Carl Sagan says once you venture beyond Earth, the universe is a lonely place.
"Our planet is a lonely speck in a great engulfing darkness. We're on our own. We have to help ourselves," Sagan said in his keynote address to a Pacific Rim transportation technology conference in Seattle on Wednesday.It was his first public appearance since receiving a bone marrow transplant this year to help recover from mye-lo-dys-pla-sia, a rare precancerous disease of the spinal cord.
Sagan told delegates from 35 countries that children need to be equipped with a "baloney detection kit" so they will not believe everything the government and adults tell them.