Popular Culture
In Carl Sagan's novel "Contact", a machine is constructed from a blueprint received through an extraterrestrial radio transmission. An important (and unexplained) component of the machine are dowels constructed out of erbium.
Read more about this topic: Erbium
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“O, popular applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms?”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“Insolent youth rides, now, in the whirlwind. For those modern iconoclasts who are without culture possess, apparently, all the courage.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)