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string_and_words.txt
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SAGAN:
The cosmos is all that is...
...or ever was or ever will be.
Our contemplations of
the cosmos stir us.
There is a tingling in the spine,
a catch in the voice...
...a faint sensation,
as if a distant memory...
...of falling from a great height.
We know we are approaching
the grandest of mysteries.
The size and age of the cosmos...
...are beyond ordinary
human understanding.
Lost somewhere between
immensity and eternity...
...is our tiny planetary home,
the Earth.
For the first time,
we have the power to decide...
...the fate of our planet
and ourselves.
This is a time of great danger.
But our species is
young and curious and brave.
It shows much promise.
In the last few millennia,
we've made...
...the most astonishing
and unexpected discoveries...
...about the cosmos
and our place within it.
I believe our future depends
powerfully on...
...how well we understand
this cosmos...
...in which we float
like a mote of dust...
...in the morning sky.
(SEAGULL CHIRPS)
We're about to begin a journey
through the cosmos.
We'll encounter galaxies and suns
and planets...
...life and consciousness...
...coming into being,
evolving and perishing.
Worlds of ice and stars of diamond.
Atoms as massive as suns...
...and universes smaller than atoms.
But it's also a story
of our own planet...
...and the plants and animals
that share it with us.
And it's a story about us:
How we achieved our present
understanding of the cosmos...
...how the cosmos has shaped
our evolution and our culture...
...and what our fate may be.
We wish to pursue the truth,
no matter where it leads.
But to find the truth, we need
imagination and skepticism both.
We will not be afraid to speculate.
But we will be careful to distinguish
speculation from fact.
The cosmos is full beyond measure
of elegant truths...
...of exquisite interrelationships...
...of the awesome machinery of nature.
The surface of the Earth is
the shore of the cosmic ocean.
On this shore, we have learned
most of what we know.
Recently, we've waded
a little way out...
...maybe ankle-deep,
and the water seems inviting.
Some part of our being knows
this is where we came from.
We long to return.
And we can.
Because the cosmos is also within us.
We're made of star-stuff.
We are a way for the cosmos
to know itself.
The journey for each of us
begins here.
We're going to explore the cosmos
in a ship of the imagination...
...unfettered by ordinary limits
on speed and size...
...drawn by the music
of cosmic harmonies...
...it can take us anywhere
in space and time.
Perfect as a snowflake...
...organic as a dandelion seed...
...it will carry us...
...to worlds of dreams
and worlds of facts.
Come with me.
Before us is the cosmos
on the grandest scale we know.
We are far from the shores of Earth...
...in the uncharted reaches
of the cosmic ocean.
Strewn like sea froth
on the waves of space...
...are innumerable
faint tendrils of light.
Some of them containing hundreds...
...of billions of suns.
These are the galaxies...
...drifting endlessly
in the great cosmic dark.
In our ship of the imagination...
...we are halfway to the edge
of the known universe.
In this, the first of
our cosmic voyages...
...we begin to explore the universe
revealed by science.
Our course will eventually carry us
to a far-off and exotic world.
But from the depths of space,
we cannot detect even...
...the cluster of galaxies
in which our Milky Way is embedded...
...much less the sun or the Earth.
We are in the realm
of the galaxies...
...8 billion light years from home.
No matter where we travel,
the patterns of nature are the same...
...as in the form
of this spiral galaxy.
The same laws of physics
apply everywhere...
...throughout the cosmos.
But we have just begun to
understand these laws.
The universe is rich in mystery.
Near the center of
a cluster of galaxies...
...there's sometimes a rogue,
elliptical galaxy...
...made of a trillion suns...
...which devours its neighbors.
Perhaps this cyclone of stars...
...is what astronomers on Earth
call a quasar.
Our ordinary measures
of distance fail us...
...here in the realm of the galaxies.
We need a much larger unit:
the light year.
It measures how far
light travels in a year...
...nearly 10 trillion kilometers.
It measures not time,
but enormous distances.
In the Hercules cluster...
...the individual galaxies are
about 300,000 light years apart.
So light takes about 300,000 years...
...to go from one galaxy to another.
Like stars and planets and people...
...galaxies are born, live and die.
They may all experience
a tumultuous adolescence.
During their first 100 million years,
their cores may explode.
Seen in radio light,
great jets of energy...
...pour out and echo
across the cosmos.
Worlds near the core or along
the jets would be incinerated.
I wonder how many planets
and how many civilizations...
...might be destroyed.
In the Pegasus cluster,
there's a ring galaxy...
...the wreckage left from
the collision of two galaxies.
A splash in the cosmic pond.
Individual galaxies may
explode and collide...
...and their constituent stars
may blow up as well.
In this supernova explosion...
...a single star outshines
the rest of its galaxy.
We are approaching what
astronomers on Earth call...
...the Local Group.
Three million light years across,
it contains some 20 galaxies.
It's a sparse and rather typical
chain of islands...
...in the immense cosmic ocean.
We are now only 2 million
light years from home.
On the maps of space,
this galaxy is called M31...
