10 Carl Sagan Quotes On Science And Life

Carl Sagan was the man who brought astronomy into our living rooms with his masterpiece, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was viewed by over 500 million people around the world!

As a scientist, he contributed enormously to our understanding of the solar system. He correctly predicted the existence of methane lakes on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. When other astronomers had imagined Venus to be a mild summery paradise, Carl showed it to be dry, thick and unpleasantly hot.

He also predicted life on Venus in 1967 and we may be close to proving him right. Not just it, Carl Sagan played a leading role in every major spacecraft mission to explore the solar system in the 20th century: Mariner, Viking, Voyager, you name it!

Although Carl died quite young (had he been alive, he'd be celebrating his 86th birthday in 2020), his ideas and thoughts will remain with us for-ever. Let us have a look at 10 Carl Sagan quotes which are relevant to modern times, shall we?

On climate change

Protest in Goa

Carl says: Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.

On life elsewhere

All my life, I've wondered about life beyond the earth. On those countless other planets that we think circle other suns, is there also life? Might the beings of other worlds resemble us, or would they be astonishingly different? What would they be made of? In the vast Milky Way galaxy, how common is what we call life? The nature of life on earth and the quest for life elsewhere are the two sides of the same question: the search for who we are.

On science and politics

We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged.

On afterlife

He says: I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

On cannabis

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate.

On experiment

Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world.

Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo.

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

On god

The idea that a God or gods is necessary to effect one or more of these origins has been under repeated attack over the last few thousand years. Because we know something about phototropism and plant hormones, we can understand the opening of the morning glory independent of divine micro-intervention. It is the same for the entire skein of causality back to the origin of the universe. As we learn more and more about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do.

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On our place in the cosmos

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

On the future

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

On books

The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is.

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Why did Paul Dirac speak so little?

Paul Dirac was a British theoretical physicist who is most well known for his contributions to quantum mechanics. He gave an equation that predicted the existence of anti-matter in 1928. But, perhaps, there's another reason why Dirac is so widely recognized, that for his introversion and timidity.

Some of Dirac's colleagues at Cambridge defined a "unit of conversation" in his honour meaning one spoken word per hour. Although, this was a joke but the reality was pretty much the same. One commented on Dirac: "He's a lean, meek, shy young fellow who goes slyly along the streets, walks quite close to the walls, like a thief, and is not at all healthy."

The reason, for his incredible shyness and speechlessness, many claim, was Dirac's strained relationship with his father, especially during his growing up years. In fact, after his father died, Dirac wrote: "I feel much freer now, and I am my own man."

According to study, authoritarian parenting styles generally lead to children being obedient and proficient, but they rank much lower in happiness, social competence, and self-esteem.

Paul Dirac's father, Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac, an immigrant from Switzerland, was very strict right from the beginning. He forced his children to speak to him only in French, so that they might learn his native language.

Dirac, who knew just a little French, spoke even less in order to avoid being scolded for wrong grammar. Dirac took a lot of time to frame sentences, as he was told never to start a sentence without knowing its end.

Dirac found comfort in his imagination and when he wanted to put across his thoughts he would do so by writing them. In his early thirties, Dirac wrote in a letter to a close friend that to defend himself against the hostilities he perceived around him he retreated into his own imagination.

Paul had a younger sister, Béatrice, and an older brother, Reginald, who committed suicide in 1925. Dirac, then 23, later recalled: "My parents were terribly distressed by it...But I didn't know they cared so much? I never thought that parents were supposed to care for their children. From then on I knew."

So, from early childhood, physics and maths had become Dirac's escape. The magical world of numbers and objects and their interrelationships interested him quite deeply. His father wanted Dirac to become an engineer but after graduating Dirac switched careers to pursue physics degree.

It was the right thing to go against his father's wishes because as an engineer Dirac couldn't land a job in post-first-world-war Britain. Dirac chose his passion and was allowed to skip the first year of the honours degree credit to his engineering degree.

