with the line "Dedicated to Carl" ( For Carl).

In one of the episodes of the movie "Star Trek" ( star trek) shows the Mars Pathfinder landing site ( Mars Pathfinder) and a historical inscription quoting Sagan at the site of the "Carl Sagan Memorial Station", which reads:

In 2004, a musical group performing electronic music released their album "Invisible Forces" ( Unseen Forces). The music disc accompanies a DVD with humorous video clips that pay homage to the historical sketches from the Cosmos series.

Prizes and awards

• Apollo Project Achievement Award - NASA
• Little Chicken Award - Honorable Mention in 1991, Center for National Concern, A Dubious Achievement Award from an organization that is skeptical of state assessments environment and the impact of human activity on it.
• Public Service Recognition - NASA.
• Emmy - Outstanding Individual Achievement - 1981 - for "Space"
• Emmy - Outstanding Educational Series - 1981 - for the TV series "Space"
• Distinguished Scientific Achievement Medal - NASA
• Helen Caldicot Leadership Award - Women's Movement for Nuclear Disarmament
• Homer Award - 1997 - for "Contact"
• Hugo Award - 1998 - for "Contact"
• Hugo Award - 1981 - for "Cosmos"
• Hugo Award - 1997 - for "World Full of Demons"
• Humanist of the Year - 1981 - awarded by the American Humanist Association
• Sanity Award - 1987 - Committee on the Scientific Approach to the Paranormal
• Isaac Asimov Award - 1994 - Committee on the Scientific Approach to the Paranormal
• John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award - American Astronomical Society
• John Campbell Memorial Award - 1974 - "Space Connections" ( The Cosmic Connection)
• Klumpke-Roberts Pacific Astronomical Society Award - 1974
• Medal of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky - Soviet Federation of Cosmonautics
• Locus Award - 1986 - for "Contact"
• Thomas Lowell Award - Explorers Club - 75th Anniversary
• Mazursky Award - American Astronomical Society
• Peabody Award - 1980 - for "Space"
• Public Welfare Medal - 1994 - National Academy of Sciences
• Pulitzer Prize for Literature - 1978 - for The Dragons of Eden ( The Dragons of Eden)
• Science Fiction Chronicle Award - 1998 - for "Contact"
• Carl Sagan Memorial Award - Named after him
• Named 99th Great American on June 5, 2005 on The Greatest American Show ( The Greatest American) shown on the Discovery Channel.

Works related to Sagan

• Sagan, Carl, and Jonathan Norton Leonard, with the editors of Life magazine ( life) - "Planets". Time Corporation
• Sagan, Carl and Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, "Intelligent Life in the Universe" ( Intelligent Life in the Universe). Random house,
• Sagan, Carl, "Making Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence" ( Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence). MIT Press,
• Sagan, Karl and others "Mars and the Mind of Man" ( Mars and the mind of man). Harper & Row,
• Sagan, Carl, "Other Worlds" ( Other Worlds). Bantam Books,
• Sagan, Carl and others ("Sounds of the Earth: Voyager Interstellar Recording") ( Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record). Random house,
• Sagan, Carl and others "Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War" ( The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War). Sidgwick & Jackson,
• Sagan, Carl, "Contact". Simon and Schuster, ; Republished in August by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1-56865-424-3, 352 pp.
• Sagan, Carl, and Richard Tarko, "The Path No One Thought About: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race" ( A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race. Random house,
• Sagan, Carl, The Dragons of Eden: Reflections on the Evolution of the Human Brain ( Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence). Ballantine Books, December, ISBN 0-345-34629-7, 288 pp.
• Sagan, Carl, "Brock's Brain: A Discourse on the Romances of Science" ( Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science). Ballantine Books, October, ISBN 0-345-33689-5, 416 pp.
• Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Searching for Who We Are ( Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are). Ballantine Books, October, ISBN 0-345-38472-5, 528 pp.
• Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan, The Comet ( comet). Ballantine Books, February, ISBN 0-345-41222-2, 496 pp.
• Sagan, Carl, "The Blue Spot: A View of Humanity's Cosmic Future" ( Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space). Ballantine Books, September, ISBN 0-345-37659-5, 384 pp.
• Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan, "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Edge of the Millennium" ( Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium). Ballantine Books, June, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pp.
• Sagan, Carl, A World Full of Demons: Science as a Candle in the Dark ( The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark). Ballantine Books, March, ISBN 0-345-40946-9, 480 pp.
• Sagan, Carl and Jerome Agel, Cosmic Connections ( The Cosmic Connection). Cambridge University Press, January 15, ISBN 0-521-78303-8, 301 pp.
• Sagan, Carl, "Space: A Personal Journey" ( Cosmos: A Personal Voyage). Random House, May 7, ISBN 0-375-50832-5, 384 pp.
• Robert Zemeckis, Contact. Warner Studios, IMDB
• Davidson Kay, "Carl Sagan: life path» ( Carl Sagan). John Wiley & Sons, August 31, ISBN 0-471-39536-6, 560 pp.
• Tom Haid (editor), Conversations with Carl Sagan ( Conversations with Carl Sagan). University Press of Mississippi,