...the great galaxy Andromeda.
It's a vast storm of stars
and gas and dust.
As we pass over it...
...we see one of its small
satellite galaxies.
Clusters of galaxies...
...and the stars of
individual galaxies...
...are all held together by gravity.
Surrounding M31...
...are hundreds of globular
star clusters.
We're approaching one of them.
Each cluster orbits the massive
center of the galaxy.
Some contain up to
a million separate stars.
Every globular cluster is
like a swarm of bees...
...bound by gravity...
...every bee, a sun.
From Pegasus,
our voyage has taken us...
...200 million light years
to the Local Group...
...dominated by two
great spiral galaxies.
Beyond M31 is another
very similar galaxy.
Its spiral arms slowly turning...
...once every quarter billion years.
This is our own Milky Way...
...seen from the outside.
This is the home galaxy
of the human species.
In the obscure backwaters
of the Carina-Cygnus spiral arm...
...we humans have evolved
to consciousness...
...and some measure of understanding.
Concentrated in its brilliant core...
...and strewn along its spiral arms...
...are 400 billion suns.
It takes light 100,000 years
to travel...
...from one end of the galaxy
to the other.
Within this galaxy are
stars and worlds...
...and, it may be, an enormous
diversity of living things...
...and intelligent beings
and space faring civilizations.
Scattered among the stars
of the Milky Way...
...are supernova remnants...
...each one the remains of
a colossal stellar explosion.
These filaments of glowing gas...
...are the outer layers of a star
which has recently destroyed itself.
The gas is unraveling...
...returning star-stuff
back into space.
(PULSAR HISSES)
And at its heart, are the remains
of the original star...
...a dense, shrunken stellar
fragment called a pulsar.
A natural lighthouse,
blinking and hissing.
A sun that spins twice each second.
Pulsars keep such perfect time
that the first one discovered...
...was thought to be a sign of
extraterrestrial intelligence.
Perhaps a navigational beacon...
...for great ships that travel
across the light years...
...and between the stars.
There may be such intelligences
and such starships...
...but pulsars are not
their signature.
Instead, they are
the doleful reminders...
...that nothing lasts forever...
...that stars also die.
We continue to plummet,
falling thousands of light years...
...towards the plane of the galaxy.
This is the Milky Way...
...our galaxy seen edge on.
Billions of nuclear furnaces...
...converting matter into starlight.
Some stars are flimsy
as a soap bubble.
Others are 100 trillion times
denser than lead.
The hottest stars are
destined to die young.
But red giants are mostly elderly.
Such stars are unlikely
to have inhabited planets.
But yellow dwarf stars,
like the sun...
...are middle-aged
and they are far more common.
These stars may have
planetary systems.
And on such planets, for the first
time on our cosmic voyage...
...we encounter rare forms of matter:
Ice and rock, air and liquid water.
Close to this yellow star...
...is a small, warm, cloudy world...
...with continents and oceans.
These conditions permit an even more
precious form of matter to arise:
Life.
But this is not the Earth.
Intelligent beings have evolved
and reworked this planetary surface...
...in a massive engineering
enterprise.
In the Milky Way galaxy,
there may be many worlds...
...on which matter has
grown to consciousness.
I wonder, are they very
different from us?
What do they look like?
What are their politics, technology,
music, religion?
Or do they have patterns of culture
we can't begin to imagine?
Are they also a danger to themselves?
Among the many glowing clouds
of interstellar gas...
...is one called the Orion Nebula...
...only 1500 light years from Earth.
These three bright stars
are seen by earthlings...
...as the belt in the familiar
constellation of Orion the hunter.
The nebula appears from Earth
as a patch of light...
...the middle star in Orion's sword.
But it is not a star.
It is another thing entirely.
A cloud that veils
one of nature's secret places.
This is a stellar nursery,
a place where stars are born.
They condense by gravity
from gas and dust...
...until their temperatures become
so high that they begin to shine.
Such clouds mark
the births of stars...
...as others bear witness
to their deaths.
After stars condense in the hidden
interiors of interstellar clouds...
...what happens to them?
The Pleiades are a loose cluster
of young stars...
...only 50 million years old.
These fledgling stars are just
being let out into the galaxy.
Still surrounded by wisps
of nebulosity...
...the gas and dust
from which they formed.
There are clouds
that hang like inkblots...
...between the stars.
They are made of fine, rocky dust...
...organic matter and ice.
Inside, a few stars begin to turn on.
Nearby worlds of ice evaporate...
...and form long, comet-like tails...
...driven back by the stellar winds.
Black clouds, light years across...
...drift between the stars.
They're filled with
organic molecules.
The building blocks of life
are everywhere.
They are easily made.
On how many worlds have such complex
molecules assembled themselves...
...into patterns we would
call alive?
Most stars belong to systems
of two or three or many suns...
...bound together by gravity.
Each system is isolated
from its neighbors...
...by the light years.
We are approaching a single,
ordinary, yellow dwarf star...
...surrounded by a system
of nine planets...
