Pale Blue Dot

Damn, I’ve watched this at least 5 times today.

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[i]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 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.[/i]

Pic related.

How fitting.
I just watched Horton Hears A Who last night.

That was beautiful

Reading the transcript before watching kinda ruined the video for me. They could not have picked a worse narrator. The message was very powerful though.

I think this is why astronauts kinda give me a hard on.

Especially the first round of guys in the Mercury and Apollo programs.

They got to see a whole different vantage of what we really are. They’re the ones, if they took the time to be enlightened by the whole thing, that really have an advantage over everyone else because they’ve been somewhere we’ll never be or have the chance to be.

And then Buzz Aldrin goes on Dancing With The Stars… Damn.

Carl Sagan owns.

[quote]Rational Gaze wrote:
Carl Sagan owns.[/quote]

x2

Nice clip.

Though it does make one wonder why we still lack a viable asteroid interception strategy.

Read the entire book. It’s worth it.

[quote]chillain wrote:
Nice clip.

Though it does make one wonder why we still lack a viable asteroid interception strategy.
[/quote]

…because the sky is really really big. It is said that we only have about 10% of that universal space under observation at any one time. We could literally not see one coming until it was way too late to do anything about it. It is also pretty much just a matter of time before we get hit with something really big again. There are still huge craters thousands of years old on Earth that could have potentially ended life as we know it if they were to hit today.

Professor X IS the asteroid interception strategy!

Anyway, great and humbling video…

Chuck Norris will roundhouse kick the incoming asteroid for a cosmic sudden-death-overtime field goal.

Did you see that on Nate Green’s blog?

Good video, btw.

I read “Billion and billions” by Sagan, would recommend it if you’re into space and astronomy.

I saw this clip years ago, and I had it linked to me over MSN. Since then I’ve just watched it over and over.

It’s truly amazing how insignificant we are in the context of the universe. We’re here for such a brief moment and so many people choose to waste their lives.

[quote]Makavali wrote:

Sharing is caring, right?

[/quote]

Especially if it’s herpes.

[quote]Squiggles wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

Sharing is caring, right?

[/quote]

Especially if it’s herpes.
[/quote]

<3

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]chillain wrote:
Nice clip.

Though it does make one wonder why we still lack a viable asteroid interception strategy.
[/quote]

…because the sky is really really big. It is said that we only have about 10% of that universal space under observation at any one time. We could literally not see one coming until it was way too late to do anything about it. It is also pretty much just a matter of time before we get hit with something really big again. There are still huge craters thousands of years old on Earth that could have potentially ended life as we know it if they were to hit today.[/quote]

We’re not nearly as ignorant as that. But we do remain helpless, despite relatively robust space programs and budgets.

The point I’m echoing is that since we stand to lose literally everything, shouldn’t this be a highest priority?

http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/2007-10-15-reducingrisk.html

[quote]WhiteFlash wrote:
Reading the transcript before watching kinda ruined the video for me. They could not have picked a worse narrator. The message was very powerful though.[/quote]

The narrator was the author, Carl Sagan. Widely regarded as one of the best science communicators of all time. I love the mans body of work and the way he speaks personally, he very powerfully communicates the awe and wonder of nature in light of human discovery.

[quote]chillain wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]chillain wrote:
Nice clip.

Though it does make one wonder why we still lack a viable asteroid interception strategy.
[/quote]

…because the sky is really really big. It is said that we only have about 10% of that universal space under observation at any one time. We could literally not see one coming until it was way too late to do anything about it. It is also pretty much just a matter of time before we get hit with something really big again. There are still huge craters thousands of years old on Earth that could have potentially ended life as we know it if they were to hit today.[/quote]

We’re not nearly as ignorant as that. But we do remain helpless, despite relatively robust space programs and budgets.

The point I’m echoing is that since we stand to lose literally everything, shouldn’t this be a highest priority?

http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/2007-10-15-reducingrisk.html

[/quote]

There are far greater concerns than that. Many things right here have higher certainty rates.