Darkfinn Posted June 16, 2010 Share Posted June 16, 2010 This photograph of earth (circled) was taken by the Voyager 1 Spacecraft as it exited our solar system in 1990. From a distance of more than 4 billion miles, the earth is merely a speck. Carl Sagan (American Astronomer) summed it up as such... "From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of 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." 1 Link to comment
PrincessDragonette Posted June 17, 2010 Share Posted June 17, 2010 Gotta love Carl Sagan, thanks for sharing Darkfinn Link to comment
dprtodd Posted June 17, 2010 Share Posted June 17, 2010 major Sagan fan too Some favs from youtube - the Sagan autotune stuff and Link to comment
tenderheart Posted June 17, 2010 Share Posted June 17, 2010 I have a huge collection of sagan. Everything I could find, he was a brilliant man that brought science to a huge number of people. Link to comment
Darkfinn Posted June 17, 2010 Author Share Posted June 17, 2010 I particularly enjoyed the 3rd paragraph. Link to comment
Kalbintion Posted June 18, 2010 Share Posted June 18, 2010 seems to be more of a Sagan love thread haha, but Sagan is awesome. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now