Some Important Note From Cosmos - Carl Sagan
Wanderings: Sagan has been taking his readers on a tour of the 'Cosmos' and the solar system. 'wanderings'
Fragile: easily broken or destroyed, weak, delicate.
Blue-white world: This is what the Earth looks like from a distance in outer space.
Cosmic ocean: The 'cosmos', or universe, is like an ocean in its vastness, and the earth is so tiny in comparison-a little grain of sand-that it is 'lost' in this immensity, it cannot even be seen as a separate object.
Most courageous imaginings: what we can ever dare to imagine; the furthest point to which our imagination can stretch.
Significant: important, noteworthy.
Rippling: full of.
Cosmic perspective: a view of the relative importance of things seen against the backdrop of the Cosmos.
Poignantly: in a way that is deeply moving.
Unique: without any equal; only one of its kind.
Aware: conscious, capable of thinking and feeling.
Garnered: collected, gathered, stored, deposited.
Their long voyage home: A reference to how the Earth and the other planets of the Solar System were born out of the dust and gas that were left after or thrown out during the formation of the Sun which is a star. So, one may say that the Sun, which belongs to the family of stars, has given 'birth' to the Earth. As one of the life forms on Earth, descended from 'stars', human beings are, therefore, 'born ultimately of the stars'. When these human beings try to explore space and reach the furthest stars, who are like the members of the Sun's family, they are trying to return home - go back to their origin.
Near East: (also Middle East) the area stretching roughly from the eastern Mediterranean region to the western side of the Indian peninsula.
Metropolis: a town or city as a center of activity; chief city; the capital city of a country.
Alexandria: a city and seaport on the delta of the river Nile. This major cultural center of the ancient world was founded in 332 BC by Alexander the Great, after whom the city was named.
Eratosthenes: (c 285 - c 194 BC) He was the most versatile scholar of his time. One of his nicknames was 'pentathlos', a term taken from athletics, but in a general sense meaning 'all-rounder'. Sadly, his work survives only as scattered quotations.
Alpha: the first letter of the Greek alphabet, used to denote 'first class', the best.
Great library of Alexandria: Perhaps the greatest library of the ancient world, it was founded by Ptolemy I, the Macedonian general, who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great.
Evolved : developed gradually.
Working out our destiny: achieving or attaining, with difficulty, our ultimate goal; progressing slowly and laboriously towards what is our future.
A papyrus book: a book with pages made from papyrus - a kind of paper made from the stem of the papyrus plant.
Frontier: the boundary between two countries; the edge of land where people live and have built towns, and beyond which the land is wild and unknown.
Summer solstice: 'Solstice' refers to one of the two days 21 June or 21 December- when the Sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky, marked by the longest or the shortest day of the year. Summer solstice falls on 21 June in the northern hemisphere and 21 December in the southern hemisphere.
Columns: pillars.
Musings: thoughts, reflections.
Outpost : a distant settlement; a small unit of an army kept to give warning and so prevent surprise attacks on the main cities situated further inland.
Syene: modern day Aswan, a city in the southern part of Egypt.
Cataract: a large waterfall.
There are six Nile Cataracts: the first at Aswan, the sixth just above Khartoum.
Commonplaces: ordinary things or events which are not considered important enough or worth taking notice of.
Made the world: gave us a definite idea regarding the shape and size of the world.
Presence of mind: the ability to think and react quickly.
Pronounced: very noticeable.
Inclined: bent or sloping (at an angle).
Circumference : a line that goes round a circle.
Pace it out: Eratosthenes hired the man to walk from Alexandria to Syene, using normal steps-'paces'. Later, he calculated the distance between the two places by the number of steps the man had to take by the distance covered by him in one normal step.
Seafaring: work, travel or trade involving frequent journeys by sea.
Modest: small, not very big or pretentious, humble.
Circumnavigated: (sailed) all round.
Phoenician : belonging to Phoenicia. Ancient Phoenicia was located in South Syria.
Fleet : a number of ships sailing together.
Pharaoh: the title assumed by the rulers of ancient Egypt.
Necho: The reference most certainly is to Necho II who ruled from 610-595 BC. He had supplemented his military strength on land by a fleet of warships, for the Egyptians had longstanding commercial interests in the Red Sea.
Frail: weak, not strong, delicate; something that is easily damaged or destroyed.
Epic: great, heroic.
Voyager spacecraft: In 1997, the USA launched two space probes to reach the outer
Planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These spacecraft were to transmit images of and data relating to these planets. The two unmanned spacecrafts were named Voyager I and II respectively.
Earth to Saturn: The distance between the Earth, the third planet from the Sun, and Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun, is about 628 million kilometers. In other words, the Voyager can go almost 15 times round the Earth in one day (24 hours).
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