Pale blue dot - Carl Sagan

Video Description

The Pale Blue Dot. Astronomer Carl Sagan beautifully summarises the importance and deeper meaning on what on the surface seems like an insignificant image. A deep message that will hopefully change your outlook on our existence and how fragile and small we are in the vastness of the universe and space. Full Transcript: When the voyager 1 was about to leave the solar system - a record distance; well beyond its intended mission - it was commanded by Nasa that a final image of the earth should be taken before it leaves. This was specifically requested from Astronomer Carl Sagan, who narrates this video. The photograph shows earth taken from six billion kilometres(3.7 billion miles). From this distance, all that is seen of the earth is a tiny dot; no bigger than a pixal. Calr sagan believe there was deeper meaning and significance to this image, and expresses his thoughts: ------------------------------------------------------------------ From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again 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. Comos series/credit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395695/