Perhaps it had no beginning. Perhaps, being spacetime itself, it is neither where nor when. Like the scarlet ribbons of song, it came “I will never know from where.” Yet here I am, awake in this vast improbability for a nanosecond of cosmic time, a mote of life on a fleck of rock afloat in the … [Read more...]
Carl Sagan: Visionary
Originally written as a memorial speech delivered by Buzz Aldrin, this was subsequently published in the Planetary Society’s Planetary Report, May/June 1997. I can’t think of Carl without seeing that windblown figure strolling on the beach, telling us, over the roar of the breakers, in his emphatic … [Read more...]
Touching the Sky
In 1946, the summer I turned eight, old Uncle George moved into the back room of our house in Palo Alto. Though he seldom emerged, I would sometimes encounter him in his rumpled coat, high-top shoes, and fedora hat sitting out on the porch under a red sky in a cloud of cigar smoke. He … [Read more...]