Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 10h

"What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

8 97 490

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 22h

"There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises."

-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

1 34 190

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 1d

"Once intelligent beings achieve technology and the capacity for self-destruction of their species, the selective advantage of intelligence becomes more uncertain."

-Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

12 140 600

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 1d

A gentle warning from Carl Sagan

6 85 240

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 2d

"We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

5 83 490

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 3d

"The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee."

-Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

2 48 310

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 4d

"If you’re too resolutely and uncompromisingly sceptical, you’re going to miss (or resent) the transforming discoveries in science, and either way you will be obstructing understanding and progress. Mere scepticism is not enough."

- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

6 65 270

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 5d

"Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science."

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

6 61 270

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 6d

"Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone."

-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

9 57 260

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 7d

"The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines."

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

9 54 340

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 7d

"By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

3 26 190

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 8d

"There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

6 84 440

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 8d

"Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic."

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

9 110 400

Reposted by Saganism

Astronomy 🔭 @astronomy.bsky.social · 10d

A tiny dark nebula floats in front of the glowing Eagle Nebula, stark in silhouette. This small Bok globule just a fraction of a light-year across lies about 7,000 light-years away, with young stars and gas glowing behind it.

Credit: Peter Bresseler

$A tiny dark nebula floats in front of the glowing Eagle Nebula, stark in silhouette. This small Bok globule just a fraction of a light-year across lies about 7,000 light-years away, with young stars and gas glowing behind it. Credit: Peter Bresseler$

27 160 1.2K

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 9d

"If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?"

-Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

2 28 160

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 10d

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.

10 12 170

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 10d

"All the atoms that make each of us up—the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains—were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light-years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff."
-Carl Sagan,The Demon-Haunted World

17 140 630

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 11d

"Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it.
Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse."
-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

3 70 320

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 12d

"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact."
-Carl Sagan

12 170 790

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 12d

"Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, and to steer a safe course."

-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

4 68 320

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 13d

"The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster."
-Carl Sagan

3 47 260

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 13d

"Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs -- in time, in space, and in potential -- the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors."

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

13 86 420

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 14d

"If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves."

- Carl Sagan, Pale blue dot

6 100 390

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 14d

"Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom."
-Carl Sagan

5 75 310

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 15d

"If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us."
- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

5 130 480