Journeys and Space and time

Ever since people could communicate with each other, the stars have been a big point of conversations. May it be through old tales about constellations or methods to keep yourself in the right direction, the stars have always been a point of fixation all throughout time. Constellations have had a huge impact on our ancient ancestors, be it through astrology or astronomy, constellations have still played pivotal roles in every day life. However, the stars that we see today aren't exactly the same stars that our ancestors have seen. For example, the constellation Leo the lion looks almost nothing like it did thousands of years ago. This is for a multitude of reasons, primarily due to the motion of the stars. 

The ability to travel even close to the speed of light is still far and away from our reach, and until we can get closer to reaching that goal, intergalactic space travel like in the movies will only be works of fictions they are now. Even the fastest machines that we've ever produced, the Voyager space crafts ( Mentioned in previous posts) only travel at 1/ 40,000 times the speed of light. That is a minuscule amount, and to reach the nearest star (Alpha Centari) 165,000 years. That's more then ten times the amount of times that humans have been alive. 

Just because traveling at the speed of light seems like work of fiction, hasn't stopped the brave few from contemplating it. Probably one of the most noteworthy is famous theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein's equations and theories have gone on to do amazing things and revolutionize our understandings of many things in many fields of science. Just a few of Einsteins many discoveries are: The photo electric affect, special relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy. Einstein has had many theories about the speed of light as well. One of his more famous ones was what would happen if we were to travel at the speed of light? This turns out to have an interesting answer. If I were to travel at the speed of light, time would slow down and even stop for me. So in essence, if I were traveling the speed of light and could stop whenever i wanted to, i could be anywhere instantaneously, without my knowledge of any time passing. This does help us in the minute chance that we do end up achieving speeds that approach the speed of light, traveling through vast space would be easier for us. Without us having to spend the years and years that it takes light to travel almost any distance in the cosmos, time would slow down to ridiculously slow speeds. 

Travelers Tales

Ever since the dawn of man, we have been fascinated with the prospect of leaving earth and investigating further into our universe then what we have always known. One of the first spacecraft to reach through our solar system was the voyager spacecraft. The voyager was a special spacecraft, normal solar powered propulsion methods wouldn't cut it for this craft, ( It would be too far away from the sun for this to work.) so the voyager was equipped with what was essentially a miniature nuclear reactor as a propulsion system. The Voyager had quite the journey on its way to the outer reaches of the universe, first it was shot around mars, using its gravity as a means of passive propulsion, next it was hurtled through the asteroid belt, (a lot less dangerous the movies would let you think) And finally Voyager reached what was its original goal, Jupiter. Voyager was originally meant to observe Jupiter and its various moons, on its way to the outer reaches of our solar system. After the craft observed what it was meant to on Jupiter, it began making its way past the gas giant planets, and finally passed Neptune on September 12, 2013, becoming the first spacecraft to pass into interstellar grounds.

There were other things that were interesting about Voyager then its means of transportation and the fact that it was a pioneer in its field, voyager was also the first spacecraft that was prepared to send a message to other beings aside from us. The contents of the voyager space craft,along with various other scientific equipment, was a golden record. This golden record contained Photos of earth and its life forms, a range of scientific information, and spoken greetings of the most prominent earth languages. Probably the most eerie of all the contents of this golden record, was the choice of music which they put on there. The song that they chose to represent us as the human race, alone with no one to accompany us besides ourselves, was classical music such as Beethoven and Bach. This is a kind of interesting message to send to aliens.(implying that they'll see it.) It could mean an entire range of things depending on how you interpret it, but i prefer to think that we were trying to tell them that not matter what happens and how advanced we become, we will always remember our past and where we came from.

Some things that molecules do

This is going to be a different type of blog. Its going to be different in the sense that I'm going to be explaining one of the episodes of the new Cosmos television series, one which I thoroughly enjoyed and feel like it should be shared with more people. This episode was titled: "Some things that molecules do". I'm reviewing this episode rather then a chapter of the book because Sagan touches quite heavily on the topic of evolution in the original cosmos, so i figured that reviewing the episode would have a similar effect as to reviewing the chapter in the book. 

One of the more interesting things that this show featured was how wild wolves evolved into domesticated dogs which we know today. What originally happened when dogs first came to be were wolves which weren't  afraid of humans had an advantage over the ones who were. Humans offered a source of food wherever they went, and also offered some protection from other wolves whom weren't so brave when it came to humans. Gradually, wolves became friendlier and friendlier to humans, eventually becoming hunting partners and symbiotically helping each other hunting and gathering food. We assume that this all happened around 8000-13000 years ago, just around the time that people were starting to settle down and start making towns and cities. 

One of the most prominent arguments against evolution and natural selection are the existence of unbelievably complicated organs which we have, such as the eye. The eye is such a specialized and fine tuned organ that there is no way that something like this could have come from mere chance... or did it? The fact of the matter is that the eye ins't actually perfect. There are hundreds of improvements which could be made on the eye all of which would make it more efficient and effective. The show then proceeds to outline the progression which the eye has had, from the first light-sensitive cells to exist, all the way to the we which we see in most animals in modern day times. 

One of the more interesting topics that was discussed in the show were the 5 major mass extinctions which have occurred throughout the earths existence. Everyone has heard of the infamous ice age that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs, however the ice age pales in comparison to the rest of the 5 major mass extinctions. One which was focused on in the show was the Permian- Triassic event, more commonly referred to as "The Great Dying". During this time, 57% of all families, 83% of all genera and 90% to 96% of all species went extinct. This mass extinction was caused by a sudden release of methane gas that made most

 of the habitats on earth unlivable. There was one animal in particular though which has survived and flourished in circumstances just like these. The tardigrade is undoubtedly the toughest animal to ever live. They can survive in nearly any habitat imaginable, from the antarctic to death valley, they can even survive in the vacuum of space, these guys have been found, everywhere. 

