Master of the Universe – Carl Sagan

Nov 9, 1934 - Dec 20, 1996

I don’t remember when exactly I got hooked on to Carl Sagan; it was probably in the eighties when I watched his Cosmos for the first time in Doordarshan or probably when I read his book Contact a bit later, I don’t know, but it was an association for life and an association that introduced Science to me (okay, whatever little science I know) and it also introduced skepticism.

Carl Sagan, in many ways is similar to my favorite writer Sujatha, similar in the way they spent a lifetime popularizing science, similar in the way they sowed the seeds of knowledge in a young mind. The difference could be that Sujatha was a writer who was also a man of science; Sagan was a man of science who was also an author. The other difference is, probably Sagan was a skeptic and I guess Sujatha never wavered from his Srirangam upbringing!

Beauty of Sagan’s writings lies not only in the way he simplifies complex theories (which he does very well) but also in the way he inspires and creates a sense of awe in the readers mind, especially the young readers.

I wish we have more science teachers like him (or like Sujatha) in our schools.

Contact is a science fiction by Carl Sagan this was published in 1985 and later made into a movie starring Judy foster and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Given his background as a renowned scientist (astrophysicist), it is not surprising that the book is written with real science as the foundation of the book, unlike many other science fiction books that are full of ‘made up’ science and harbor a gloomy/doomsday outlook.

The protagonist Ellie Arroway (named after Eleanor Roosevelt and Voltaire Arouet) is an Astronomer (the character is very similar to Sagan himself). Ellie is convinced of intelligent life out there in the universe (…I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space) and pursues her belief and becomes the director of ‘Project Argus’ that scans (with the help of many Radio Telescopes) the sky for intelligent signals from the cosmos as part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). She does hit the jackpot when the telescopes start picking up a sequence of coded messages coming in from the Vega star system – the first contact from an extraterrestrial intelligence. The message once decoded contains, among other things, a blueprint for building a machine (vehicle). The struggles to building the machine (a multibillion venture) and undertaking the space travel by Ellie are the meat of the book (Ellie travels thru a wormhole to the Vega star some 26 light-years from Earth!).

The culmination of the book indicates a creator of the universe and an intelligent design, which is very surprising (and a bit disappointing) given that Sagan is a confirmed atheist (or at least a skeptic), or is there a different message – honestly I am not so sure. But, I would like to believe that the Creator, Sagan hints at is the collection of many physics and mathematical laws that govern and that are interwoven into the universe and not the Creator as propagated by the many religions. Nevertheless the book is a wonderful read for its scientific accurateness and the awe it can inspire.

The movie by Zemeckis is equally powerful and worth a watch, I will leave the review of the movie to my good friend Toto. Meanwhile you can enjoy the opening sequence of the movie here.

Sagan can make us feel very special (‘we are made of star stuff’')and at the same time make us feel very humble (A vision... of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are!) But, my all time favorite (and a longish) quote is from

Pale Blue Dot: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

The other book I would recommend is The Demon-Haunted World. This is a great book that advocates Science and fights against the practice of Pseudoscience, right from UFO sightings to religious superstitions. Sagan speaks about the power of reasoning and importance of questioning the many beliefs without bias. The Baloney detection tool kit introduced in this book is a great tool thru which such beliefs are to be passed before accepted. The book does not spare scientist and sets high ethical standards for them. It’s a vast canvas that Sagan paints in this book and what a beauty it turns out to be.