Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist and author. He contributed to many breakthroughs in these fields but perhaps his most impressive quality and work was in communication. He had a skill that not many practitioners in these fields possess, he could communicate ideas and information in an easy understandable way that made colpex scientific information more accessible to the general public. it id this quality that makes him a very interesting subject for this task. he worked on the TV program Cosmos: A personal Voyage. The tv show is the most widely viewed show in the history of American public television. the show was seen by atleast 500 million people in 60 countries. This skill with communication links very well to illustration and his work on extraterrestrial communication used many of the same philosophies as modern illustration.

He assembled the first physical messages sent into space. the messages we designed in a way that could potentially be understood by extraterrestrial life. They were called to pioneer Plaque and Voyager golden Record.

 The image above is of the Pioneer Plaque and below there is an explanation of the information included within the design.

 These next two images are of the Voyager Golden Records that were launched into space in 1977 aboard both of the Voyager Spacecraft. each record contained both images and sounds that were designed to communicate the diversity of life and culture on earth. Voyager 1 will pass withing 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445, the constellation Camelopardalis but not for around 40,000 years.

Although his work on these messages was very scientific and considered his ideas about to idea itself is more poetic, he said "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

President Jimmy carter echoed his sentiments saying "This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours."

The effort undertaken for this task shows the dedication and belief in the idea. this was a message that he knew would not receive a reply but felt strongly enough about it to put in the time and effort to make sure it was done properly and would successfully communicate our species and cultures. His work gives a new perspective on what is important and how small we all are in the grand scheme of things.