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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carl Sagan | 13/13 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:17:36.414677+00:00 | kb-cron |
==== In popular culture ==== Robert Zemeckis's Contact was based on Sagan's novel of the same name. The movie was completed after his death. It ends with the dedication "For Carl." His photo can also be seen in the film. The Beastie Boys paid homage to Sagan on To the 5 Boroughs: "I've got billions and billions of rhymes to flex / 'Cause I've got more rhymes than Carl Sagan's got turtlenecks." Sagan's son Nick wrote several episodes in the Star Trek franchise. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you." Sagan's student Steve Squyres led the team that landed the rovers Spirit and Opportunity successfully on Mars in 2004. In September 2008, musical compositor Benn Jordan released Pale Blue Dot, a tribute to Sagan's life. Beginning in 2009, a musical project known as Symphony of Science sampled several excerpts of Sagan from his series Cosmos and remixed them to electronic music. To date, the videos have received over 21 million views worldwide on YouTube. The 2014 Swedish science fiction short film Wanderers uses excerpts of Sagan's narration of his book Pale Blue Dot, played over digitally-created visuals of humanity's possible future expansion into outer space. In February 2015, the Finnish-based symphonic metal band Nightwish released the song "Sagan" as a non-album bonus track for their single "Élan". The song, written by the band's songwriter/composer/keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, is an homage to Sagan's the life and work. In February 2019, the progressive metal band Dream Theater dedicated their song named "Pale Blue Dot" to Sagan. It opens with an audioclip from Nick Sagan saying "Hello from the children of planet Earth." In 2019, Sagan's daughter Sasha released For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in our Unlikely World, which depicts life with her parents and her father's death when she was fourteen. Building on a theme in her father's work, Sasha Sagan argues in For Small Creatures Such as We that skepticism does not imply pessimism. Cosmos was named one of the Books That Shaped America by the Library of Congress. In 2022, the audiobook recording of Sagan's Pale Blue Dot was selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." He is featured in Emer Reynolds's documentary The Farthest, about the Voyager program. In 2023, a movie Voyagers by Sebastián Lelio was announced with Sagan played by Andrew Garfield and with Daisy Edgar-Jones playing Sagan's third wife, Ann Druyan. Recordings and archival video of Sagan were used extensively in two 2025 films, Elio and The Life of Chuck. Druyan tells of a porter who refused to let Sagan pay him for handling baggage. He told Sagan, "You gave me the universe."
== Books ==
== See also == List of peace activists Neil deGrasse Tyson
== Explanatory notes ==
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Cited references === Achenbach, Joel (1999). Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-84856-3. LCCN 99037592. OCLC 41606346. Davidson, Keay (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-25286-3. LCCN 99036206. OCLC 41580617. Morrison, David (2006). "Carl Sagan: The People's Astronomer". AmeriQuests. 3 (2). doi:10.15695/amqst.v3i2.84. ISSN 1553-4316. Head, Tom, ed. (2006). Conversations with Carl Sagan (1st ed.). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-57806-736-7. LCCN 2005048747. OCLC 60375648. Poundstone, William (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-5766-9. LCCN 99014615. OCLC 40979822. Spangenburg, Ray; Moser, Kit (2004). Carl Sagan: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-32265-5. LCCN 2004015176. OCLC 55846272. Terzian, Yervant; Bilson, Elizabeth, eds. (1997). Carl Sagan's Universe. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57603-1. LCCN 96040511. OCLC 36130681. Terzian, Yervant; Trimble, Virginia (January 1, 1997). "Carl Sagan (1934–1996)". Bulletin of the AAS. 29 (4).
== External links ==
The Seth MacFarlane collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan archive, 1860-2004 (bulk 1962-1997). The Library of Congress The Carl Sagan Portal (CarlSagan.com) Carl Sagan at IMDb Carl Sagan discography at Discogs FBI Records: The Vault – Carl Sagan at fbi.gov David Morrison, "Carl Sagan", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2014) Scientist of the Day – Carl Sagan at Linda Hall Library Carl Sagan – Great Lives, BBC Radio, December 15, 2017 "A man whose time has come" (archived) – Interview with Carl Sagan by Ian Ridpath, New Scientist, July 4, 1974 "Carl Sagan's Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic" (archived), by David Morrison, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry "NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19630011050: Direct Contact Among Galactic Civilizations by Relativistic Interstellar Spaceflight", Carl Sagan, when he was at Stanford University, in 1962, produced a controversial paper funded by a NASA research grant that concludes ancient alien intervention may have sparked human civilization. Carl Sagan demonstrates how Eratosthenes determined that the Earth was round and the approximate circumference of the earth (via YouTube)