# What did Carl Sagan get wrong? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 10, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-carl-sagan-get-wrong/982476 "2023-04-10T23:27:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 13
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2023, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-carl-sagan-get-wrong/982476/13 "2023-04-11T07:36:49Z")
I discussed one of the problems with the book Cosmos 11 years ago in a post: > [@infinite regression](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infinite-regression/644712/28): > > As long as we’re talking about smoking pot and thinking about infinite regression, there’s a passage in Cosmos (second to the last paragraph in Chapter X) by Carl Sagan where he says, “There is an idea - strange, haunting, evocative - one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved. But it stirs the blood. There is, we are told, an infinite hierachy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our uni… The idea that an atom could be a universe of its own (or a solar system of its own) is arbitrary. It is based on the idea from a century or so ago that an atom is like the solar system with electrons spinning around the nucleus. Nothing like this is currently believed by physicists. Some things that Sagan said were silly. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-carl-sagan-get-wrong/982476)._