Ask Jot

Chosen Answer by White Tiger

The Cosmos series was made for the general public and is easy to understand and very enjoyable. It does look a little dated, but its still wonderful. Much of the series is a history of science, so the concepts are still relevant. I also enjoyed the recently released Sagan book "The Varieties of Scientific Experience". A great book with a similar broad scientific subject matter is Bill Byson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", especially the illustrated edition.

Chosen Answer by book guy

I read the book years ago it was fascinating. I'm note sure how it is relevant to AP English. The book talks about human development and gives certain insights into the importance of childhood. Human childhood is much more protracted and birth much more dangerous than the than the births and early lives of other creatures on the planet, I guess you could link his work to literary theory. Sagan talks about genetic predispositions. For instance babies have an inbred fear of snakes and heights left over from the time we were arboreal (tree dwelling). You could argue that these were the beginning of the universal archetypes. For example the snake in genesis is evil because we have a primordial fear of snakes , it can't be anything but an embodiment of evil. We as humans have carried the fear of snakes and reptiles with us to this very day. Our literature is littered with images and unspoken fears gathered collectively from thousands nay millions of years of evolution. Id have to Sagan's writing style is essentially academic in that he backs all of his theories up with evidence and example. Yet unlike Hawking he has a certain flourish to his writing. It really is entertaining, not to mention thought provoking

Chosen Answer by pzifisssh

It's still out there. It will take approximately 25,000 years for it to arrive at the destination that they were aiming for. If "they" are going to hear it, then they'd better have their ears (or, whatever they use) to their radios, because the entire broadcast was less than three minutes long. Assuming that "they" actually do receive the entire message, and assuming that they record it, then they'll have the rest of eternity to figure out what it means. That might not be enough time. Maybe they will figure out that it's a string of 1679 bits. Maybe one of them will notice that 1679 has exactly two prime factors. Maybe they, like us, are accustomed to recording their ideas on two-dimensional pieces of paper, and maybe they will try to see what it looks like if they plot the bits in a 73x23 grid. There's a lot of different ways you could fill a 73x23 grid with 1679 bits. Maybe it will occur to them to fill the grid row-by-row or column by column. Maybe the "obvious" way (according to their culture) will be something different (maybe a spiral.) Some of the pictures that they get may look "random", and some of them might look like "something." Again, much will depend on their culture. Maybe they will eventually decide that our interpretation is the most likely. Maybe their "experts" will be divided over which pattern is the right pattern. Probably their biggest clue will be the crude diagram of a parabolic dish antenna that appears in the image. Maybe they will recognize that, or maybe it will have been so many aeons since they used that particular technology that nobody even remembers what they looked like. If they ever pick the right way to fill the bits into the array, then they will have to figure out what all of the different crude blobby forms mean. That's the part that could take forever. Assuming they even have their radios on, and their recorders running when the message flashes past.

Chosen Answer by Nautica™

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

Chosen Answer by Jack P

Sagan was merely saying all the elements of an apple pie made from scratch [reduced to the lowest common denominator] are elemental to the universe and the universe had to be there before an apple pie could be made from them. Hardly profound, though it's often quoted.