I am titled Melissa.
I've seen 20 revolutions around the sun.
Science + SciFi + Art
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Aspiring amateur astronomer.
Science enthusiast.
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This is what I post.
This is what I look like.
01/24/12
* What I post does not belong to me, unless otherwise stated, obviously. Please don't remove the credit when reblogging.
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“These are some of the things hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. It has the sound of epic myth, but it’s simply a description of the evolution of the cosmos as revealed by science in our time. And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears, and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins. Star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and, perhaps, throughout the cosmos. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”
Jon Stewart speaks for the people.
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree, with flexible parts, on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it, and you’re inside the mind of another person. Maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
“Every human generation has asked about the origin and fate of the cosmos. Ours is the first generation with a real chance of finding some of the answers. One way or another, we are poised at the edge of forever.”
“On our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history. What we do with our world right now will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, greed, or stupidity, we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet, to enhance enormously our understanding of the universe, and to carry us to the stars.”
“There are worlds that began with as much apparent promise as the Earth, but something went wrong. Knowing that worlds can die alerts us to our danger. If a visitor arrived from another world, what account would we give of our stewardship of the planet Earth?”
“All life on our planet is closely related. We have a common organic chemistry, and a common evolutionary heritage. And so our biologists are profoundly limited. They study a single biology, one lonely theme in the music of life. Is it the only voice for thousands of light years, or is there a cosmic fugue, a billion different voices playing the life music of the galaxy?”
“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.”
Carl Sagan’s legendary 13 part program on the mysteries of space, originally broadcast on PBS in 1980
