A voice in the COSMIC fugue: the music of science in the Cosmos".

I remember when I was a kid, I enjoyed a lot with the second episode of Cosmos, A Voice in the Cosmic Fugue, that day when my father showed up with the second tape in VHS format I was anxious to play it, it is one of the ones that made me dream the most. Because here, Carl Sagan not only talks about space, but about something equally fascinating: how we try to talk to the universe.

Although this episode begins with a more than interesting story to explain artificial selection, using the Battle of Dan-no-ura, which took place in Japan back in 1185.

Painting about the battle of Dan-no-ura

This chapter made me think for the first time about the idea that, maybe, we are not alone. I find it fascinating to think that maybe, out there, someone is trying to do the same as us: to say “we are here”, it also makes me wonder if someone is taking astrophotographs of the Milky Way from a distant galaxy, or if someone is photographing our Sun from a planetary system close to a nebula. This idea has haunted me forever.

This episode is pure biological poetry. Sagan begins to delve into the miracle that is life, how it emerged from inert matter, how it evolved in infinitely diverse forms, and how we-fragile, curious-are a consequence of that process that has been going on for billions of years.

I marveled at the way he describes DNA as a language shared by all living things on Earth-the same molecule that is in a whale is, with slight variations, in a butterfly, in a tree, in you and me! It is a thought so powerful, so unifying... that it should almost be taught as a philosophy of life.

There is also a beautiful sequence in which he imagines what life on other worlds might be like. Not from a science fiction approach, but from a scientific logic combined with imagination. Sagan did not affirm that there is life outside the Earth, but he said something even more interesting: "If there isn't, what a wasted space", this same phrase is found several times in the movie "Contact", a movie that we will talk about in this blog.

Fragment of the episode where Sagan explains more about our DNA and how it works.

Some interesting curiosities:

• The title of the episode alludes to the fugue, a musical form in which multiple voices intertwine: a beautiful metaphor for the diversity of life.

• Here, for the first time, the idea of the "message in a cosmic bottle" appears prominently, something that will be taken up later with the golden disc of the Voyager probes.

• Sagan introduces the concept of responsible scientific speculation, which will be key in many episodes.

After watching this episode, one cannot help but feel a deep respect for life, not only human life, but all forms of existence. DNA as a score written by time, played by every living being, is an image that has been with me ever since.

If we ever speak to other beings in the cosmos, we may not do it with words. Perhaps it is our DNA, our music, our art... our voice in the cosmic fugue.

Key topics of the episode:

• The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth

• The DNA molecule as a universal message

• The possibility of life on other planets

• The language of DNA as a form of cosmic communication

• Life as part of the symphony of the universe

And here comes this second episode, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you feel like watching this magnificent series.

Until next Thursday where we will talk about the harmony of the worlds, another episode that has nothing to waste and tells us about a topic that is booming again today.