Glorious Dawn - Carl Sagan

A few months ago, this fantastic video remix of various things Carl Sagan said went viral and basically everyone I knew online was talking about it. When I heard it, I immediately became mildly obsessed with it, listened to it 8 times, and then proceeded to send it to everyone else I knew, as is expected of something like this. The person who made it also made the video and mp3 available for free (bless them) so I have them in my permanent possession now :) but I also have it linked here.



Anyway, I didn't know much about Carl Sagan except for the very brief and wonderful love story about him and Ann Druyan and their work on the golden record included in the Voyager expedition from the Radiolab episode about Space. So I went on a cursory search of information about him beginning with the Carl Sagan wikipedia article.

There are so many reasons to find him and his work totally fascinating, not the least of which is his apparent talent of bringing complex scientific ideas to average people. I feel like he is a great example of someone whose passion for something exceeds that thing's natural appeal in such a way that makes it accessible to everyone else around him. For instance, take this sentence from the Wikipedia article which . . . says as much "Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos—simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the earth in comparison to the universe."

Also, this: "Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own." I think this speaks to my general fascination with people who are brilliant and my nerd-crushes on all of them.

And also, some really interesting stuff about UFO's and . . . other things which remind me of the X-Files and are great. :) (I did find a mention of the particular episode that I was thinking of, by the way, on a wikipedia article about the Pioneer 10 spacecraft that they sent the golden record on. . . . "In the X-Files episode "Little Green Men", Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 can be heard whilst characters discuss the Golden Record.")

Here is something further about the remix that I didn't know: "In 2009, clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos were used as the basis for A Glorious Dawn, the first video produced for the Symphony of Science, an educational music video production by composer John Boswell. Musician Jack White later released this song as a vinyl single under his record label Third Man Records.[51] Additional clips were used in the followup video, We Are All Connected, which featured Sagan alongside other noted scientists Richard Feynman, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye" I think this might be from Wikipedia or something. Not sure.