A Pale Blue Dot

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Today I was reminded of the thoughts expressed by Carl Sagan as he viewed the remarkable photo of earth taken by Voyager 1, more than 4 billion miles away as it left our solar system. He had with great difficulty pursuaded NASA to turn the craft around to take this photo of earth before continuing along its path.

You can see the photo here, and scroll down to see the zoomed image.

Many of you may be familiar with this, but I ask that you please take a moment to keep his words in mind as you contemplate the photo. Never in my lifetime has it seemed so important to consider this.

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known." – Carl Sagan

2

‘The world’s a big blue marble when you see it from out there…’

(Sorry. I don’t remember the rest.)

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Sorry, I don’t see a point to the OP.

From IMHO to MPSIMS.

4

If I may take the liberty of interpreting the OP…

'IMHO, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of six billion little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy cosmos. Someday you’ll understand that.

‘I think we should keep that in mind and stop killing each other and destroying the only planet we have.’

At least, that’s how I read it.

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Thanks. Yes, I was moved to share, but reconsidered it as opinion and not pointless, so moved it to IMHO. Sorry if it’s not appropriate.

The “point” of the OP was to share and perhaps move someone else, as I was moved.

Sagan said it better than I could ever hope to.

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At least I got to use a Casablanca quote, which I probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been moved. :wink:

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Your point was very well made. Thanks.

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I’ve often thought about how our beautiful blue planet appears from space, even from the moon, and Carl Sagan has expressed my thoughts much better than I could ever.
Thanks for sharing this, Brightpenny. I bookmarked the page.

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Yes. Thank you.

10

That was quite moving.

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From the cite:

Just curious: how does something get into an image when it is smaller than a pixel? I thought a pixel was the smallest unit of resolution.

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It that something is bright and, say, 80% of the size of a pixel, it makes sense that it would take over one pixel.

13

Is it appropriate to Pit a moderator for having no soul?

I was fortunate enough to take a class with Dr. Sagan near the end of his life; he left about 2/3ds through the semester to go get medcal treatment which was ultimately unsuccessful. He never stopped trying to make this point to us, and to others. I hope that someday people start listening.

–Cliffy

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Even if an object is smaller than a pixel, its light is still recieved by the camera. It will light up that pixel, and the light will also be scattered slightly by the camera’s optics into other nearby pixels.

For example, when you take an picture of a star with an ordinary digital camera or camcorder, the star’s actual size on the sky is much smaller than one pixel, but if you blow up the picture in Photoshop, you’ll see that it looks like a dot. The brighter the star, the more light the camera recieves, and the larger the dot will appear.

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I remember reading that and it’s what makes me like Carl Sagan so much. He had a very cool way of putting things.
I’d like to add a quote too if I may in the sprirt of what Cliffy said.
At the end of “Billions and Billions” he discusses his own health and adds this…

"For years, near my shaving mirror -so I see it every morning- I have kept a framed postcard. On the back is a penciled message to a Mr. James Day in Swansea Valley, Wales. It reads Dear friend, Just a line to show that I am alive and kicking and going grand. It’s a treat. yours, WJR

…On the front is a color photo of a sleek, four funneled steamer captioned "White Star Liner Titanic . The postcard was imprinted the day before the great ship went down.

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From the linked site:

Anyone know where the other pix might be?

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Voyager 1 Solar System “Family Portrait.”

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Brightpenny
I’m very glad you posted that. It is one of my favorite quotes of all time. In those few sentences, Carl Sagan sums up the human condition so eloquently.

One sentence really summarizes the present world situation:*
“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”*

And Johnny L.A. if I might add to your quote:
*the problems of six billion little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy cosmos … *
but this is our hill … and these are our beans!"
Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin in “The Naked Gun”

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In about 1970 I read the book Carl Sagan wrote with a Russian astronomer, I. S. Shklovskii, called Intelligent Life in the Universe. I was only 15 at the time, and it fueled the sense of wonder that has become a big part of who I am today.

It strikes me as interesting that he, like Einstein, who pondered the vastness of the universe and the complexity of the smallest unit, were both moved to devote much of their lives to promoting peace.

I envy you, Cliffy, for having taken a class with him.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
–Albert Einstein

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I enjoyed Carl Sagan’s thought, and find that I tend to subscribe to it. But it seems to contain a logical weakness:

One obviously important human conceit is the one he’s pointing at: “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe” Another could well be the notion that human ideas of virtue, such as kindness and compassion, have any real significance. If the earth is appallingly insignificant, how is the life of a human - or of thousands of humans - worth more than that of a mouse, or a mosquito, or a microbe? Why is there any real reason to deplore “the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors” ?