...dozens of moons, thousands of
asteroids and billions of comets:
The family of the sun.
Only four light hours from Earth
is the planet Neptune...
...and its giant satellite, Triton.
Even in the outskirts
of our own solar system...
...we humans have barely begun
our explorations.
Only a century ago...
...we were ignorant even of
the existence of the planet Pluto.
Its moon, Charon, remained
undiscovered until 1978.
The rings of Uranus were
first detected in 1977.
There are new worlds to chart
even this close to home.
Saturn is a giant gas world.
If it has a solid surface...
...it must lie far below
the clouds we see.
Saturn's majestic rings...
...are made of trillions
of orbiting snowballs.
We are now only 80 light minutes
from home.
A mere one and a half
billion kilometers.
The largest planet in our
solar system is Jupiter.
On its dark side, super bolts
of lightning illuminate the clouds...
...as first revealed by
the Voyager spacecraft in 1979.
Inside the orbit of Jupiter...
...are countless shattered
and broken world-lets:
The asteroids.
These reefs and shoals...
...mark the border of
the realm of giant planets.
We are now entering the shallows
of the solar system.
Here there are worlds with thin
atmospheres and solid surfaces:
Earth-like planets...
...with landscapes crying out
for careful exploration.
This world is Mars.
In 1976, after a year's voyage...
...two robot explorers from Earth...
...landed on this alien shore.
On Mars, there is a volcano
as wide as Arizona...
...and almost three times
the height of Mount Everest.
We've named it Mount Olympus.
This is a world of wonders.
Mars is a planet with ancient
river valleys...
...and violent sandstorms driven
by winds at half the speed of sound.
There is a giant rift in its surface
5000 kilometers long.
It's called Vallis Marinaris.
The valley of
the Mariner spacecraft...
...that came to explore Mars
from a nearby world.
In this, our first cosmic voyage...
...we have just begun
the reconnaissance of Mars...
...and all those other planets
and stars and galaxies.
In voyages to come,
we will explore them more fully.
But now, we travel the few
remaining light minutes...
...to a blue and cloudy world,
third from the sun.
The end of our long journey...
...is the world where we began.
Our travels allow us...
...to see the Earth anew...
...as if we came from somewhere else.
There are a hundred billion
galaxies...
...and a billion trillion stars.
Why should this modest planet
be the only inhabited world?
To me, it seems far more likely
that the cosmos is brimming over...
...with life and intelligence.
But so far, every living thing...
...every conscious being...
...every civilization
we know anything about...
...lived there, on Earth.
Beneath these clouds...
...the drama of the human species
has been unfolded.
We have, at last, come home.
Welcome to the planet Earth.
A place with blue nitrogen skies...
...oceans of liquid water...
...cool forests...
...soft meadows.
A world positively rippling with life.
In the cosmic perspective,
it is, for the moment, unique.
The only world in which
we know with certainty...
...that the matter of the cosmos
has become alive and aware.
There must be many such worlds
scattered through space...
...but our search for them
begins here...
...with the accumulated wisdom of
the men and women of our species...
...acquired at great cost...
...over a million years.
There was once a time when
our planet seemed immense.
When it was the only world
we could explore.
Its true size was first worked out
in a simple and ingenious way...
...by a man who lived here in Egypt,
in the third century B.C.
This tower may have been
a communications tower.
Part of a network running along
the North African coast...
...by which signal bonfires were used
to communicate messages of state.
It also may have been used
as a lighthouse...
...a navigational beacon
for sailing ships...
...out there in the Mediterranean Sea.
It is about 50 kilometers west...
...of what was once one of the great
cities of the world, Alexandria.
In Alexandria, at that time...
...there lived a man named
Eratosthenes.
A competitor called him "beta," the
second letter of the Greek alphabet...
...because, he said, "Eratosthenes
was second best in everything."
But it seems clear, in many fields,
Eratosthenes was "alpha."
He was an astronomer, historian,
geographer...
...philosopher, poet, theater critic
and mathematician.
He was also the chief librarian
of the Great Library of Alexandria.
And one day while reading
a papyrus book in the library...
...he came upon a curious account.
Far to the south, he read...
...at the frontier outpost of Syene...
...something notable could be seen
on the longest day of the year.
On June 21st...
...the shadows of a temple column,
or a vertical stick...
...would grow shorter
as noon approached.
As the hours crept towards midday...
...the sun's rays would slither down
the sides of a deep well...
...which on other days
would remain in shadow.
And then, precisely at noon...
...columns would cast no shadows.
And the sun would shine directly down
into the water of the well.
At that moment...
...the sun was exactly overhead.
It was an observation that someone else
might easily have ignored.
Sticks, shadows,
reflections in wells...
...the position of the sun...
...simple, everyday matters.
Of what possible importance
might they be?
But Eratosthenes was a scientist...
...and his contemplation of these
homely matters changed the world...
...in a way, made the world.
Because Eratosthenes had
the presence of mind to experiment...
...to actually ask whether
back here, near Alexandria...
...a stick cast a shadow