All Entries Tagged With: "excerpt"

Patents.

Thanks to Google’s new Patent Search, I was able to uncover an original Carl Sagan invention.

Along with Akiva Bar-Nun and Simon Bauer, Sagan filed the Pressure Wave Synthesis of Aminocarboxylic Acids for a patent on October 2, 1970.

How does it work?

A homogenous vapor phase method for preparing aminocarboxylic acids by subjecting a gaseous mixture of compounds containing the elements of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen (with the latter two in reduced compounds), which are optionally mixed in an inert carrier gas to pressure wave heating and rapid expansion wave cooling. The products from the heating and cooling process are immediately withdrawn from the reaction chamber into a dilute aqueous solution of a mineral acid wherein the aminocarboxylic acids produced from the process are recovered.

The patent was awarded on March 28, 1972.

While this is the only Sagan patent I found in Google’s records, the search giant did show that he had influence in getting other inventions patented.

You may remember these from Cosmos:

Hypercube model
Polyhedral model

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A Year Science

In annual tradition, the Editors at Scientific American publish an article at the end of each year summarizing that year’s scientific developments.

‘The Year in Science’ published on December 20, 1997 starts off with the death of Carl Sagan but quickly moves to focus on his impact on science.

To quote:

The year 1997 began on a somber note, just days after the death of astronomer Carl Sagan. In many ways, though, the year’s events went on to celebrate Sagan’s life. There were steady advancements in a variety of disciplines. But perhaps the most stellar happenings of the year took place in Sagan’s own specialties, namely astronomy, cosmology and space science.

As if in tribute to Sagan, Comet Hale-Bopp blazed across the early summer skies, its fiery tail observed by the most sophisticated observatories and millions of amateurs–armed with telescopes, binoculars or the naked eye. 1997 also marked the 40th anniversary of the Space Age, which began officially when a startled world awakened to beeping signals from the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I on October 4, 1957. In the years that followed, Sagan was a pivotal in the conception and planning of unmanned space probes, many of which are still returning important data.

Two spacecraft inspired by Sagan, Voyager I and Voyager II, which were launched August 20 and September 5, 1977, arrived at halfway points in their 40 year missions. Both reached the very fringes of the solar system in 1997, and headed into interstellar space. In their first decade, these vessels returned important images and data from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Since 1989, both have patroled the outer solar system. And in February 1998, Voyager 1 will pass the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, making it the most distant human-made object in the universe.

All of these spacecraft are equipped should they chance upon intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. Pioneer 10 carries Sagan’s famous plaque, which bears human greetings. And both Voyagers contain a gold record describing the location of Earth and human civilization. (Perhaps DVD compact discs, which only came to market last year, would now be more appropriate.)

To read more about Sagan’s impact on sciene in ’97, check out the Scientific American article.

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Golden Record

The image of the ‘golden record’ that was placed on both Voyager spacecrafts has come to represent many of the attributes, both cultural and scientific, that Carl Sagan spent his life promoting.

The 12 inch gold-plated disk contains a message, a telling of the human story. On it one can find the sounds from nature (from waves crashing on the shore, to birds chirping, and the roll of thunder), spoken greetings in 55 human languages, and musical compositions from around the globe. Additionally the disks contain images from Earth and instructions on how to use the disks. The contents of these records were chosen by a NASA committee lead by Carl Sagan.

Voyager 1 left our solar system in 2004. Although this spacecraft is currently further from Earth than any other man made object excepting Pioneers 10 and 11, it will still be 40,000 years before it is in the proximity of any planetary system.

By placing a message on craft that won’t be intercepted till well after the demise of human kind, both Sagan and NASA exhibited a rare form of public pride in humanity — the notion that even though humans are a tiny and rare occurrence, seemingly insignificant on the galactic scale, our story is worth telling.

To quote Sagan: The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.

For more detail consult NASA’s page on the golden record.
To experience the content of the golden records check out re-lab‘s site.

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A Candle Goes Out.

Carl Sagan, Astronomer, Author, Skeptic and Teacher died December 20th, 1996 of pneumonia. He was 62 years old. In his life Carl Sagan has published research on the atmosphere of Venus, the dust storms of Mars, nuclear winter and extraterrestrial intelligence. He has also written a dozen popular books and countless articles on science which have been read by millions.

I had the great pleasure of hearing Carl Sagan speak in 1994 at the State University of New York at Albany. This was just before the publication of Pale Blue Dot, and Dr. Sagan’s talk included a short reading from that book. The passage was about the only voyager photograph of Earth. In this photograph, taken at Sagan’s insistence, the earth was a single pixel—a pale blue dot.

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.

Carl Sagan saw the big picture.

More importantly, Carl Sagan was passionate about bringing the big picture to others. He was above all else a teacher, and I think an extraordinary one. After his talk, he sat down and took questions from the audience for nearly an hour. People lined up at the microphone to ask him about life on other planets, UFOs, the nature of science, and his views on religion. I sat there in awe.

Carl Sagan looked perfectly at ease, in his natural environment, while answering those questions. And what questions they were! Many of them would have left me, and I suspect most skeptics, exasperated. Just after an insightful question about the future of planetary exploration, would be a question about the government cover up of UFOs. After one concerned questioner asked what she can do about the environment, another asked about the growing synergy of science and religion. If one questioner wanted to know if there was life on mars, another wanted to know why scientists were so close minded.

In The Demon Haunted World, his last book, Carl Sagan said there is no such thing as a dumb question. He really believed this. Never did he show a lack of patience. Never once did he answer in a way that would make the questioner feel silly. He used each question to teach something. He might say that he didn’t know the answer, “but, let me tell you a related story” and proceed to use the question as a jumping point for something better. The questioner never seemed unsatisfied.

My favorite story that night started with “When I was talking with the Dali Lama, I asked the same question I ask all great religious leaders.” He then discussed the nature of religious beliefs that might conflict with science, and the nature of those that do not. (This story is in The Demon Haunted World.) When I’m 62, I only hope I could have have lived the kind of life were I could, with a strait face, begin a story “When I was talking with the Dali Lama….”

We skeptics lost a friend when Carl Sagan died. But more, we lost a teacher.

-Mike Sofka

This article is taken from The Why-Files 3(1). A shorter version was published in the March/April, 1997 Skeptical Inquirer.

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