The pale blue dot

[pocaracas]

I know this is not something new.... It was brought back to me by last week's cosmos episode. Just enjoy!

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40 AU) from Earth, as part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a fraction of a pixel (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space.
[...]
The Pale Blue Dot was taken when the Voyager 1 spacecraft reached the edge of the solar system, 12 years after its launch and travelling at 40,000 miles per hour (64,000 km/h)[8] at a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers.[11][12][13] On February 14, 1990,[14][15] having completed its primary mission, the spacecraft was commanded by NASA to turn around and photograph the planets of the solar system

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

[LostLocke]

Yes.
This is one of those little speeches, when I hear it directly from Sagan, that can, at the same time, bring a chill down my spine and a lump in my throat.

[Marsellus Wallace]

makes you feel insignificant :/

[Minimalist]

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Too bad no one listened.

[Napoléon]

Reminds me of this video.

[Shaggy]

This is awesome to me every time I see it come up. I seriously love stuff that shows the vastness of the universe around us. That's why the first episode of cosmos was so amazing.

Now i have to watch last week's cosmos.

[Anomalocaris]

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Too bad no one listened.

Not enough people anyway.

[Brian37]

Sagan's rightful assessment of our planet's size in the scope of the universe is not the first realization of our species finite nature. As beautiful as his prose were in stating the obvious Shakespeare said much the the same in Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5,

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Sagan wasn't the first to figure out our finite nature. Science however eventually confirmed what a select few humans guess at.