As we all know, Paul Dirac made not only a career out of pure sciences but also revolutionized physics for next half a century. However, despite all his achievements, Dirac remained merry in his own company and suffered agonies if forced into any kind of socializing or small talk.

Fourth Woman To Win Nobel Prize In Physics

In 1903, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics for research on spontaneous radiation as discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel in 1896.

It took 60 years, in 1963, for another woman to win the most coveted prize in physics. Maria Goeppert Mayer was awarded for discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.

Another 55 years later, in 2018, Donna Strickland received the award for her 1985 discovery, chirped pulse amplification, a technique which is used to make cellphone screens.

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Cut to 2020, we have another woman Nobel laureate in physics, her name Andrea Ghez, who has been awarded the top honor for the discovery of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's center!

She shared the prize with colleague Reinhard Genzel. The other half of it went to Sir Roger Penrose.

When asked to comment on it, Andrea said: "I'm grateful, I'm thrilled. You know I work for the science and I'm just glad that it is recognized."

One might ask, "Why do we care about supermassive black holes, like, why is that so important to know about?

Andrea says: "They represent the breakdown of our understanding of the laws of physics. It's transformed our knowledge of these objects that we didn't really have proof existed in the universe."

By picturing the center of Milky Way galaxy at infrared wavelength, Ghez and her team were able to peer through heavy dust that blocked visible light, and produced images of the Black Hole, Sagittarius A*.

By using Kepler's third law, she showed that its mass was 4.1 million solar masses. Based on its mass and radius calculations, astronomers concluded that Sagittarius A* was a supermassive black hole.

Andrea has appeared on many black hole physics documentaries for BBC and Discovery Channel. When asked about her role as a science comunicator, she replied: "We all must step up to talk about the role of science and that is, I think, more important than ever."

She stayed up many nights at the Keck telescope photographing the center of Milky Way and then superimposed each still photograph on top of the other to make a film showing how stars around the center behaved due to Sag A*. In 2020, we celebrate her brilliance and dedication.

Roger Penrose Wins Nobel Prize In Physics

American theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, had once said: "Mathematicians are only dealing with the structure of the reasoning and they do not really care about what they're talking. The physicist, on the other hand, has meaning to all the phrases."

Sir Roger Penrose agrees.

In his 1997 book, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Penrose wrote: "Well, why am I talking about things when I do not know what they really mean? It is probably because I am a mathematician and mathematicians do not mind so much about this, so long as those things can say something about the connections between them."

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Cut to 2020, Penrose is the winner of Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. He shares it with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.

"I was good at maths, yes, but I didn't necessarily do very well in my tests. But the teacher realized if he gave me enough time, I would do well," the laureate recalled.

While he had been working proactively to unravel the mysteries of the universe since the 50s, Roger Penrose came to a much wider public attention after publishing of A Brief History of Time in 1988.

Penrose and Hawking go way back. They both were the winners of Wolf Prize in 1988 for Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems (1965). Their friendship and collaboration were captured even in the movies: Hawking (2004) and Theory of Everything (2014).

See also: Best Physics Movies

Sir Penrose was most heavily inspired by his father, Lionel Penrose, who was a psychiatrist and a geneticist. In fact, brilliance runs down their family: his grandfather was a renowned Irish artist, one of his brothers is a physicist himself and the other is a Chess grandmaster, his sister, a geneticist, has followed in her father's footsteps!

Since Penrose was purely a mathematician, his work was really abstract in that sense. But he was drawn to astrophysics by Dennis Sciama (who also was a doctoral advisor to Stephen Hawking).

And that is how they first met.

They proposed two types of singularities: space-like for non-rotating black holes and time-like for rotating black holes.

It was thought that in the eventual collapse of a star (to form a black hole), if the star is spinning and so possesses even some angular momentum, maybe the centrifugal force could counteract gravity and keep the singularity from forming.

