Carl Sagan
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Contents 6
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Sagan, Dr. Carl Sagan |
Carl Sagan (9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. He was interested in UFOs from his teens. He served on the 1966 Air Force panel that led to the Condon Committee and co-organised the 1969 scientific symposium on UFOs. He became one of the best-known scientific skeptics of the idea that UFOs are alien spacecraft.[1][2]
Career
Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. He taught at Harvard until he was denied tenure in 1968, and then moved to Cornell University, where he became the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies.[1] He worked on the Mariner, Viking and Voyager missions and helped design the Pioneer plaques and the Voyager Golden Record. He co-wrote and presented the 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, won a Pulitzer Prize for The Dragons of Eden and wrote the novel Contact.[1] He died of pneumonia, after suffering from the bone-marrow disease myelodysplasia, at the age of 62.[1]
Early interest in UFOs
When the flying saucer wave began in 1947, the teenage Sagan suspected that the discs might be alien spacecraft. On 3 August 1952 he wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson to ask how the United States would respond if the saucers turned out to be extraterrestrial. In 1964 he had several conversations about UFOs with the French researcher Jacques Vallée.[1] Although he doubted that UFOs had any extraordinary explanation, he thought scientists should study them, if only because of the wide public interest.[1]
The Blue Book review and the Condon Committee
In 1966 Sagan was a member of the Air Force's Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book. The committee found that Blue Book had not been a proper scientific study and recommended a university-based project. That recommendation led to the Condon Committee of 1966–68 at the University of Colorado.[1]
The 1969 AAAS symposium
Sagan and astronomer Thornton Page were the main planners of a UFO symposium for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Physicist Philip Morrison and AAAS president Walter Orr Roberts helped them.[2] Page first proposed the idea in 1968, for that year's AAAS meeting in Dallas, but the event was delayed by opposition.[2] Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel objected to giving a platform to scientists who favoured the extraterrestrial hypothesis, such as James McDonald. Edward Condon also opposed the event. Sagan suggested scheduling McDonald and Condon on different days to avoid a direct clash.[2]
The symposium finally took place on 26 and 27 December 1969 in Boston, during a heavy snowstorm that caused McDonald to miss the first day. Roberts read Menzel's paper for him, and sixteen scientists took part in all.[2] Speakers ranged from Hynek and McDonald to the skeptical astronomers William Hartmann and Menzel. Sociologist Ron Westrum later called the symposium the high point of Sagan's work on UFOs, noted its balanced list of speakers and credited Sagan with holding it despite pressure from Condon.[1] Sagan and Page edited the papers, which were published in 1972 as UFO's: A Scientific Debate.[1]
Views on UFOs and contactees
Sagan rejected the idea that UFOs were alien craft but thought UFO reports were a worthwhile subject for study and for teaching about scientific method.[1] He discussed UFOs in several books and in an episode of Cosmos, and he saw a religious undercurrent in the subject.[1] He wrote that when people who claimed to be in contact with aliens invited him to ask them anything, he sent precise mathematical questions, such as a request for a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. He said that he never received an answer to these, while vague moral questions always got a reply.[1]
He popularised the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", which was based on a similar remark by sociologist Marcello Truzzi.[1] His book The Demon-Haunted World set out a "baloney detection kit" for testing claims, and he wrote often about what he saw as the logical flaws in UFO and abduction reports.[1] Sagan also argued that the Drake equation pointed to many civilisations in the galaxy, and that the lack of evidence for them, the problem known as the Fermi paradox, might mean that technological civilisations tend to destroy themselves.[1]
References
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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