Noted astronomer Carl Sagan would have turned 90 in 2024. To mark that milestone and honor his legacy, the University and the scientific institute that bears his name hosted a celebration on the Hill in mid-November. (The keynote program can now be watched online.) With those festivities in mind, Cornellians has gathered not quite “billions and billions”—but a plethora—of factoids about the astronomer, who passed away in 1996.
Read on in Cornellians for 14 fascinating facts about Sagan—one of Cornell’s most famous faculty members, and one of the most effective science communicators of all time!
New York State Museum
A copy of the map of dispossession of Indigenous lands, from the New York State Museum, featured in the Languages at the Brink exhibit.
Engine House and Hannah Wakeford/Provided
The shape of WASP-17b’s atmosphere mapped using transmission strings. The planet has a broad banded jet around the equator with vast wind speeds which transport material and heat from the permanently irradiated dayside to the permanently shadowed nightside.
Xi Jin/Provided
Cornell physics researcher Zhiyuan Zhang holds a chip containing an array of the devices he developed to create microscopic bubbles on demand, when and where they are needed.
