Saturday, 23 January 2010

Why I love Carl Sagan

Science is a mosaic. Good science from disparate fields seems to conveniently converge to help us gradually gain a clearer overall view of our universe and make valid predictions based on that knowledge.

No one joined this rich mosaic of scientists together more sublimely and eloquently and passionately communicated this amassed wisdom better than Carl Sagan. Thanks Carl.




Click to embiggen and stand well back for a clearer view, or get up close and see how Carl cut his teeth on Einstein and Feynman.



32 comments:

  1. Fantastic! Is it possible to obtain a large file of this picture? This has to be printed in large and put on my living room wall!

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  3. Florian,

    I made a 300dpi 50 MB version first that was too big for the blog, but ideal for posters, email me at crispian@hampshireskeptics.org and I'll send you a copy.

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  4. You include the mosaic itself, thus implying that Sagan stood on his own gigantic shoulders. Interesting.

    Turtles all the way down?

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  5. I also included one person who is technically not a scientist, but has vast scientific understanding and I'm sure no one will complain about is inclusion. Anyone spot him?

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  6. Best blog post of the decade?

    Get's my vote!

    Best regards,

    Psi

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  7. This is just utterly wonderful. Thank you!

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  8. Dang! Is there a way to order a poster-size print of this? I don't have a printer and I wouldn't want to take this file to FedEx Kinko's because they might have a problem printing something copywrighted. Someone sell me a poster of this!

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  9. Oleg,

    I'm looking into to getting them printed as posters.

    I'll probabbly re make the image at an even higher res with more cells. I restricted the number of cells for the blog version so you could identify the scientists, but if it is poster sized I can increase the rows and columns by quite a bit.

    I'll post an update if I am able to produce the posters, although anyone wanting one will have to cover my production costs and P&P. If I am able to make some, i will not be doing it for profit

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  10. I would definitely buy it in poster form as well.

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  11. I'd be interested in posters for TAM if you have copyright clearance for any of the photos that are still in copyright.

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  12. Very cool! Where's Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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  13. i'd be interested in a poster as well.

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  14. Laurie T.

    Good Question, In many ways Neil has taken on Carl’s role as chief science promoter to the general public. He also tells a very nice anecdote of when he first met Carl Sagan. I originally intended to use scientists who preceded Carl to show how he combined their knowledge, but as I included Brian Cox, I think I should have also included Neil. I’m going to make a higher res version for a poster and I’ll make sure I’ll add him in.
    Let me know if you spot any other glaring omissions

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  15. I'd definitely be interested in a poster.

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  16. Yup, I'm up for a post if it isn't huge or hugely expensive!

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  17. Very clever, Mr Jago! I was looking for the other guy with a white beard - well played, sir.

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  18. Excellent! I would most definitely buy a copy of this if it were made available.

    Will you include a key to the mosaic images with the printed version? Not all of us are science history supergeeks...

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  19. Not only did i embiggen it, after viewing it, i found it to be perfectly cromulent.

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  20. Very Cool! Like Alice, I'm in for a poster if it is not hugely expensive.

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  21. I'd buy two posters. One for me and another as a present. Providing the costing wouldn't be exhorbitant, of course. Thanks for a great post.

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  22. Several of the small thumbnails in the mosaic are of Carl Sagan in the same pose as the main image. You should therefore make the image fully recursive by replacing the thumbnails of Carl Sagan by thumbnails of the mosaic of Carl Sagan. Repeat this replacement using the updated mosaic until you get bored.

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  23. Any word on when or if this will be printed and available for purchase?

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  24. Hmm Well I was just searching on Google for some Tarot readings of some Tarot reader
    and just came across your blog, generally I just only visit blogs and retrieve my required
    information but this time the useful information that you posted in this post compelled me
    to reply here and appreciate your good work. I just bookmarked your blog

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  25. Seems like I'm the only person here who read Contact. Add the matrix for the face of god and Carl Sagan turns out to be the very kind of person whom you parody.

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  26. I know it's very late to be requesting a poster but I'm lusting after it. Is there any way I can get one?

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  27. Hi, thats a great image, can u send it to me? Im form Mexico, grettings (I'll gonna send u an mail) Sorry for my bad english

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  28. Awesome, really. I wonder how much time was involved in creating this one. Truely a piece of art. To makes things easy, you can hold ctrl and then scroll in & out. That will zoom the page in/out. Thnx for sharing!

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