What are Carl Sagan's contributions in modern astronomy.?

Question

Like what he did.

Answer 1

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrobiologist, and highly successful science popularizer. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was the most-watched PBS program until Ken Burns' The Civil War in 1990. A book to accompany the program was also published.

He also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name starring Jodie Foster. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated scientific skepticism, humanism, and the scientific method.

Dr. Carl Sagan helped design the plaques carried by both Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. These plaques, bearing the images of a man and a woman as well as a diagram showing Earth's location in the Galaxy, may one day be found by an extraterrestrial civilization.

Carl Sagan was an astronomer and a Pulitzer Prize winning author who was often described as "the scientist who made the Universe clearer to the ordinary person". Dr. Sagan helped to popularize science through the writing of hundreds of articles and over two dozen books. His television series "Cosmos" became the most watched show in public television history. It was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 different countries.

His scientific curiosity led him to earn four degrees in physics, astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago. Carl Sagan taught and conducted research at Harvard University. He was among the first to determine that life could have existed on Mars. In 1968, Dr. Sagan became a professor at Cornell University where he was also director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He was well-known as a pioneer in the field of exobiology, the study of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He constantly appealed to NASA to extend its exploration of the Universe.

In his role as a visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Carl Sagan helped design and manage the Mariner 2 mission to Venus, the Mariner 9 and Viking trips to Mars, the Voyager mission to the outer solar system and the Galileo mission to Jupiter. Dr. Sagan suffered from a rare bone marrow disease called myelodysplasia. Complications from the disease caused the pneumonia which ended his life on December 20,1996.

Along with Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, he founded the Planetary Society in 1980, which inspires and involves the world's public in space exploration through advocacy, projects, and education. Today, The Planetary Society is the largest and most influential public space organization group on Earth.

Sagan began researching the origins of life in the 1950s and went on to play a leading role in every major U.S. spacecraft expedition to the planets.

"We have looked close-up at dozens of new worlds. Worlds we never saw before. And unless we are so stupid to destroy ourselves, we are going to be moving out to space in the next century," he said. "And if I'm fortunate enough to have played a part in the first preliminary reconnaissance in the solar system, that's a terrifically exciting thing."

"We have swept through all of the planets in the solar system, from Mercury to Neptune, in a historic 20 (to) 30 year age of spacecraft discovery," Sagan once said.

Outside his research, Sagan also hosted a popular television series on PBS called "Cosmos." He published hundreds of scientific papers; wrote eight books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning "The Dragons of Eden"; and was a professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Sagan was central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet Venus. In the early 1960s, no one knew for certain the basic conditions of Venus' surface and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report (which were later depicted for popularization in a Time-Life book, Planets) — his own view was that the planet was dry and very hot, as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a surface temperature of 500°C (900°F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project. Mariner 2 confirmed his views on the conditions of Venus in 1962.

Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa may possess oceans (a subsurface ocean, in the case of Europa) or lakes, thus making the hypothesized water ocean on Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. Sagan also helped solve the mystery of the reddish haze seen on Titan, revealing that it is composed of complex organic molecules constantly raining down to the moon's surface.

He furthered insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely hot and dense with crushing pressures. He also perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through greenhouse gases. Sagan speculated (along with his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter) about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars’ surface, concluding that they were not seasonal or vegetation changes as most believed, but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms.

Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.

Answer 2

Carl Sagan Discoveries

Answer 3

That is ok. Lots of people don't know who Carl Sagan is (if you are under the age of 25. Carl Sagan was a visionary, educator, scientist, philosopher. To put it simply, he was a pretty cool guy that asked a lot of questions and posed a lot of plausible answers, espcially at a time when know one else would, even with all the work NASA was doing. And he had the craziest and most unique voice I have ever heard. Hugo Weaving modeled the voice for Agent Smith in the Matrix films.

Answer 4

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RE:
What are Carl Sagan's contributions in modern astronomy.?
Like what he did.

Answer 5

His principle achievements were providing theoretical insights concerning planetary phenomena including the first accurate depiction of the nature of the Venusian atmosphere and the subsurface liquid oceans of Titan and Europa.