Bookmarks (5) clear filters

Much of the world got to know Carl Sagan through Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the thirteen-part PBS series on the nature of the universe — and the intensity of Sagan's own passion to discover that nature. First aired in 1980, it would become the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. […] Watch a Young Carl Sagan Appear in His...

The point at which we date the birth of any genre is apt to shift depending on how we define it. When did science fiction begin? Many cite early masters of the form like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as its progenitors. Others reach back to Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein as the genesis of the […] When Astronomer Johannes Kepler Wrote the First Work...

Name all the things in space in 20 minutes? Impossible, you say? Well if there’s anyone who might come close to summarizing the contents of the universe in less than half an hour, with the aid of a handy infographic map also available as a poster, it's physicist Dominic Walliman, who has explored other vast […] An Illustrated Map of Every Known Object in...

Many of us have heard of Stephen Hawking but know him only as a symbol of a powerful mind dedicated for a lifetime to the thorniest problems in astrophysics. Even more of us have heard of black holes but know of them only as those dangerous things in sci-fi movies that suck in spaceships. But […] Stephen Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox Explained in Animation...

It’s hard to imagine that the space-crazed general public needed any help getting worked up about astronauts and NASA in the early 60s. Perhaps the wild popularity of space-related imagery is in part what motivated NASA administrator James Webb to create the NASA Art Program in 1962. Although the program's handpicked artists weren’t edited or censored in any way, […] NASA Enlists Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Norman Rockwell...