People can fool themselves for years, wishful thinking and not questioning highly dubious things. And this applies to all areas of life, from small misconceptions in everyday life to serious personal attitudes that can destroy life. What is more important: the search for truth or pleasant illusions?

Below we will talk about the four rules of life of Carl Sagan, who devoted his life to the search for truth, put forward many hypotheses about the cosmos that have not yet been refuted, and helped ordinary people learn more about how our Universe works.

Carl Sagan (1934–1996)

If you apply these four rules in your life, you can learn and understand much more, become an erudite and a good storyteller, a fighter for truth and justice and just a cheerful person who always knows that you can look at the problem from different angles.

Misinformation Detection Kit

Sagan was, first of all, a scientist, which determined his special view of the world. In his last book"A world full of demons. Science is like a candle in the dark" he talked about what could be called a "bullshit detection kit".

This kit helps you test arguments and find out which information is false. And it's a great tool for developing critical thinking. Here is part of this "set":

• Wherever possible, there should be independent confirmation of the facts.
• Encourage debate using evidence between supporters of different points of view.
• The arguments of "authoritative" experts have no more weight than the statements of the rest of the participants in the debate. "Authorities" have been wrong in the past, what prevents them from doing it in the future? In science there is no concept of "authority", in the extreme case there are experts.
• Do not use only hypotheses and conjectures. If there are incomprehensible moments, try to find explanations for them, and approaching from different angles. Then figure out how you can test these explanations with tests and disprove all but one of them, which is true. This way you will have a much better chance of hitting the right answer than just clinging to the first theory that seems good to you.
• Don't stick with an idea just because it's yours. Your hypotheses are just another point on the path to knowledge. Ask yourself why you prefer this particular idea, compare it with alternative opinions, think about what would make you give it up. If you don't come up with it yourself, others will.

This set of tips is not just for science. It is good for any argument or discussion - from pre-election debates to arguments at the dinner table. The better you are at identifying false information, the stronger your arguments will be and the more correct your conclusions will be.

Examine your own beliefs carefully

If a person wants something to be true, he very easily begins to believe in it. Especially if it's impossible to prove. Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of Carl Sagan's daughter about conversations with her father. The astrophysicist tried to explain to his daughter what he thought about the existence of the afterlife.

He very gently told me that it can be dangerous to believe something just because you want it to be true. You can be very wrong if you do not question your beliefs, and especially the opinions of "authoritative" people. He said that everything that really exists can be tested by research.

This applies not only to the afterlife and your religion, but also applies to all your beliefs in this life. You believe that you love some things and hate others, that you are good at one thing and never achieve anything at another.

You only believe this because you want it to be true, you are brainwashing yourself and building walls between yourself and something new.

Check your beliefs often: any of them, even the most “reinforced concrete”, may turn out to be erroneous.

Remember your place in the universe

It's so easy to get lost in your problems and forget about the rest of the world. In his opening speech on the famous Pale Blue Dot image (“Pale Blue Dot”, a photograph of planet Earth taken from the greatest possible distance from it using the Voyager 1 probe), Carl Sagan recalled how great importance we give credit to our problems and how little they really mean on the scale of the universe. Here is an excerpt from that speech:

Our posturing, our imagined importance, the illusion of our privileged status in the universe, they all succumb to this point of pale light. Our planet is just a single speck of dust in the surrounding cosmic darkness. In this vast void, there is no hint that someone will come to our aid in order to save us from our own ignorance.

