• In total there are 31 users online :: 1 registered, 0 hidden and 30 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Pale Blue Dot

Engage in discussions encompassing themes like cosmology, human evolution, genetic engineering, earth science, climate change, artificial intelligence, psychology, and beyond in this forum.
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
geo

2C - MOD & GOLD
pets endangered by possible book avalanche
Posts: 4779
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:24 am
15
Location: NC
Has thanked: 2198 times
Been thanked: 2200 times
United States of America

Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

A view of Earth from Saturn as seen from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Wow!

Image

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html
-Geo
Question everything
User avatar
johnson1010
Tenured Professor
Posts: 3564
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:35 pm
15
Location: Michigan
Has thanked: 1280 times
Been thanked: 1128 times

Re: Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

wow.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
User avatar
geo

2C - MOD & GOLD
pets endangered by possible book avalanche
Posts: 4779
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:24 am
15
Location: NC
Has thanked: 2198 times
Been thanked: 2200 times
United States of America

Re: Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

To put this in perspective, this is a real image taken just a couple of days ago by the Cassini spacecraft which was launched in 1997 and is now orbiting Saturn. This photo shows our humble planet as it appears from about 900 million miles away! How small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things and, yet, how fragile and special we are too.
-Geo
Question everything
User avatar
Chris OConnor

1A - OWNER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 17016
Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 2:43 pm
21
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 3509 times
Been thanked: 1309 times
Gender:
Contact:
United States of America

Re: Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

“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 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. 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.

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: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
User avatar
geo

2C - MOD & GOLD
pets endangered by possible book avalanche
Posts: 4779
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:24 am
15
Location: NC
Has thanked: 2198 times
Been thanked: 2200 times
United States of America

Re: Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

Thanks, Chris, that is perfect.
-Geo
Question everything
User avatar
johnson1010
Tenured Professor
Posts: 3564
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:35 pm
15
Location: Michigan
Has thanked: 1280 times
Been thanked: 1128 times

Re: Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
User avatar
LanDroid

2A - MOD & BRONZE
Comandante Literario Supreme
Posts: 2800
Joined: Sat Jul 27, 2002 9:51 am
21
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Has thanked: 195 times
Been thanked: 1166 times
United States of America

Re: Pale Blue Dot

Unread post

Such eloquence. Carl Sagan - the ultimate agitator. He didn't need to say it directly, "it" was an inescapable conclusion to his observations. He convinced me way back when we read Demon Haunted World.
Post Reply

Return to “Science & Technology”