A "lost" 1994 lecture by Carl Sagan has been found and published last week on November 9th (the 84th anniversary of his birth). In it, Sagan goes through many of his highlights, which include putting us in our place, cutting our petty anthropocentric (or ethnocentric, or gendercentric or etceteracentric) chauvinism down to size. His magic, of course, is doing that while filling us with wonder:
Around minute 39 in the video, Sagan speculates on how many exoplanets (planets outside of our Solar System) we will discover in the next "10, 20, 30 years." Lucky for you, a fantastic presentation by astrophysicist Jackie Faherty from the American Museum of Natural History was recently published, showing very visually how many stars and planets within the Milky Way we have mapped in the last 30 years or so:
At several points, Sagan touches upon the characteristics and evolution of intelligence, something he delved into in several of his books (perhaps most deeply with The Dragons of Eden). And, again, you are in luck thanks to another very recent presentation. This time by geneticist and author Adam D. Rutherford who goes at length discussing the evolution of human intelligence and which aspects, if any, are exclusive to humans:
