Join the Universe in Wishing Carl Sagan a Big Bang of a Birthday!

source

This weekend we celebrate the birthday of beloved American astronomer, astrophysicist and cosmologist Carl Sagan on November 9. Sagan was born in 1934 and died in 1996.

Carl Sagan is famous for contributing to people's understanding of the cosmos – the universe – as a whole. He is the author of the science book and TV series Cosmos. Cosmos covered many scientific topics such as the origin of life and our place in the Universe. He also wrote the novel Contact, which was made into a movie in 1997.

Because Carl Sagan was able to communicate complex ideas very easily, he helped people understand our place, as humans, in the universe. He taught us how small the Earth is compared to the Universe but at the same time emphasized the value and importance of the human race. Sagan's work helped to discover the high surface temperatures on Venus, the second planet from the sun. His research also deals with the possibilities of extraterrestrial life (aliens!).

In honour of his birthday, here, from the 11th episode of Cosmos, is a quote from Sagan about the magic of books:

What an astonishing thing a book is. It is a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.