60 Fun Facts About Carl Sagan

Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage has been seen by at least how many people worldwide?

It won two Emmys and a Peabody and was American public television's most watched series until The Civil War in 1990.

For which book did Sagan win the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction?

It introduced the Cosmic Calendar, compressing the history of the universe into a single year.

Which director filmed Sagan's novel Contact, completing it after his death?

The film ends with the dedication 'For Carl', and his photo appears in it.

In which New York City borough was Sagan born in 1934?

The family lived in a modest apartment in Bensonhurst.

What was the trade of Sagan's Ukrainian-born father, Samuel?

In the worst Depression years he also worked as a movie theatre usher.

Sagan described a visit to which 1939 event, with its Futurama exhibit and time capsule, as a defining moment?

As an adult he would build his own time capsules and fire them into space.

When the young Sagan asked a librarian for something on the stars, what did she first bring him?

The right book told him the stars were suns, but very far away, 'a kind of religious experience'.

Sagan's family moved in 1948 to which New Jersey town, where he went to high school?

He was president of the chemistry club and voted most likely to succeed.

Sagan's prize-winning high school essay compared human contact with advanced aliens to what?

The judges thought the subject controversial but were won over by his rhetoric.

At what age did Sagan enter the University of Chicago, one of the few colleges that would take him?

He found himself in a physics department 'orbiting around Enrico Fermi'.

Who supervised Sagan's doctoral thesis on the physical study of the solar system's worlds?

Kuiper was then the only full-time planetary astronomer, and taught him back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Secret 1958 Project A119, on which Sagan and Kuiper worked, planned a nuclear detonation where?

Sagan later leaked the classified paper titles in a scholarship application, a slip revealed in 1999.

From radio observations, Sagan concluded that the surface of Venus was roughly how hot?

Mariner 2 confirmed his dry, hellish Venus in 1962, against those who imagined a balmy paradise.

Which Nobel laureate and former mentor wrote to Harvard's tenure committee recommending against Sagan?

Urey, an old-time empiricist, thought Sagan got too much publicity and theorised too freely.

Which Cornell astronomer had courted Sagan to move to Ithaca even before Harvard denied him tenure?

Sagan stayed at Cornell for nearly thirty years, until his death.

At Cornell, Sagan directed the Laboratory for what?

He became the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences in 1976.

As a NASA adviser, Sagan briefed which astronauts before their flights?

He later argued that robotic missions were a better use of money than the Shuttle and the space station.

Sagan assembled the first physical message sent into space, a gold-plated plaque on which 1972 probe?

Pioneer 11 carried a copy the next year.

Alongside Bach and Beethoven, which rock and roll star's music is on the Golden Record launched in 1977?

The record, aboard both Voyagers, is a sample of the sights and sounds of Earth.

Sagan was among the first to suggest which moon of Jupiter might hide a subsurface ocean of water?

The Galileo spacecraft later confirmed it indirectly; he also proposed liquid oceans on Saturn's Titan.

Sagan concluded that the changing colours on Mars were caused not by vegetation but by what?

He also helped solve the mystery of Titan's reddish haze: organic molecules raining down.

In 1985 Sagan testified to the US Congress about which threat to Earth's climate?

He likened it to the runaway warming that had turned Venus into a furnace.

Which planetary science journal did Sagan edit from 1975 to 1979?

He served the journal in various roles for twelve years.

Sagan co-founded which organisation in 1980 and served as its first president?

He also sat on the board of the SETI Institute.

Sagan's first wife, who later updated his Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Life, was which biologist?

Their sons Dorion and Jeremy were born before the marriage ended in 1964.

Sagan delivered the 1977 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on what subject?

They came the same year the Voyagers left Earth carrying his Golden Record.

Cosmos drew notably on which earlier documentary series by Jacob Bronowski?

Sagan co-wrote the 13 episodes with Ann Druyan.

The production of Cosmos recreated which lost building of the ancient world?

Sagan used it to mourn the knowledge lost when it burned.

Besides Bach and Vivaldi, which electronic composer's music featured prominently in Cosmos?

His 'Heaven and Hell' became the series' signature theme.

Sagan wrote the introduction to which physicist's runaway bestseller?

In 1988 he, Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke discussed 'God, the Universe and Everything Else' on television.

Sagan's Cosmos sequel took its title from an Earth photo taken by which spacecraft?

He had proposed the picture himself; the audiobook was added to the National Recording Registry in 2023.