Penrose-Hawking theorems showed that that cannot happen, and that a singularity will always form once an event horizon forms. In other words, Penrose proved with complicated maths that Black holes were not impossible and in fact a result of relativity.

Hence, in 2020, we celebrate Sir Roger Penrose's contributions to physics, his incredible writings on human consciousness and his life in general.

Albert Einstein on Gandhi, Non-Violence and India

Generations to come, will scarce believe, that such a man as this one, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. This was said of Mahatma Gandhi by Albert Einstein on the former's 70th birthday in 1939.

Einstein was deeply inspired by Gandhi's teachings and so much so that he called him the most enlightened of all the politicians of his time. The two never met but they exchanged letters among themselves. In other words, they were pen pals.

In 1950, two years after Gandhi's death, Einstein recorded an interview for United Nations from his study at Princeton University in New Jersey.

He said, "We should strive to do things in his spirit...Not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil."

Gandhi's picture framed in Einstein's study

On that radio interview, Einstein advocated for non-cooperation, a peaceful form of protest against what you believe is evil. Such a movement was launched by Gandhi in 1920s.

Einstein believed that if the world were to be improved, it could not be done simply with new scientific discoveries, it also had to encompass morals and ideals.

"In this respect I feel," Einstein said: "That the Churches have much guilt. She has always allied herself with those who rule, who have political power, and more often than not, at the expense of peace and humanity as a whole."

Einstein noted that the admiration for Mahatma Gandhi in all countries of the world rests on recognition of the fact that in time of utter moral decadence, Gandhi was perhaps the only statesman to stand for a higher level of human relationship in political sphere.

Their communication began through letters. Einstein wrote the following congratulatory letter to Gandhi in the 1930s (this was after their renowned Salt March from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi).

Translation:

"I use the presence of your friend in our home to send you these lines. You have shown through your works, that it is possible to succeed without violence even with those who have not discarded the method of violence.

We may hope that your example will spread beyond the borders of your country, and will help to establish an international authority, respected by all, that will take decisions and replace war conflicts.

P.S. I hope that I will be able to meet you face to face some day."

Gandhi responded, saying: "Dear friend, I was delighted to have your beautiful letter sent through Sundaram. It is a great consolation to me that the work I am doing finds favour in your sight. I do indeed wish that we could meet face to face and that too in India at my Ashram."

Despite their intentions, the two greats never met in person.

On Gandhi's death, Einstein wrote: He died as the victim of his own principles, because in time of disorder and general irritation in his country, he refused armed protection for himself.

5 Physicists Who Were Musically Gifted

Even though physics and music are two wildly separate fields...what is life without both of them? Without physics, there is no chemistry or biology, or that which we call living. Whereas, without music, the living cannot so eloquently express feelings such as joy, heartbreak, hope and so on.

Richard Feynman

This was a man full of life...He was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Even at old age, Feynman did not stop performing his famous "orange juice" song.

Albert Einstein

He had once said: "Life without playing music is inconceivable for me. I live my daydreams in music, I see my life in terms of music. If I were not a physicist I would probably be a musician. I get most joy in life out of my violin."

His mother, Pauline, played the piano reasonably well and she wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to make him fall in love with music but also to help him assimilate into German culture.

Max Planck

He was a German physicist who is known for proposing Quantum theory in 1901. Planck was a father figure to Einstein yet they both played music as if members of a western classical band.

Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played organ, piano and cello, and composed his own songs. However, instead of music, Planck chose physics for a career.

S.N. Bose

He was an Indian physicist and polymath who is known for having collaborated with Albert Einstein on his original work which came to be called Bose-Einstein statistics.

Satyendra Nath Bose was gifted at playing Esraj, an Indian stringed instrument, similar to violin. He used to perform for his students and colleagues in Calcutta and Dhaka universities.

Werner Heisenberg

He was a German physicist known for uncertainty principle, one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg was highly interested in music and played together with Albert Einstein if Max Planck called it off.

