Remembering Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan passed away 15 years ago today. Sagan was a gifted astronomer, astrophysicist, writer, and evangelist of science; he was best known for his TV series Cosmos, and his novel Contact, which was later made into a movie. Both dealt with the big questions of science (including are we alone?), and humanity's place in the cosmos -- about finding meaning through the scientific method, and experiencing wonder in the process. Sagan was a tremendously humane man, whose warmth and generosity of spirit exude a comforting glow that has inspired a generation of scientists, and now a generation of artists. In the years since Sagan's death, the rise of the internet and tools to remix and share media have led to hundreds of videos based on Sagan's work. Here, I'll collect some of the best, along with some of my favorite clips from Cosmos. Be warned, this is a very long post -- the man inspired a tremendous amount of creative work.

Earth: The Pale Blue Dot

By director Michael Marantz, using time lapse photography and narration from Sagan's 1994 book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space:

We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the Earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little terraqueous globe is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; are we to venture out into space?

And here's a short film by David Fu, using more source narration from Pale Blue Dot mixed with clips from classic movies and TV and music by Mogwai:

The Symphony of Science

The Symphony of Science is a project featuring scientists' words set to music. The series is wonderful, though this first installment called "A Glorious Dawn" is still the best:

Here are a few more good Symphony of Science videos featuring Sagan:

We Are All Connected:

The Unbroken Thread:

The Sagan Series

Reid Gower has been assembling videos featuring Carl Sagan, primarily using Sagan’s narration from Pale Blue Dot and assorted documentary footage. The first video started out as a plea for NASA to do a better job at marketing itself, so the public would support increased funding. From there, Gower created The Sagan Series, a bunch of short films of various topics, all using Sagan's voiceover. You can watch the whole series here; check out the first video for a taste:

Carl Sagan and the Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions

In this beautiful Sagan "Pale Blue Dot" remix, Torrey Meeks combines footage of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, time lapse footage, and Sagan's increasingly famous "Pale Blue Dot" intro narration. Beautiful, touching, and well-made.

Images and Sounds on Voyager's Golden Record

The Voyager 1 probe was launched in 1977. Among other things, it carries a golden record (actually, gold-plated copper) onboard, containing songs, sounds, and images from Earth, all selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. In the video below from NPR, we see a montage of images and sounds on the record.

Carl Sagan Interviewed by Ted Turner

In 1989, Ted Turner interviewed Carl Sagan for CNN. The resulting discussion touched on the environment, nuclear warfare, space, time travel, SETI, and many other topics. You can watch the entire interview here; here's the first bit to get you started:

Cosmos as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

Accountant and Cosmos aficionado Callum Sutherland has remixed the landmark Carl Sagan documentary Cosmos into a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" style video series called Imagination. Read more about this project, or check out the first installment below:

Cosmos: The Fourth Dimension

In this clip, Sagan explains how to think about the fourth dimension -- including the notion of tesseracts. Read more in my blog post from 2009, or just watch:

Cosmos: The Drake Equation

In this clip from Cosmos, Sagan explains the famous Drake Equation -- a proposal for a way to estimate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way. You can read more about this equation, or just enjoy the clip below:

Watch Cosmos for Free, Online

The entirety of Cosmos is available online, for free: watch it on Hulu. (It has ads.) You can also buy it on DVD from Amazon, but it's over a hundred bucks. (I have the DVD set, and personally I think it's worth it.) If you want to learn more about the series, read Documentaries I Like: Cosmos. Rest in peace, Carl.