Writing Contact, Sagan asked physicist Kip Thorne for advice on the physics of what?

He needed a way to get his heroine Ellie Arroway to Vega; the query led Thorne to new research on time travel.

Sagan briefly advised Kubrick on which film, urging its aliens be suggested rather than shown?

He read Verne, Wells and Astounding Science Fiction as a boy and always credited science fiction with leading him to science.

Besides Sagan, which AI expert did Asimov say had a greater intellect than his own?

Sagan spoke at the Nebula Awards in 1969 through his friendship with Asimov.

In a column for which magazine did Sagan first propose his 'Baloney Detection Kit'?

He expanded it in his penultimate book, The Demon-Haunted World.

Sagan's 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' echoed a near-identical line by which fellow sceptic?

The idea goes back to Laplace: the weight of evidence should match the strangeness of the facts.

Which controversial author of Worlds in Collision did Sagan challenge to a debate in 1974?

He credited Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies with teaching him critical thinking.

'Sagan's number' is the number of what?

He put it at 10 sextillion in 1980; later estimates run to 300 sextillion.

Sagan never said 'billions and billions'. Which talk-show host's impression made it famous?

Sagan took it well and titled his final book Billions and Billions.

After Sagan objected to an Apple computer code-named after him, engineers renamed it 'BHA', meaning what?

The Power Macintosh 7100 had been dubbed 'Carl Sagan' in the hope Apple would make billions and billions.

Sagan was the 'S' in the 1983 TTAPS paper that introduced which chilling term?

His colleague Richard Turco coined it; Edward Teller later called Sagan 'an excellent propagandist'.

Sagan was arrested twice in the 1980s for climbing the fence at which US facility?

The 'Nevada Desert Experience' protests followed Reagan's refusal to match Gorbachev's test moratorium.

Sagan resigned from the Condon Committee and gave up his top-secret clearance in protest at what?

He became more politically active still after marrying Ann Druyan in 1981.

Sagan's son Nick went on to write episodes of which television franchise?

Nick's voice also opens Dream Theater's tribute song 'Pale Blue Dot'.

What was the licence plate on Sagan's orange 1970 Porsche 914?

He also drove a red Porsche 911 Targa and lived in an Egyptian revival house on a cliff in Ithaca.

Asked about his religious beliefs in 1996, what did Sagan call himself?

His son Dorion said he believed in 'the God of Spinoza and Einstein', God not behind nature but as nature.

Under what pseudonym did Sagan write a 1971 essay on smoking cannabis for Marihuana Reconsidered?

The authorship was revealed by his friend Lester Grinspoon after his death.

In 1952 the teenage Sagan asked Dean Acheson how the US would respond if what proved extraterrestrial?

He later rejected an alien explanation for UFOs but thought the reports worth studying.

Sagan received three bone marrow transplants during his final illness. Who was the donor?

He died of pneumonia in Seattle in December 1996, aged 62, after two years of myelodysplasia.

The landing site of which 1997 mission to the red planet was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station?

The plaque quotes him: 'Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you.'

Despite receiving its Public Welfare Medal, Sagan was denied membership of which body, reportedly over his media fame?

His reputation among scientists was far more polarised than among the public.

Who hosted the 2014 sequel series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey?

Druyan had co-written the original series with Sagan.

Cosmos was the most-watched American public TV series until which 1990 documentary overtook it?

Ken Burns's series ended a decade-long reign for Sagan's programme, which reached 60 countries.

In which city did Sagan die of pneumonia in December 1996?

He was being treated at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; he is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Ithaca.

Which Sagan student led the team that landed the rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004?

Both rovers far outlived their planned 90-day missions.

How long is the Sagan Planet Walk, the scale model of the Solar System opened in Ithaca in 1997?

It runs from The Commons downtown to the Sciencenter, a hands-on museum.

Sagan helped solve the mystery of the reddish haze on which moon of Saturn?

The colour comes from complex organic molecules constantly raining down onto the surface.

Roughly how many scientific papers and articles did Sagan publish in his career?

He wrote them alongside popular books that began with The Cosmic Connection.

How many Nobel laureates signed Sagan's 1982 pro-SETI petition in the journal Science?

The petition marked a big jump in respectability for what was then a controversial field.

In which Brooklyn neighbourhood was Sagan born and raised in a modest apartment?

His mother Rachel was a New York housewife and his father a garment worker from Ukraine.