I encourage all of you to watch this episode here!

Mars: the big red planet

Humans have been around for thousands of years, mammals for millions, and life for billions. Life is a special thing for us. Its something that defines things, you either have life or you don't. Because of humans' natural curiosity about life, we've tried to find it anywhere that we possibly could; and for the most part we have. There are tube worms living in the bottom of the ocean, camels that can live in the desert without water for months, and even funguses that grow inside of volcanoes. However there is one place that we just cant seem to find life, space. Space is a good place to look for life, most scientists agree that there is life out there. However, for the longest time people weren't looking in the right spot. Yes, were talking about the famous martians.

Its completely logical to look for life on mars; its the closest climate wise to earth, there's evidence to support water on mars, and finally the fact that we didn't know any better. If you think about it, for a person living in the dark ages of science it would seem normal for every planet to have life. Though, after careful observation its clear that there are loads of requirements if you want to have life somewhere, this is a topic for a different post though.

There is something interesting that i noticed while reading an earlier chapter which i found half ironic, half sad that it took us so long to make this amount of progress. Sagan was talking about the difference between scientific minded people and normal people, and one of the things he mentioned was at a dinner party he'd discuss things about people rather then concepts and ideas. One of the things that he talked about was asking the question of when do you think a rover will be sent to mars? I laughed when i read this; here a book that is 30 years old, talking about something achievable 30 years ago, and we took this long to send the curiosity rover to mars. I think this really tells about the priority of scientific discovery in modern day times. We'd much rather argue about imaginary lines on the ground then make meaningful discoveries unfortunately.



Even though mars has been the source of some unfortunate let downs involving life it has had quite the reputation when it comes to astrology and mythology. Mars was named for the God of war in Greek mythology. Mars was the most prominent and most worshiped of all the Gods in Greek mythology. Mars has also had quite a name when it comes to astrology. Mars is known as the planet of energy, action, and desire. Its been said that mars is what gets us out of bed in the morning and what gives us the power to do anything. Mars is our anger, our passion and all of our might. So, all in all i think mars has been held in high regard among people, in  spite of the huge let down in terms of being a life bearing planet. 

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler is a prominent figure when speaking about the dawn of astronomy. His life is one that is full of twists and turns, and Cosmos goes into detail about numerous aspects of his life. Ill be giving a brief description of his life, and his contributions to the field of astronomy. 


Kepler was born December 27, 1571 and as a boy he was sent to Protestant seminary school to learn how to become a clergy man. Kepler realized at an early age that the life of a zealot was not for him. He was instead driven by space, which was his biggest curiosity and his muse. Kepler was a gifted mathematician, and used his talent to make observations about the stars that was on par with the greats of the time. He  has a small fling as being a teacher; unfortunately a miserable failure. Kepler has been said to have a gifted mind, however its not always the smartest people that make the best teachers. He was horribly inept at getting his ideas across to his students, most of which dropped from his classes. He quickly left the classroom and went into the laboratory, asking for a grant from the duke of wurtemberg. His proposal was unfortunately rejected, which is when he met another prominent figure of the time, a schoolteacher named Tycho. Tycho was much better off then the poor Kepler, owning numerous instruments all of which costed more the Kepler life earnings. Kepler and Tycho did end up working together at some point, its a shame that it only happened after Tycho died. Tycho had given Kepler some key data that was needed for him to finish one of his theories. Kepler published many works about physics and astronomy. Johannes Kepler died in Regensburg in 1630. 

Kepler is best known for his 3 laws on planetary motion. 

                                          Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.

This is a good example of what Kepler proved; that the eclipse is an accurate representation of a planet, and the circle is what was previously thought for it to be. 

The law of equal areas 

The law of equal areas states that a line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. This basically means that an equal amount of area will be covered when an equal amount of time has passed at any 2 distances in the planets orbit. 

The law of periods

line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. This essentially means that it will take shorter amounts of time for planets with smaller radii to circle the sun. Thus why mercury has an 88 day long year

Chapter one- The shores of the cosmic ocean

In the first chapter of cosmos Carl Sagan has some very interesting things to say about the ancient philosophers and their impacts on our knowledge of space. One person whom he details is a philosopher by the name of Eratosthenes. Eratosthenes was the first person to estimate the circumference of the earth and he did so in a pretty ingenious way. There were two stakes on the ground; one in the city he was residing in, Alexandria, and another in a city which was 900 miles from him, Sienna. At exactly noon, both him and his assistant measured the angles of the shadows cast by the stakes. Using this, he was able to estimate the circumference of the earth.

This diagram pretty well describes what the experiment Eratosthenes was trying to do.

Not only did this tell Eratosthenes the circumference of the earth, but it also told him with certainty that the world 100% had to be round. With this knowledge, he made it safe for others to venture far into the unknown and sail west as far as they could, and when you think about it, adventurers sailing westward is  like us exploring space. People venturing out into the unknown just to see whats out there. Its interesting seeing these parallels in history like this.

Introduction/ Preface

Cosmos, by Carl Sagan is one of the best selling science books published in the English language.  After being published in 1980, a television series depicting some of the themes of the book was put into production. The series was put into production and run around the same time that the book was published. It's been said that the book and the movie were meant to be experienced in tandem, knowing that i will be both reading the book and watching the series at to get the entire experience of the Cosmos.