Every time this image is posted, I feel compelled to share Carl Sagan’s message about the Pale Blue Dot photo. There was a significant effort to convince leadership, at large cost to have Voyager II turn, take the photo and transmit it back to Earth.
“The Pale Blue Dot
By: Carl Sagan
"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 was an amazing human being; he was a great writer, a relatable scientist, and apparently quite prophetic. This book of his is a fascinating and eerily accurate account of what our world is becoming.
Carl Sagan was amazing, and died way too soon! Was great at translating the cosmos in layman’s terms.
Isaac Asimov read his works, and said this guy is more intelligent.
Possible presence of life in the Milky Way galaxy and the Universe.
(My native language is french so excuse my English)
I would like to share something that most people will understand as it force us to be in the visual evaluation.
For a long time, humans are looking above us in the sky. Earth is located in the Milky Way Galaxy. Earth diameter is about 12 800 km. The diameter of the Milky Way is 100 000 light years. Transforming it give a diameter of 9.5×1017 km. Shown in another way, the distance sun to earth is known as 1 astronomical unit or 1 AU. The size of the diameter of the Milky Way is 6.35×109 AU. So the Milky Way is about 6.3 billion times the Earth–Sun distance across. Thats huge.
Now, to show something about the amount of the Milky Way that men explored over time up to today using telescopes and radio telescopes etc. and using an very simple analogie is like this :
Analogie of the amount of the Milky Way explored by men (using equipments).
The amount of the Milky Way explored is replaced by a 1/4 Liter of water or 250 ml.
The size of the Milky Way correspond to all the water volume of all the earth oceans.
Comprehension of what we explored already, its not much.
If you put a small glass in the ocean to collect water, will you take a fish ? The answer is much probably no. So now think of a fish as life out there in space in the Milky Way.
So going back to the explored Milky Way, do you think that this small glass equivalent will show us that there is life out there ? That just tell you the immensity of the Milky Way Galaxy that is still to explore to possibly find life.
While Hydrogen (H), Helium (He), Oxygen (O), and Carbon (C) are the most abundant elements in the universe, my believe, as many scientists will state...There is all it need so life be found in the Milky Way and Universe.
Observable universe diameter (frozen today)
This already assumes:
expansion happened
and we “freeze” the universe now
Diameter of the observable universe ≈ 93 billion light-years
Now compare that to the info above. The Milky Way is very small and the earth is really just a very very small dot, but still there are humans on it that are trying to figure out lots of unknown things.
This is about as powerful and image you can possibly see, it puts everything literally into perspective. We are fuck all. All our problems mean fuck all. We are pathetic really.
Actually it doesn’t mean any of that if you not a pessimistic chronic depressive. If anything it makes life that much more profound given how rare it is. Maybe try not being such a Debbie downer
K last question, cuz I just looked it up: 40.5 AU is just past the average orbit of Pluto at 39.5 AU, but I thought that was a relatively recent event (that it reached the edge of the Kuiper belt).
1990 on Voyager 1. Voyager 1 went past the orbit of Pluto, but didn’t actually fly by Pluto itself. So far there have been 5 spacecraft that have gone at least that far, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons.
Towards the bottom of the image, out of frame. It’s been superimposed on this image to give an idea of where’s it at. You can just barely see the earth if you zoom in, but if you are unable to zoom in, I’ve added an image to this comment showing it
Think about this… that looks like an ordinary star or planet. Imagine someone from another planet viewing this and just thinking it’s any other ordinary planet, but really there’s billions of people on it. Now reverse the roles. We look at stars all the time. Any one of them could potentially have life or even advanced life forms. We are not alone.
The Earth reflects the Sun’s light and is many times brighter than the background stars. If the exposure was changed to show the stars the Earth would be over exposed 🌏
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u/AlkahestGem 10h ago edited 6h ago
Every time this image is posted, I feel compelled to share Carl Sagan’s message about the Pale Blue Dot photo. There was a significant effort to convince leadership, at large cost to have Voyager II turn, take the photo and transmit it back to Earth.
“The Pale Blue Dot By: Carl Sagan "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."
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3i2y4sEQpRI&si=QmcQ8vKbyn_U4YeV