He started reading sheet music at the age of four! However, as Heisenberg grew older, his love for science outgrew his passion for music, despite which, music remained a lifelong hobby of his.

When A Teacher Learned From His Student

This is a special post about the relationship between a renowned student-and-teacher duo. They are Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy respectively, two of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century.

The lesson to learn here is that students are more "bindaas" meaning that they find hope when there's none...They discover joy even in the darkest of moments. Teachers, on the other hand, or adults beaten down by life's hardships, take themselves and life much too seriously.

Professor Hardy went to see Srinivasa Ramanujan in the hospital, who was terminally ill due to prolonged tuberculosis. Since they were both mathematicians, they always used to quip about numbers and letters.

Hardy, depressed over the fact that his dear student was going to die soon, remarked, that the taxi he had ridden in had a rather dull and ominous number... or so he felt.

"No sir!" A weak Ramanujan, replied after a brief pause. "It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

After pondering, Hardy couldn't help but smile. Hardy was the one to recognize Ramanujan's genius, and brought him to Cambridge University. Even now in his deathbed Hardy's favorite student managed to save the day.

The number happened to be 1729 which can be written in the following two ways:

1729 = 1³ + 12³

1729 = 9³ + 10³

Such numbers are called Hardy-Ramanujan numbers in the honor of their relationship. They are more commonly called taxicab numbers in pure mathematics.

There is a scene in the film, The Man Who Knew Infinity in which Dev Patel, who plays Ramanujan says, "I owe you so much." Professor Hardy, played by Jeremy Irons, looks him in the eye. "No, it is I who owes you!"

5 Poems Written By Famous Physicists

Although they mostly employ mathematical language in order to describe nature...but from time to time, physicists cave in to poetry. In this post, you will read some of the best poems written by the most renowned physicists in the world.

Robert Oppenheimer

He was an American theoretical physicist who contributed to our understanding of atoms, black holes and quantum tunneling. He wrote the following poem describing his memories of New Mexico.

It was evening when we came to the river

With a low moon over the desert

That we had lost in the mountains, forgotten.

What with the cold and the sweating

And the ranges barring the sky.

And when we found it again...

In the dry hills down by the river,

Half withered, we had

The hot winds against us.

There were two palms by the landing;

The yuccas were flowering; there was

a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.

We waited a long time, in silence.

Then we heard the oars creaking

And afterwards, I remember,

The boatman called us.

We did not look back at the mountains.

Tamarisks

Oppenheimer's friend, British physicist Paul Dirac, who hated poetry, quipped, "In science, one tries to tell people, something that no one ever knew before, in such a way as to be understood by everyone. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite!"


Paul Dirac

Ironically, Dirac wrote the following poem; quite full of gloom!

Age is, of course, a fever chill

That every physicist must fear.

He's better dead than living still

When once he's past his 30th year.

He was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and this poem, which is attributed to him, shows his dedication towards physics. Dirac was a complicated character; in fact, Einstein described him as an awful balance between genius and madness.



Albert Einstein

Einstein had a great reverence for Baruch Spinoza, who was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese origin, best-known for his conceptions of the self and the universe.

How much do I love that noble man,

More than I could tell with words!

I fear though he'll remain alone

With a holy halo of his own...

This poem was written by Einstein in 1920 in the honor of Spinoza. According to Spinoza, "What many people call God, few call the Laws of Physics."


Galileo Galilei

He was an Italian astronomer who is known to have broken the foundations of Aristotelian physics. Galileo discovered the law of inertia and made pioneering contributions to astronomy.

He wrote the following appreciation poem for mathematics; a free verse.

Nature is written in this grand book

Which stands continually open

Before our eyes

But cannot be understood

Without first learning

To comprehend the language

In which it is written.

Without which

It is impossible..

To even understand a word

Without which

One is just wandering

In a dark labyrinth.

