Original artwork, not a still
Misattributed to Carl Sagan
Billions and billions.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The line is the great Sagan misquote, and the joke is that it stuck harder than anything he actually said. Carson's impression turned a careful science communicator's emphasis on one consonant into a catchphrase, and the phrase now stands for sheer cosmic scale, with the "sagan" even used as a joke unit of enormous number. Sagan eventually gave in and titled a book after it.
Context reviewed
In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
When Cosmos reached television in 1980, Carl Sagan leaned on the "b" in "billions" so viewers could hear the difference from "millions". The famous double phrase was never his. The public tied him to it through a Tonight Show skit in which Johnny Carson parodied his manner with "billions and billions". Sagan said so himself in his 1997 book Billions and Billions: he wrote that he never said it, only "billion" many times, and called the phrase too vague, since nobody knows how many billions it means.
Sources (2)
- Wikipedia: Billions and Billions (book)section "Billions and billions"Reference checked
- Wikiquote: Carl SaganBillions and Billions (1997), Chapter 1, p. 10Reference checked
Context reviewed