In his books and in the mini-series Cosmos, Carl Sagan continues to explore this theme. He repeated similar ideas to his daughter:

Right now you are alive. It is amazing. If you believe that millions of different variations lead to the birth of one particular person, you should be grateful that you are you this very second. Think of the incredible number of potential alternate universes where your ancestors never met and you will never exist.

Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you can breathe air, drink water and love the warmth of the star closest to us. We are connected through DNA with generations of ancestors and even more - with the entire Universe, because the material for each cell of our body was prepared in the hearts of the stars. We are made of stellar material.

Awareness of such scale and one's place in this world brings pleasure and unusual sensations, but what else can one get besides them?

As you can see, you can look at any problem from different points of view: on the scale of your life, your problems mean a lot, but on the scale of one planet, they mean nothing, not to mention the scale of the Universe.

When you're dealing with problems or dealing with negativity and painful memories, just try to look at it from a different angle and you'll see that it's not so bad.

Diversify your knowledge

It's so easy to get stuck in one area of ​​knowledge and spend all your time studying it. However, it is known that side projects and activities that are unusual for you help develop abilities.

The desire to diversify your knowledge helps to understand that you will always have something to work on.

Sagan knew this, and while most of his time was devoted to space exploration, he found time to do other things as well. Here is a list of books to read from the Library of Congress that shows just how varied Carl Sagan's interests were.

1. The story "The Immoralist" by André Gide.
2. Tragedy "Julius Caesar", William Shakespeare.
3. "State", Plato.
4. "A History of Western Philosophy: Kant and the Nineteenth Century", Volume IV, Jones.
5. "Education is the way to freedom" by Robert Maynard Hutchins.

These are just some of the topics that Sagan was interested in. His reading list included a huge number of works, including stories by contemporary authors like Huxley and Bradbury.

Sagan understood how important it was to diversify his knowledge of science with a variety of information about the real world - from politics and philosophy to fiction.

New knowledge in different areas provides a fresh look at things and develops creative thinking.

Perhaps that is why Carl Sagan was not only an outstanding scientist, but also an excellent storyteller and an interesting conversationalist.

If you are a professional in your field or even in several areas of activity, there will always be areas in which you do not understand or know anything.

You have a vast ocean of information in front of you. Do not stop exploring this world, and you will become an erudite person and a wonderful storyteller, and beliefs and thinking itself will never stiffen.

For many centuries, mankind has been dreaming of establishing contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. But, perhaps, only one person managed to prove to the world that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a serious scientific direction, and not a kind of mania. His name was Carl Sagan, and he wrote and sent a real letter to aliens. Even two.

Pioneer means first

In 1972-1973, two research vehicles, Pioneer-10 and Pioneer-11, were sent to Jupiter and Saturn. Their main task was to photograph the gas giants from a more or less close distance. Both "Pioneers" successfully completed their task and set off to drift into deep space.

Along with Voyager 1, which launched a little later, the Pioneers became the first man-made vehicles to leave the solar system and find themselves in deep space. All this was planned.

That is why the "Pioneers" were chosen by the famous astronomer and popularizer of science Carl Sagan to carry aluminum plates - messages to distant worlds with brief information about people and the Earth.

If a distant alien intelligence ever "catch" any of the devices, even in a million years, he will be able to decipher the pictograms invented by Sagan.

The plates depict the ship itself (for scale), as well as the figures of a man and a woman. Nearby is engraved a diagram of the solar system and a diagram of the location of the Sun relative to the nearest 14 pulsars and the center of the Galaxy (a pulsar is neutron star, which is a source of some kind of radiation, usually radio or light).

The coordinates of the Sun relative to pulsars are unchanged, as are the positions of other stars, which means that aliens will be able to orient themselves. Also on the plates is a schematic representation of a hydrogen atom, the radiation wavelength of which is taken as a unit of measurement (for example, the height of a woman is indicated in them).

Carl Sagan died in 1996, long before the Pioneers left the solar system, but he was well aware that he would not live to see contact, if any. He was just trying to see into the very, very distant future.

How to become an astronomer

Sagan was born in Brooklyn in 1934 to a Russian immigrant who married a girl from New York. The family lived in poverty, especially against the backdrop of the Great Depression.

Carl's parents were ordinary people without education, but his father wanted his son to grow up differently. He took little Karl to the Museum of Natural History, to the planetarium, in 1939 they visited the World's Fair in New York with the whole family.

