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Fans of Carl Sagan's cherished 1980 astronomy miniseries Cosmos rejoice! A lost fourteenth episode — about the awe-inspiring Meat Planet — has been found after decades of neglect. In this rediscovered footage, such geological features as the gristly mantle and Mount Sustenance are given their documentary due. Additionally, there is a website that explains the planet's most succulent features, such as its weather: More »
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Many of you are probably familiar with The Sagan Series, a collection of videos that pays tribute to the inspirational words of astrophysics-giant Carl Sagan. (And if you're not familiar with the series, you owe it to yourself to check it out immediately, starting with this emotionally stirring first installment). More »
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Here's some seriously uplifting material to kick off your weekend. Turns out that when Neil deGrasse Tyson was applying to colleges in high school, Carl Sagan made an outstanding effort to make him feel especially at home at Cornell University, where he taught. More »
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Ever wonder if humans will make it off this rock and to a better place among the stars? This stirring video from the Sagan Series will fill you with a strange feeling we get very rarely in these dark, confusing times: Hope. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5774106&view=rss&microfeed=true Carl Sagan's still a rockstar, plus he's still helping people understand the vastness of space. More »
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The next Symphony of Science jam session is out titled, "A Wave of Reason." Listen to Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Carolyn Porco and others sing about "scientific reasoning and skepticism in the face of growing amounts of pseudoscientific pursuits." More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5697399&view=rss&microfeed=true Ralph Vicinanza, a literary agent who specialized in foreign rights, died suddenly at his home on Saturday. For two decades, he represented such high-powered authors as Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, Carl Sagan, Robert A. Heinlein, George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett and Kim Stanley Robinson, primarily in overseas deals. In 1998, Vicinanza formed Created By, an L.A.-based production/management company that works mostly with science fiction. [Publishers Lunch] More »
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After the flashy Green Lantern footage was premiered we sat down with cast and crew to talk about the ring-slinging space corps. But we were most surprised to learn Peter Sarsgaard's inspiration for his mustachioed character. Spoilers ahead... More »
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Carl Sagan said that the weak rays of our Sun during Earth's early years should have created a planet ensconced in ice. Yet somehow Earth's temperature's been mostly constant, and above freezing. Now two Danish scientists think they know why. More »
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People talk about science fiction as the literature of humanism. But actually, science fiction's explorations put it into conflict with humanism's tenets. The best science fiction questions the nature of humanity, and whether the universe will let us stay human. More »
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Was this giant glowing aerial presence just a satellite — or a sign of intelligent life in the universe? That's what scientists are asking when a strange, eerily familiar shape showed up in a photo of Norway's Northern Lights. More »
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"The culture-shaping force of science fiction storytellers may be more significant and more widespread than we imagine. That's because they trade in myth. By myth, I mean a transcendent story that helps us make sense of our place in the cosmos. This common definition makes the Christian gospel, as C. S. Lewis suggested, "God's myth"-not because it is fiction, but because it is a story that gives ultimate meaning. We live in an age in which new myths, born mostly of science-fueled imaginations, are crafted and propagated at an unprecedented rate. More »
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More than 30 years ago, we launched two space craft on a long-shot, once in a lifetime mission to explore the outer planets. Today, the Voyager space probes are still making their long, lonely journeys outside the boundaries of our solar system. Amazingly, they are still functioning and still sending us data about the things they encounter. Now we know what the edge of the solar system looks like, but where will the Voyagers end up? More »
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Hilary Clinton is currently the only presidential candidate with a space plan, which can't be pleasing to the scientists and scifi writers who warn that the human race must escape from Earth if it's to have any future. It's probably not surprising that 1970s astronomer icon Carl "billions of stars" Sagan was an offworld booster; nor would it boggle your mind to know that SF visionary Octavia Butler's post-apocalypse duet Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents is about why colonizing space is one of the most urgent political tasks of our time. But space travel as a political issue goes back further than that — way further. More »
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George Dvorsky reports over at Sentient Developments that the Wikipedia community has deleted a perfectly reasonable entry on astrosociobiology, "the speculative scientific study of extraterrestrial civilizations and their possible social characteristics and developmental tendencies." People like Carl Sagan and Freeman Dyson are counted among the ranks of astrosociobiologists, as are countless scifi creators. Luckily, Dvorksy has preserved the excised the entry in its entirety on his blog. Find out what Wikipedia doesn't want you to know about cultures that might develop beyond our solar system's heliopause. More »
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Must-see movies are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. Written by Jason Shankel. More »
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