This is a picture of Earth. It was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of 6.4 billion kilometers. Look again at 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 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.
-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
3 comments:
Wait, I think I found Mike's Fantasy Football team that didn't show up last weekend!
Just kidding... I was interested to see whose writing that was. I didn't think you were that poetic. That photo really does put you in your place and make you realize of what little importance many things have. And anyone who thinks we are the only life forms out there has got to be wrong. Why would so much space exist for just us?
I think it's because we are a greedy species, and therefore we want/think all of space is just ours. And I think we are all alone. I believe that God gave us space. He gave it to us so that we can never complain about not having enough space.
Hahahahahhahahaha I crack myself up. Probably just me.
I think the odds that life exists outside of Earth are very good, but that the odds of Earthlings ever finding that life are very small.
The problem is infinity. Strange things happen to probability when you have infinite opportunities. For instance, it is entirely possible that the atoms that make up your body align themselves with the atoms of a brick wall such that your entire body can pass completely through the wall without even touching the brick. The odds of such a perfect alignment are astronomically small. But given infinite chances, it will eventually happen. (And also that you will pass half-way through the wall and be trapped)
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