And soon after the war, the number of the famous almanac Astounding Science Fiction fell into the boy's hands, which, coupled with the general hysteria of that time associated with UFOs, determined the worldview of the future scientist. Carl Sagan wanted to be an astrophysicist.

And he became one, and brilliant. University of Chicago Astronomical Society, graduate school and dissertation on "Physical Exploration of the Planets" - by 1960, the newly minted Ph.D. in physical sciences was considered one of the leading young astrophysicists in the country and showed great promise.

He worked at the University of California, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, lectured at Harvard, Cornell University, was a consultant at NASA (including training astronauts for flights to the moon).

During his work, Sagan made a number of astronomical and astrophysical discoveries - for example, he discovered high-temperature regions on Venus, explored Titan and Europa (the moons of Saturn and Jupiter). But he was known primarily for his research in the field of alien intelligence. And he became the only scientist whose research on this topic was recognized by the world scientific community.

Where do aliens live

The issue of alien intelligence has bothered Sagan since childhood. He was addicted science fiction(and in 1984 he himself wrote the sci-fi novel "Contact", which entered the golden fund of American fiction), loved comics, was passionately interested in the UFO mania of the 1950s. When astronomers Thomas Pearson and Jill Tarter founded the SETI Institute in the mid-1980s, the main purpose of which was contact with alien races, Carl Sagan, along with another popularizer of alien intelligence, Frank Drake, became one of its leading figures. In fact, he himself stood at the origins of the SETI program back in the 1970s.

It was Sagan who managed to get funding and permission from NASA to install two aluminum, gold-anodized plates on the Pioneer probes.

A few years later, in 1977, Sagan led a commission that prepared another record that went to the infinity of space on the Voyager series research apparatus. Moreover, this message was a record in a different sense of the word.

It records the sounds of the Earth. Most of it is music (from Bach and Beethoven to Chuck Berry and Georgian choral singing), the smaller part is just human voices and various noises, sirens, hammering, birdsong and animal cries.

At the same time, there are 116 encoded drawings and photographs on the disc, reflecting life on Earth and the structure of the solar system. On the outside of the case, in addition to repeating the image from the Pioneer plates, there is a diagram of a device that allows you to extract information from the plate.

Between the sending of tablets and records, in 1974, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake made another attempt to contact deep space by sending a radio signal there. It is now known as the Arecibo message (after the source radio telescope).

The signal-message with a duration of 169 seconds was encoded information about human civilization - numbers in the binary system, atomic numbers of the main elements, information about human DNA, humanity as a whole, solar system and the telescope itself.

The direction of the radio signal was chosen in the constellation Hercules (globular star cluster M13). Sagan was well aware that the signal would take about 25,000 years to reach its destination, and if it was received by aliens, successfully decoded and answered, another 25,000 years in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, he pinned more hopes on this method of communication than on records, which he described in detail in the novel "Contact".

By the way, this was the second attempt to send a radio signal into space. The words "peace", "Lenin" and "USSR" were sent in 1962 from the Evpatoria Center for Deep Space Communications. Subsequently, many messages were sent to other worlds, but it is Sagan's message that remains the most famous and informative.

Another life

Carl Sagan surprisingly combined a serious scientist-researcher, a science fiction dreamer and a popularizing star. He gave exciting lectures, understandable even to an unprepared person, he knew how to captivate anyone with his ideas and enthusiasm.

His work was a huge success. Dragons of Eden book. Discourse on the Evolution of the Human Brain won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1978 and topped the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks, which is simply incredible for a non-fiction publication.

Sagan was interested in absolutely everything - astronomy and anthropology, psychology and biology, the problems of artificial intelligence and the development of computer networks.

There was no branch of science that he would not pay attention to in his books, lectures, stories. The most important thing that was in Sagan was an unconditional faith in humanity, its limitless possibilities and its inexhaustible resources.

An asteroid is named after Sagan, the landing site of the first rover, a number of awards in various industries science and even a special number that characterizes the number of stars in the observable universe (approximately equal to 70 x 10 21). The film, staged in 1997 based on the novel Contact, won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Film.

But the main monument to Carl Sagan is four records flying somewhere in the boundless space. They will fly for millions more years, and perhaps someday they will reach their destination. And then the mission of Carl Sagan will be completed.

Tim QUICKLY