Today would have been Carl Sagan‘s 75th birthday. Among his many interests, Sagan was an outspoken advocate for skeptical inquiry, critical thinking, and the scientific method.

Carl Sagan with a full-scale mock-up of one of the Viking landers.

In the fall of 1980, I was 14.  I had had a deep interest in science for literally as long as I could remember.  But that fall I was one of millions treated to a voyage of scientific discovery on PBS through Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.  While Cosmos is largely the story of the history of science and how it leads to our understanding of our place in the universe and the world around us, it is also a collection of lessons on critical thinking and the scientific method.

Over the course of the series, Sagan clearly and concisely demonstrated the logical and verifiable flaws in creationism, astrology, and tales of alien abduction and UFOs.

He also discussed the suppression of knowledge, by ancient Greek philosophers, by the early Christian church through its brutal murder of the mathematician Hypatia of the Library of Alexandria, and by the Inquisition against astronomer Galileo Galilei. In our present society, suppression of scientific knowledge for religio-political purposes remains an antagonistic issue.

Years later, in 1995, I had the good fortune to see Carl Sagan speak in person at the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).  The talk was part of a session honoring the late James Pollack, an astrophysicist and former student of Sagan’s.  The talk was to be on the work Sagan and Pollack had done together on the potential for terraforming Mars, but Sagan spent the time telling stories about his former student, colleague, and friend.  It was a kind and generous tribute.

Through his work and his clear elucidation of the wonder of understanding the world through science, he gave us all an immeasurable gift of enlightenment.

Thank you, Carl.

From a Reuters news story posted on September 7, 2009:

Japan’s next prime minister might be nicknamed “the alien,” but it’s his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world.

“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.

“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”

Now it’s fortunate for Ms. Hatoyama that it was only her “soul” that traveled to Venus.  The planet is rather inhospitable for corporeal beings from Earth.  And it’s not green.

In 1982, the Soviet probes Venera 13 and Venera 14 returned the only color images ever taken on the surface of Venus and they do not support Ms. Hatoyama’s claim.  It is clearly not green. As for aesthetics, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But could the greenery of Ms. Hatoyama’s vision exist elsewhere on the surface of Venus? Thanks to Soviet, NASA, and European Space Agency (ESA) Venus flyby missions, orbiters, atmospheric probes, and landers, we also know a good deal more about the surface environment of that planet. While I am not familiar with any scientific studies on the environmental extremes which the human soul can tolerate, we do know that, for terrestrial life-forms such as humans or green plants, surviving the ~93 bar atmospheric pressure, or the ~460°C (~860°F) temperature would be, shall we say, problematic.  So would breathing the air, which is over 96% carbon dioxide, and lacks even detectable trace amounts of molecular oxygen.  Oh, and there’s the atmospheric sulfuric acid with which to contend as well.

This information is all readily available to anyone who chooses to look it up online (for example, see Wikipedia’s page on the planet Venus). It would seem Ms. Hatoyama has yet to do so.

When she awoke, Japan’s next first lady wrote, she told her now ex-husband that she had just been to Venus. He advised her that it was probably just a dream.

“My current husband has a different way of thinking,” she wrote. “He would surely say ‘Oh, that’s great’.”

So the reasoned conclusions we can draw from Ms. Hatoyama’s story:

1. it is unlikely that she has been to Venus
2. she is apparently not a fan of critical thinking

It’s unfortunate that Ms. Hatoyama’s alien abductors did not choose to bring her body along for the ride.  No, I’m not wishing the harm on her that an actual visit to the surface of Venus would have inflicted.  Rather, I merely lament the missed opportunity that such a corporeal visit would have conferred upon her.

As Neill de Grasse Tyson said during a lecture last year here in St. Petersburg, if you happen to be abducted by aliens, while you’re aboard the alien vessel “grab an ashtray.”  What did he mean? Grab something. Grab anything, made with or from alien technology, surreptitiously stick it in your pocket, pants, or privates, and bring it back. Just one little piece of proof would lend some credence to your claim.