pale blue dot

[Jerry_111]

A picture of Earth -- 4 billion miles away.

http://www.bigskyastroclub.org/pale_blue_dot.htm

What do you guys think? (be sure to skim the speech below, too)

 

[nofx]

Makes me feel worthless, and nihilistic. Arigatou.

 

[xcellerate]

It's all relative.

 

[spookymooky]

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.

One of my favorite speeches.

Edit: On further reflection, I really like the word mote.

 

[Parlez]

Interesting.

 

[xombine]

Good ol' Carl...

 

[nutcrackr]

I can see my house

 

[Parlez]

I can see my house

No... that is not your house! It is just a piece of space dust.

 

[CptStern]

astronaut jesus took that photo not vyger

 

[CyberPitz]

We tiny.

Cool picture anyway.

 

[tehsolace]

I could see my house.

 

[Geogaddi]

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

That's right. I posted a quote supporting the idea of a higher being. Fcuk me in the ass and call me Sally.

 

[Raziaar]

Pfft... I could make a picture like that.

Voyager doesn't have any damn artistic ability.

 

[JNightshade]

I love that

 

[Cormeh]

Sweet.

 

[Remus]

Humbling expiriance my ass. I still feel we are the center of the Universe, the heroes in this cosmic soap-opera.

 

[Ren.182]

Wow, amazing. We're so small in space... our existance is nothing out there...

 

[xcellerate]

...our existance is nothing out there...

let's all go cut ourselves!


:angel: ;(

 

[Ren.182]

let's all go cut ourselves!


:angel: ;(

lol, shush you. xD