Random Stuff

(Nikhil)

A Pale Blue Dot

This is the image of our earth as seen from near the Neptune. This image was taken by the Voyager spacecraft as it left our solar system forever, destined to travel endlessly in the great cosmic ocean. It carries with itself an entire collection of the very best creations of humankind which include 115 images, greetings in 55 different languages, sounds that we hear on earth and our greatest music including Beethoven and Mozart all recorded on a golden disk. All of this, in hopes that some advanced civilization will intercept it at some point in time, at a place light-years away from us, and get to know about our beautiful species. This is one last fleeting image the voyager took, one last look at its home planet as it says goodbye to us forever and carries with itself, the proof of our very own existence!!

Carl Sagan has a beautiful interpretation of this image, one that still doesn't fail to motivate me. Its there below the image.

"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 the only world known so far to harbour 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