Cosmos Book Review

Cosmos by Carl Sagan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've 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 starstuff

i don't think i'll ever give 5 stars more wholeheartedly as i am doing now ..
5 shimmering , eye-blindingly shinning stars , the brightest suns GR has in its this little galaxy should be owned by this book , cosmos .

its really shocking that only days ago i didnt know who carl sagan is . The name may have seemed a bit familiar , but nothing more
Now , this name feels too meaningful , i'd remember this man's words , his deep voice discussing the formations of the stars and their decay and deaths , i'd surly remember the passion in his eyes in the parallel Cosmos TV show , the way he pronounces Billions and Billions stressing on the B or the way he says "we are made of starstuff" with too much longing .

I LOVED THIS BOOK it maybe mainstream and often said but i dont know how to phrase what i feel about it any other way , seems its beyond my ability of putting things into coherent sentences .
it was Beautiful in every mean , i wish now that i have saved every beautiful i've ever used , ever said , so that when i call this peace of heaven beautiful you would get what i am saying ..

quoting from the same book , cosmos is :

"visually and musically stunning, and to engage the heart as well as the mind"

Carl Sagan , an astronomer, a cosmologist and a writer. a brilliant man . the way he uses words , it doesnt feel decorated , these words are written too honestly , the passions and ambitions of a man ,once a child inlove with science-fiction as we all are , scriped in papers .

I feel too ashamed that i am 22 years living in this world and its only now that i read this book , Cosmos wasn't only about astronomy , but philosophy , biology and a big deal of history all written very beautifully you will enjoy every bit , i started to love radio waves , Phythagorean laws and things of this sort that i may have considered dry and lifeless in my school years . its hard to believe that this is written in the eighties of the last century , may be so much had changed , maybe some stuff here and there are not up to date but its is still a big source of inspiration . The question about extraterrestial life remains a puzzle , but exploring the problem is a fascinating journey in itself .
I am not an expert on natural science , a mere starter , but it was easy for me to read , so i think carl sagan's books are gems of some sort , they are the bridge between scientists and common people , they are written for us , we who love the stars and crave to understand them yet we are no scientists or experts our selves . and generally expertise in the subject matter is not required to enjoy it , as the love of it shall demonstrates.

I am officaily recommending this book for every human being , its a thing every soul should read .i wish i can buy enough copies for the human race and shove them down their doors .

"Finally, at the end of all our wanderings, we return to our tiny, fragile, blue-white world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world among an immensity of others. It may be significant only for us. The Earth is our home, our parent. Our kind of life arose and evolved here. The human species is coming of age here. It is on this world that we developed our passion for exploring the Cosmos, and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny "


"There will be no humans elsewhere. Only here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare as well as an endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another"

Warning ! : dont you ever miss meeting the deep voice narrating to you the story of the cosmos , watch the TV show , meet carl sagan , I'll put links for the 13 episodes downwards .

Advice : read the book with some cosmic music , it will feel magical and out of the world .





The TV show episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ9mz...

i've read it as an ebook copy and i think half the book is marked blue , its just too charming you would want to remember every word , now i have my pockets full of fascinating quotes . and these are some i couldn't resist including in the review :

* They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky

*We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever

*Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations

*The Earth is a place. It is by no means the only place. It is not even a typical place. No planet or star or galaxy can be typical, because the Cosmos is mostly empty. The only typical place is within the vast, cold, universal vacuum, the everlasting night of intergalactic space, a place so strange and desolate that, by comparison, planets and stars and galaxies seem achingly rare and lovely. If we were randomly inserted into the Cosmos, the chance that we would find ourselves on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion* (1033, a one followed by 33 zeroes). In everyday life such odds are called compelling. Worlds are precious


*Each star system is an island in space, quarantined from its neighbors by the light- years. I can imagine creatures evolving into glimmerings of knowledge on innumerable worlds, every one of them assuming at first their puny planet and paltry few suns to be all that is. We grow up in isolation. Only slowly do we teach ourselves the Cosmos

*Welcome to the planet Earth - a place of blue nitrogen skies, oceans of liquid water, cool forests and soft meadows, a world positively rippling with life. In the cosmic perspective it is, as I have said, poignantly beautiful and rare; but it is also, for the moment, unique

*The study of the heavens brought Ptolemy a kind of ecstasy. ‘ Mortal as I am,’ he wrote, ‘ I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth. .


*With this symphony of voices man can play through the eternity of time in less than an hour, and can taste in small measure the delight of God, the Supreme Artist . . . I yield freely to the sacred frenzy . . . the die is cast, and I am writing the book - to be read either now or by posterity, it matters not. It can wait a century for a reader, as God Himself has waited 6,000 years for a witness

*With searing heat, crushing pressures, noxious gases and everything suffused in an eerie, reddish glow, Venus seems less the goddess of love than the incarnation of hell

*All that matters is the evidence, and the evidence is not yet in.

*The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished

*there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be uncovered. Nature is not entirely unpredictable; there are rules even she must obey. This ordered and admirable character of the universe was called Cosmos

*Traveling close to the speed of light is a kind of elixir of life. Because time slows down close to the speed of light, special relativity provides us with a means of going to the stars


*A star is a phoenix, destined to rise for a time from its own ashes

*Our passion for learning, evident in the behavior of every toddler, is the tool for our survival

*Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species

*The choice is stark and ironic. The same rocket boosters used to launch probes to the planets are poised to send nuclear warheads to the nations. The radioactive power sources on Viking and Voyager derive from the same technology that makes nuclear weapons. The radio and radar techniques employed to track and guide ballistic missiles and defend against attack are also used to monitor and command the spacecraft on the planets and to listen for signals from civilizations near other stars. If we use these technologies to destroy ourselves, we surely will venture no more to the planets and the stars. But the converse is also true. If we continue to the planets and the stars, our chauvinisms will be shaken further. We will gain a cosmic perspective. We will recognize that our explorations can be carried out only on behalf of all the people of the planet Earth

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