The wormhole that changed a novel
One day in the spring of 1985, Carl Sagan telephoned his colleague Kip Thorne at his office in the Norman Bridge laboratory at Caltech in order to do research for the novel he was writing
Explaining the world to an alien
A disk with images and sounds from our planet was sent out on the two ‘Voyager’ probes, as well as a recording of a person’s thoughts, in case aliens can read brain waves
A guide for aliens: how to interpret the messages sent from Earth in the Pioneer and Voyager space probes
Four planetary probes were launched in the 1970s, carrying information about Earth. This was in case – in the very distant future – they were to fall into the hands of an extraterrestrial civilization
‘Cosmos’: Carl Sagan was right (and we didn’t pay much attention to him)
The narrator explored the universe in the 1980 series with charisma, using raw visual effects and the music of Vangelis. He spoke of other worlds that can teach us about our own. Decades later, the program has aged remarkably well