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We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980

Science

The story behind the card

Sagan says this a few minutes into the first episode of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the thirteen-part television series he co-wrote and presented in 1980; it has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries. The idea behind the line is sound science: apart from hydrogen, which dates from the Big Bang, most of the atoms in our bodies, including carbon, oxygen and iron, were made inside earlier generations of stars and scattered when those stars died. Carl Sagan (1934–1996) was an American astronomer at Cornell University who worked on NASA's Viking and Voyager missions.

Türkçe oku
Biz, evrenin kendini tanıma yollarından biriyiz.
Carl Sagan, Kozmos, 1980

Sagan bu cümleyi, 1980'de birlikte yazıp sunduğu on üç bölümlük Kozmos: Kişisel Bir Yolculuk (Cosmos: A Personal Voyage) belgesel dizisinin ilk bölümünde, daha ilk dakikalarda söyler. Dizi o günden bu yana altmıştan fazla ülkede yayımlandı. Cümlenin arkasındaki fikir bilimsel olarak sağlamdır: Büyük Patlama'dan kalan hidrojen dışında, bedenimizdeki atomların çoğu, örneğin karbon, oksijen ve demir, daha önceki kuşak yıldızların içinde oluştu ve bu yıldızlar ölünce uzaya saçıldı. Carl Sagan (1934–1996), Cornell Üniversitesi'nde çalışmış, NASA'nın Viking ve Voyager görevlerinde yer almış Amerikalı bir gökbilimciydi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Carl Sagan
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