According to Galileo, this was a language whose words were composed with triangles, circles and other shapes. Clearly, his intention was to say, that without math, it is impossible to understand natural phenomena.


Richard Feynman

He was an American Nobel Prize winning physicist who contributed to our understanding of the interaction between light and matter.

Out of the cradle

Onto dry land

Here it is standing:

Atoms with consciousness;

Matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea,

Wonders at wondering: I,

A universe of atoms

An atom in the universe.

In this poem, Feynman has demonstrated the great extent of his intellect and imagination. It shows the evolution of life from the oceans to land-walking creatures. It also shows that on an astronomical scale, his existence is meaningless; but on this scale, in which he's in, he himself is the universe!



James Maxwell

He was a Scottish physicist who unified the phenomena of electricity, magnetism and optics into one single framework. His work is considered equivalent to that of Einstein's.

The world may be utterly crazy

And life may be labour in vain;

But I'd rather be silly than lazy,

And would not quit life for its pain.

This poem was written by him in 1858 in a book titled, Segreto per esser felice, meaning, Secret to be happy. Maxwell was a great lover of Scottish poetry and wrote many of his own.

5 Talents of Richard Feynman Other Than Physics

Richard Feynman was one of the world’s greatest scientists who won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1965. But we recognize him more as an outstanding teacher, a story-teller and an everyday joker whose life, was a combination of his intelligence, curiosity and uncertainty.

Feynman had once said, "Everything is interesting once you go into it deeply enough." He used to enjoy every single aspect of life whatever it had to offer. In this post, therefore, let us look at the things Feynman excelled at, apart from physics of course.

Sketching

Did you know that Feynman was an outstanding pencil artist who used to sign off his paintings with a pseudonym: ofey. The following is a portrait of fellow physicist Hans Bethe, also a Nobel Prize winner, friend of his.

Physicist Richard Feynman had started drawing more often towards the end of his scientific career.

Bongo Playing

Feynman not only used to play bongo but also wrote songs to accompany the music. One of his famous songs was called, "Orange Juice" which he penned for his love of it.

You can just look at his old wrinkly face and wonder how and why he had so much charm even at old age?

Cosplay

Now this is interesting...because how many physicists do you know that loved to dress up? Well, Feynman was clearly an exception.

As queen Elizabeth II (from anonymous source at Caltech)

From Caltech archive

Poetry

Did you know that Feynman wrote a long free-verse poem titled, an atom in the universe, in 1955? His command over scientific language was unmatched...which is demonstrated by how he described the whole universe in only a glass of wine:

"If we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms...

The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars...

What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation..



Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it!

If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts: physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on..remember that nature does not know it!

So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!"

Teaching

This is not a surprise...of course we know him as the great explainer, right? Even Bill Gates has said, "Feynman had this amazing knack for making physics clear and fun at the same time. He was the best teacher I never had."

The public made him an icon because he was not only a great scientist and clown but also a great human being and a guide to his students in time of trouble.


Investigator

He was invited to investigate the Challenger disaster and found out the problem that caused the accident was trivial. Feynman did not shy away from blaming NASA.

He demonstrated that the material used in the shuttle's O-rings became less resilient in cold weather by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice-cold water.

NASA ultimately admitted that the disaster was caused by the primary O-ring not properly sealing in unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral.


Writing

Apart from writing physics books, Feynman had a knack for telling anecdotes. He wrote two autobiographical accounts, one of which, titled, 'What do you care what other people think?' was adapted into 1996 movie Infinity starring ‎Matthew Broderick and Patricia Arquette.


Summing up

He was a genius in truest sense of the word. According to Robert Oppenheimer, "Feynman was a second Dirac. Only this time human." Just to let you know, Oppenheimer and Dirac were Feynman's seniors. In fact, Paul Dirac was Feynman's hero growing up, and quite opposite of what Feynman was...Dirac hardly spoke a word or two.