Bieber Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Hi everyone. I'm posting a picture on here accompanied by some reflections by the famed astronomer Carl Sagan that I read from time to time when I think that perhaps I might be taking my problems a little too seriously. I always find it very humbling and something that helps me to step back from all the petty things I consider so big and important and really see them for what they are, and I hope it makes you feel the same way. (The photo is from NASA, taken by the Voyager I and was taken in 1990 when it was 3.7 billion miles away from Earth and if you look closely, you'll notice a small blue dot which is our planet inside the gold ray of light, while the quote is from Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994) http://en.wikipedia....i/Pale_blue_dot) From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DwayneEMTP Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 (edited) Man..I like that a lot... Thanks for sharing.. You know what's amazing..is that the doc took a picture of my brain the last time he checked my years, and it looks exactly like that picture! What are the odds.... Dwayne Edited January 20, 2011 by DwayneEMTP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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