A thousand years from now, our epoch will be remembered as the time when we first left the Earth and saw it from beyond the outermost planet as a pale blue dot, almost lost against the backdrop of the stars. As we complete the preliminary reconnaissance of our Solar System, we hunger for a long-term vision of the human future. Now, the astronomer who brought the Universe to so many people answers that call - suggesting that our very survival depends...

Cosmos spans its own galaxy of topics, each segment deepening our understanding of how we got from there (simple microbes in the primordial mud) to here (space-faring civilization in the 21st century). In his "ship of the imagination," Sagan guides us to the farthest reaches of space and takes us back into the history of scientific inquiry, from the ancient library of Alexandria to the NASA probes of our neighboring planets. Upon this vast canvas...

Preface: On August 20th and September 5th, 1977, two extraordinary spacecraft called Voyager were launched to the stars. After what promises to be a detailed and thoroughly dramatic exploration of the outer solar system from Jupiter to Uranus between 1979 and 1986, these space vehicles will slowly leave the solar systems - emissaries of the Earth to the realm of the stars. Affixed to each Voyager craft is a gold-coated copper phonograph record...

Sagan speculates on the primitive elements of the human mind and the ways the human brain today is coping with new discoveries about the cosmos

Carl Sagan retraces the fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into consciousness, exploring such topics as the origin of life, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, spacecraft missions, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies, and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science.

Contact: Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway receives an encrypted message, apparently from a solar system many light-years away. Sphere: Officials find a spaceship that plunged into the Pacific 300 years ago.

This book is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. It is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human...