Misattribution will often carry us to quotes that never were
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were” (-Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Chapter 1)
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Founded to find life in our universe
Carl Sagan Institute
The Carl Sagan Institute (CSI) was founded to find life in the universe. Based on the pioneering work of Carl Sagan at Cornell, our interdisciplinary team is developing the forensic toolkit to find life in the universe, inside the Solar System and outside of it, on planets and moons orbiting other stars.
CSI news
Cornell astronomers cheer new space telescope’s first images
Faculty respond to the release of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope
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Peering through alien atmospheres
Jonathan Barrientos is exploring the possibility of life on Earth-like planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets.
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Cornell-chaired panels advocate Uranus, Enceladus missions
Professors Jonathan I. Lunine and Alexander Hayes played leadership roles in identifying U.S. national scientific priorities through 2033.
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Glowing Planets and Chemical Fingerprints
Nikole Lewis will be one of the first to characterize distant exoplanets using infrared data from the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope.
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More than $12M donated to support students in 24 hours
On Cornell’s eighth Giving Day, held March 16, 15,905 alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents and friends from more than 80 countries made gifts totaling a record-breaking $12,268,629.
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Tint of life: Color catalog built to find frozen worlds
As ground-based and space telescopes improve, astronomers need a color-coded guide to compare Earth’s biological microbes to cold, distant exoplanets to grasp their composition.
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Tint of life: Color catalog built to find frozen worlds
Aided by microbes found in the subarctic conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay, an international team – including researchers from Portugal’s Instituto Superior de Agronomia and Técnico, Canada’s Université Laval in Quebec, and Cornell – has created the first color catalog of icy planet surface signatur...
Read MoreBritney Schmidt: Exploring Earth’s oceans to reach Europa
Founded to find life in the universe
The Carl Sagan Institute was founded in 2015 at Cornell University to find life in the universe and explore other worlds – how they form, evolve and if they could harbor life both inside and outside of our own Solar System.