Alright. Hello everyone!
My name is Fira and I'm one of the
educators from the Lawrence Hall of Science
and welcome to today's Storytime.
Today we're doing another episode of Stories in STEAM
where we highlight and celebrate scientists
and their contributions to science
And before we begin, please give this
video a like
and subscribe to our channel for more
science content.
So yes! Let's get into our story right away.
So this is the story that i'm gonna be
reading for you today.
It is the story of Carl Sagan and his contributions in looking for the possibilities of life outside of earth
And yeah let's get right into it!
So Carl Sagan was an astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, and astrobiologist.
His best known contribution is
his research on "extraterrestrial life."
So you may have heard of this term before
but when we say extraterrestrial life,
we mean about life that may not originate from Earth
or life that may occur outside of Earth.
So perhaps like aliens or perhaps other
forms of lives that we may not know about.
And Carl Sagan did his research on that.
He's very well known for his
research on extraterrestrial life.
So Sagan also promoted science and
astronomy to the public
by writing popular science books as well as
co-writing and narrating the television series "COSMOS."
He also promoted the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence.
So Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934.
Sagan claimed that he had inherited his analytical urges from his mother
and his sense of wonder from his father.
When Sagan was only 5 years old, he went
to a library by himself to look for books about stars
And the reason why he did this is because when he asked his parents or his teachers, what are stars,
their answers didn't satisfy him.
He still didn't get an idea of what stars were.
So that's why he went to like to the library by himself.
And then after finding some books and finding out
that stars are actually very far away Suns,
that was when Sagan had
a realization about the actual scale of the universe.
And that is how his interest in astronomy started.
Then his interest in astronomy grew even more
after he visited the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History, at the age of six.
His curiosity also grew from reading science fiction stories
which made him imagine life on other
planets such as Mars.
So this was when Sagan started imagining
and thinking if life on other planets was possible.
And at first, Sagan actually only
considered astronomy as a hobby.
It wasn't until in his junior year in high school
that he decided to pursue astronomy as a career.
So when he was only 16, Sagan had
already started university.
He attended the University of Chicago
where he also pursued his
graduate and postgraduate studies.
And then after he was done with his studies,
from 1960 to 1962, Sagan was a
Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley.
So that meant that for a period of time,
he was doing research right here, in UC
Berkeley, in our campus.
He then continued as an assistant
professor at Harvard University
but he was denied tenure at 1968.
And then following this, Sagan
accepted Cornell University's invitation
to become a faculty member.
So he accepted it and then he stayed in
Cornell for the rest of his career.
Sagan was involved heavily
with the U.S. space program.
He was an advisor to NASA
where he briefed Apollo astronauts
before they went to the moon
and he also contributed to many robotic
spacecraft missions.
And this one is one of the most iconic
things about Sagan I feel like,
and it's that he assembled the first
physical message that was sent into space.
It was a gold-plated plaque that was
launched on the rocket Pioneer 10,
launched in 1972, and on Pioneer 11
in the following year.
So with these plaques, what Sagan was
aiming to do is that he wants
to be able to it's sort of like
an attempt to reach extraterrestrial life.
And Sagan continued perfecting his
design of the golden plaque
and then he finally developed the most
elaborate message
which is the Voyager Golden Record,
which was sent out in with
the Voyager space probe in 1977.
So here is the picture of the Golden Record
and here it is, attached on this space probe.
It's this golden disk right here.
So these records are sort of like time capsules.
They are filled with selected images and sounds that portray the diversity of life and culture on earth.
And the intention of these records was
so that intelligent extraterrestrial life
could learn about the Earth and the life on Earth.
So pretty much, you know, if aliens or other extraterrestrial life happen to find the record one day,
they'll be able to learn about us, here on Earth,
and I think that's very exciting to think about.
Sagan also contributed to our knowledge of planets.
He proposed that the surface temperature
of Venus is extremely dry and hot.
So here is the picture of Venus
and then the space probe Mariner 2
confirmed his hypothesis.
So we now know that the surface of Venus is very dry and very hot,
so therefore, Venus is not suitable for sustaining life.
He also contributed insights to the
atmosphere properties of Venus and Jupiter.
He stated that Venus is hot and hostile of life
due to a runaway greenhouse effect
and that's basically what's making Venus very very hot.
Meanwhile, him and his colleague at Cornell
speculated about the possibilities of
life in Jupiter's clouds
because it turns out that the clouds in Jupiter
are rich in organic molecules which
could be a possibility of life.
Sagan is also well known for his research on the
possibilities of extraterrestrial life.
He was one of the first to
hypothesize that Jupiter's moon —
so not the planet itself but its moon Europa —
might have oceans underneath its surface,
thus having the potential to hold life.
So now instead of just life existing on other planets
perhaps life could exist in the moons of other planets
because he hypothesized that Europa
might have subsurface water
and liquid water is actually one of the
most important factors that is needed to sustain life.
So perhaps, there is life in the moon of Jupiter and Europa.
He also made an experimental demonstration
that amino acids can be produced from
basic chemicals through radiation.
So amino acids is a substance
that can exist in human beings
and he's showing that it's possible
for these substances to appear
in certain conditions, which means
and shows us that life
can appear in places that we may not think about.
And that's really exciting and interesting.
As of 2017, he is the most cited scientist of SETI.
Other than his research contributions,
Sagan also popularized science
through books and TV shows.
He wrote some science books
and some of them got really popular
such as the "Pale Blue Dot," "Broca's Brain,"and the "The Dragons of Eden."
and the dragons of eden actually won him
the pulitzer prize in 1977.
And then in 1980, he co-wrote and
narrated the tv series, "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage."
This show actually won an Emmy award and a Peabody award.
The show became really really popular
and it became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television
and the show has been seen
by over 500 million people in 60 countries.
That's amazing and
it's such a huge achievement for a TV show.
And I think it's really cool how Sagan is a scientist
but he's still able to be active in entertainment and
he was able to promote science through it.
So Sagan obviously was an outstanding astronomer
and he received many awards and honors
for his works and contributions.
He received the NASA
Distinguished Public Service Medal
and here's a picture of the medal here.
He also received the National Academy of Science's Public Welfare Medal.
He also received the Isaac Asimov Award,
which he receive from Committee of Skeptical Inquiry.
And then he was also named as the "99th Greatest American" on Discovery channel's TV series
"Greatest American."
He was also inducted to the International Space Hall of Fame.
and he also got a stone that is dedicated to him
in the celebrity path in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
So yeah. And with that, we've reached the end of
our story time about Carl Sagan.
I will leave it with a quote
that was one of my favorite quotes from him,
which is that "We are made of star stuff."
Whenever I think about this quote, I feel really happy because it reminds me of the wonders of the universe.
So yeah, thank you so much for
joining us for our story time today.
I hope you enjoyed learning the story of Carl Sagan
and I hope he inspires you
as much as he has inspired me.
So yeah, once again thank you so much for watching.
Don't forget to give this video a like and subscribe to the Lawrence Hall of Science Youtube channel
for more science content.
All right, I hope you're staying safe and
healthy as always.
Bye everyone!
