Billions and Billions
E318050
Billions and Billions is a posthumously published collection of essays by astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan that explores science, philosophy, and humanity’s future.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Billions and Billions canonical | 5 |
| “Billions and Billions” (essay) | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T3009467 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Billions and Billions Context triple: [Carl Sagan bibliography, includesNotableWork, Billions and Billions]
-
A.
Untold Millions
"Untold Millions" is a novel by American author Laura Z. Hobson, best known for exploring social issues and human relationships.
-
B.
The Big Bounce
The Big Bounce is a 2004 crime-comedy film based on an Elmore Leonard novel, starring Owen Wilson as a small-time crook drawn into a laid-back Hawaiian caper.
-
C.
The Next Million Years
The Next Million Years is a 1952 book by physicist Charles Galton Darwin that speculates on the long-term future and evolution of human society using principles of population dynamics and heredity.
-
D.
The Nine Billion Names of God
"The Nine Billion Names of God" is a classic science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke that explores themes of religion, technology, and the end of the universe through a Tibetan monastery's quest to list all possible names of God.
-
E.
The Inevitable
The Inevitable is an English rendering of the name of Surah Al-Waqi'ah, a chapter of the Qur’an that vividly describes the certainty of the Day of Resurrection and the final sorting of humanity into different groups.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Billions and Billions Target entity description: Billions and Billions is a posthumously published collection of essays by astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan that explores science, philosophy, and humanity’s future.
-
A.
Untold Millions
"Untold Millions" is a novel by American author Laura Z. Hobson, best known for exploring social issues and human relationships.
-
B.
The Big Bounce
The Big Bounce is a 2004 crime-comedy film based on an Elmore Leonard novel, starring Owen Wilson as a small-time crook drawn into a laid-back Hawaiian caper.
-
C.
The Next Million Years
The Next Million Years is a 1952 book by physicist Charles Galton Darwin that speculates on the long-term future and evolution of human society using principles of population dynamics and heredity.
-
D.
The Nine Billion Names of God
"The Nine Billion Names of God" is a classic science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke that explores themes of religion, technology, and the end of the universe through a Tibetan monastery's quest to list all possible names of God.
-
E.
The Inevitable
The Inevitable is an English rendering of the name of Surah Al-Waqi'ah, a chapter of the Qur’an that vividly describes the certainty of the Day of Resurrection and the final sorting of humanity into different groups.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (30)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
essay collection
ⓘ
non-fiction book ⓘ |
| author | Carl Sagan ⓘ |
| basedOn | Carl Sagan’s essays and lectures ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States
ⓘ
linked to:
United States of America
|
| genre |
essay
ⓘ
popular science ⓘ |
| hasForewordBy | Ann Druyan ⓘ |
| hasPart |
“Billions and Billions” (essay)
ⓘ
linked to:
Billions and Billions
“In the Valley of the Shadow” ⓘ “The Environment: Where Does Prudence Lie?” ⓘ “The Nuclear Winter” ⓘ “The World That Came In From the Cold” ⓘ |
| isbn10 | 0679411607 ⓘ |
| isbn13 | 9780679411604 ⓘ |
| isPosthumous | true ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mediaType | print ⓘ |
| notableFor | popularizing the phrase “billions and billions” ⓘ |
| oclcNumber | 36663163 ⓘ |
| pageCount | ~244 ⓘ |
| publicationDate | 1997 ⓘ |
| publisher | Random House ⓘ |
| subject |
cosmology
ⓘ
environmental issues ⓘ global warming ⓘ humanity’s future ⓘ nuclear weapons ⓘ philosophy ⓘ science ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Billions and Billions Description of subject: Billions and Billions is a posthumously published collection of essays by astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan that explores science, philosophy, and humanity’s future.
Referenced by (6)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: Billions and Billions
subject linked to:
“The World That Came In From the Cold”
subject linked to:
“The World That Came In From the Cold”
subject linked to:
“In the Valley of the Shadow”
subject linked to:
“In the Valley of the Shadow”