Glorious Dawn: Sagan, Hawking Sing (w/ Video)

November 12, 2009 By Devin Powell, ISNS

Astronomer and long time science advocate Carl Sagan once said that he was "not very good at singing songs." But on Nov. 9 in Washington D.C., his voice could be heard singing about the wonders of universe -- 13 years after his death.

"A Glorious Dawn" is a new music video that features Sagan and astronomer Stephen Hawking. It was played during a meeting of The Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization founded by Sagan in 1980 to advocate for planetary exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life.

Composer John Boswell created the video by cutting together clips from the PBS documentaries "Cosmos" and "Stephen Hawking's Universe". Boswell added music, a beat and used Auto-Tune -- a program originally designed to correct the pitch of singers -- to tweak the pitch of each astronomer's voice and create a melody.

"The sky calls to us," Sagan sang at The Planetary Society event on the 75th anniversary of his birth. "If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."

Musician Jack White, founder of the rock group the White Stripes, also attended the meeting. His Nashville, Tenn. based record label, Third Man Records, is printing and distributing a couple of thousand copies of the song on a 7 inch vinyl record for music stores and radio stations.

Boswell posted the music and lyrics on his site -- symphonyofscience.com.

© 2009 Inside Science News Service, By Devin Powell

• OBSL33t - Nov 12, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
  Such a great song. I've been rocking out to this for almost a month. I'm subscribed to his youtube channel as well. He has a couple more songs just as awesome as this one.
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• antialias_physorg - Nov 13, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
  Awesome songs. Actually made me cry (and I don't even remember who/what managed that last)
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• koskol - Nov 13, 2009
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  I was initialy sceptical reading this... sounded like a blasphemy having Sagan and Feynman singing. But the songs are brilliant! Great work! A beautiful musical tribute to those people that inspired generations, those people that saw and understood the utter beauty of the universe and came back to share it with us!
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• Mesafina - Nov 13, 2009
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  These songs are an inspiration, like the people in them were in life. Carl Sagan might have had more of an influence than anyone I can think of on inspiring many children to follow science and logic rather then superstition and ignorance.
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• jsovine - Nov 13, 2009
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  @koskol: "blasphemy"
  
  Really? Wow.
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• koskol - Nov 13, 2009
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  @jsovine
  
  :D sounded dogmatic? wasn't meant to be such. Just figure of speech really. Surely you can understand that.
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• powercosmic - Nov 13, 2009
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  Whenever I'm having a bad day, I'll just listen to these songs and watch the videos and all will be well!
  
  Awesome work!
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• Dasan - Nov 15, 2009
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  Excellent songs!
  Super well put together, and very inspiring.
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