The night I found out that Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune didn't have solid surfaces, my head exploded. I had heard the term "gas giants" before, but I guess I needed Carl Sagan to spell it out for me. Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune are made of gas, not paper-mâché as scientists previously believed, and if these planets do have solid surfaces underneath all that gas, we. don't. know. about it. (Nose bleed.)
"Cosmos" quickly became all-consuming, brain paralyzing obsession. In other words, I read the book.. and watched all 13 episodes of "Cosmos" all the way through TWICE, which is huge for me since I'm one of those assholes who's never seen The Godfather or Spaceballs.
On the subject of me being an asshole, this past winter I unironically referred to Earth as "a small, rocky planet" when talking to my boyfriends father's girlfriend. She gave me a look that said 'your new space obsession isn't fooling anyone". I like her a lot. Also, on my road trip from New York to LA with Sarah and Anna, at one point we were talking about how bright and annoying the sun was as we were driving into the sunset, and I said something to the effect of, "Well it could be worse, our sun is pretty average as far as stars go and at least we don't live in a binary star system." Sarah and Anna did not like me after that.
Cosmos is Carl Sagan's personal voyage through space. It's epic, beautiful, accessible, and easy to love. Growing up, I pretended to feel indifferent about science as a way to justify my bad grades, particularly when it came to chemistry, so I made this, a Periodic Table of Elephants, as a peace offering. I also wrote a 22-page nonfiction comedy pilot about one of Jupiter's moons, but I put it away when I decided it was shitty and unfixable.
"As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. " - Elton John
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