The legendary American astronomer Carl Sagan was an extremely successful popularizer of science and the value of science
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was an American planetary astronomer, astrobiologist and an extraordinarily successful popularizer of science and the values of science. Sagan was a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial biology, a great teacher and the most effective public advocate of the values of science the world has ever seen.
As many as 45% of Americans believe that extraterrestrials have visited planet Earth – according to a 2015 Ipsos survey. In the United States alone, there are thousands of reports of “Unidentified Flying Objects” (UFO) sightings every year. This means that there are about 10 UFOs per day if all reports are considered true. That’s certainly a lot of flying saucers in the sky.
In the well-known documentary from 1966 (Walter Croncreight) “UFO: Friend, Enemy or Fantasy”, Carl Sagan gives a very striking speech on this topic. Sagan does not claim that sightings of celestial objects are impossible and unsubstantiated, but that the probability that humans have seen these objects is low. It is very anthropocentric to consider planet Earth as the most popular space destination considering the number of potential “stations” in the universe. To think that there are a large number of extraterrestrials visiting planet Earth is the same as saying that all tourists went to the same square somewhere in Italy, explains Sagan. If you believe (as UFO cultists claim) that most UFO reports are actually alien visitations, then we would have a very unusual situation. This would mean that several spaceships arrive on Earth every day from interstellar distances, Sagan explains further. “I think it is much more reasonable to speculate about very rare alien visits purely on the basis of the possibility of intelligent life outside of planet Earth. Of course, there is no evidence for that, I’m just saying that it’s not impossible. However, the belief that multiple visits occur on a daily basis is (in my opinion) stretching credulity,” says Carl Sagan.
“There is not a single verified report that could be linked to the possibility of extraterrestrial life,” says Sagan. Although this sounds like a final blow to people who believe in the existence of UFOs – it is quite the opposite. Sagan points out the large number of stars and potential planetary systems around stars. In other words, it indicates to people not to completely write off aliens yet. There are tons of planets and tons of opportunities to show life in space. The Fermi paradox is also based on the same claim. Fermi’s paradox raises the question: “Why haven’t people made contact with extraterrestrials if extraterrestrials are an everyday thing?”. The possibility that extraterrestrials really exist somewhere in the universe should not be dismissed, although it is a bit crazy to consider every blurry phenomenon flying in the sky as extraterrestrial.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-carl-sagan-truly-irreplaceable-180949818/
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