Romantic astronomy in carl sagan

In the vast universe, we are just a flying dust among the stars. We are nothing to the universe.

No wonder astronomers say that "when you have a view of the universe, you will look down on life".

Humans are young, curious, brave and full of hope. In recent years, we have made amazing discoveries about the universe and our position in the universe. We have evolved to the point where learning is fun and acquiring knowledge is a prerequisite for survival. Exploring the universe and opening the unknown world is our eternal pursuit.

The universe has endless beautiful celestial bodies, intricate connections, subtle laws and unlimited exploration space. Carl sagan's Cosmos is really a very romantic popular science book, with exquisite and beautiful writing, which changes the obscurity of previous professional courses and is interspersed with realistic stories of many scientists. From beginning to end, it feels like a gentle scholar telling a long story, and the protagonist of this story is all scientists who have made great contributions to human exploration of the universe from ancient times to the present.

For example, johannes kepler was born in 157 1. He is clever, stubborn and extremely independent. When he was a teenager, he was sent to a seminary for clergy education. At that time, superstition was a panacea for helpless civilians to deal with famine, plague and religious wars, so astrology prevailed at that time, but Kepler was always skeptical. He has been trying to find out whether there is a law hidden behind the daily chaos. He was told that Heliocentrism of Copernicus. Heliocentrism and Kepler hold that the sun is a metaphor and God is the center of everything.

Before becoming a priest, Kepler found a good secular job, perhaps realizing that he was not suitable for being an honest priest. He went to teach math. He was educated in European geometry and was addicted to it. His intelligence was the best of his time. However, he is definitely not a qualified lecturer. He always digresses from Wan Li, which puzzles the students. Only a few students came to his class in the first year, and none in the second. During the lecture, all kinds of ideas and ideas poured in, which made Kepler completely unable to concentrate. When teaching, a sudden flash of light fundamentally changed the future of astronomy.

At that time, all Christian astronomers believed that planets would move in a circular orbit at a uniform speed. This circle must be perfect, so that the planet can be high above and away from the earth. Kepler kept calculating. He tried all kinds of elliptic curves. Until a few months later, he desperately tried an ellipse formula and got Kepler's first law: the planet revolves too much along an ellipse, and the sun is at a focus of the ellipse. Second Law: Planets sweep across areas of equal area at the same time. The third law: the period of planets, that is, the square of the time they orbit once, is directly proportional to the cube of their average distance from the sun.

Kepler finally explored the motion of planets and looked for harmony between celestial bodies. Thirty-six years after his last year, the research reached its peak in the hands of isaac newton. Newton, a 23-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge University, was trapped in his hometown town by a plague and was isolated from the outside world for nearly a year. During this period, he invented calculus, discovered the basic properties of light, and laid the foundation for the theory of universal gravitation. Someone asked Newton how he discovered this, and his answer was surprisingly simple: "I just thought of it." When Newton was in his forties, his servant described him like this: I never knew what entertainment he had. He doesn't ride horses, walk, bowl or take part in any sports. He thinks it is a waste not to spend time on research. He never leaves the room except for going out to give lectures ... not many people listen to his lectures, let alone understand them. Because he doesn't listen, he often reads aloud to the air.

In this chapter of time travel, there is a passage:

If you wandered in the pleasant Tuscan countryside in the 1990s from 65438 to 2009, you might meet messy high school dropouts on your way to pavia. He used to study in Germany, but the teacher decided that he had better leave school, because he always raised all kinds of questions and undermined classroom discipline. He really left school and wandered in northern Italy, enjoying the free atmosphere here, thinking about the problems in his heart and ignoring the indoctrination of the disciplined Prussian school. The name of this dropout is Albert Einstein. His meditation changed the world.

The hundreds of scientific figures mentioned in the book are the most vivid figures to polish this popular science book, so that it is no longer boring but read with relish.

In addition to the vastness of the universe, this book also talks about the origin and evolution of life and the possibility of intelligent life outside the earth. There is Mars that people are keen on, there is a magical earth, there is an eternal end, and there is travel in time and space. We are cast by stardust, and our origin and evolution are related to distant celestial events. Exploring the universe is also a journey of self-discovery.

Many worlds were never born, and many worlds were destroyed by cosmic disasters. We are lucky: we are alive and full of strength.

The universe is vast and time is long. It is our honor to share the same time with our family and loved ones on the same planet.