Pale Blue Dot-Reflections on a Mote of Dust

[Moriarty]

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The image of the Earth above was taken by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990 while near Saturn from about 4 billion miles away.

The excerpt below is from Sagan's commencement address from May of 1996. In my opinion, there's no better example of putting the sum of human experience and existence into the proper context of the universe.

It's awe-inspiring. Spiritual, but not mystical. Amazing.

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.

[Solaris]

Wonderful piece, I like it.

[Tenacious B]

Excellent. It is really humbling to think we are just one unremarkable planet orbiting an average star in a galaxy filled with trillions of others stars in a universe filled with trillions of other galaxies; then there are theories of multiple universes. Earth is basically one grain of sand on one little beach.

If there is ever a motivation for space exploration this is it.

Thanks for posting that.

[Antares]

I teared up during the video; it was way more beautiful than any romance film; more tear-jerking than any tragedy. I never cry during movies. Oh man.

[TheLastMohican]

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Here's the video version. It has more from the book than the transcript above, but the same beginning and ending.

Um...it didn't affect me. Maybe because I had already considered this angle before watching the video...?

[ShaiGar]

"a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam"

[Motor Jax]

pretty good stuff right there

[Antares]

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Here's the video version. It has more from the book than the transcript above, but the same beginning and ending.

Um...it didn't affect me. Maybe because I had already considered this angle before watching the video...?

I just suddenly realized how insignificant we are when watching the video (I've already watched this), and I'm surprised at man's audacity to think otherwise.

[ShaiGar]

We're not insignificant. God created the world just for us. Says so in the bible.

[TheLastMohican]

I just suddenly realized how insignificant we are when watching the video (I've already watched this), and I'm surprised at man's audacity to think otherwise.

Insignificant in the universe...yes. But as life forms...no.
Though the universe is vast, only a very small fraction of the planets can harbor life as we know it. Ours is one of those planets, and the life on this planet has been able to thrive. We have an enormously rich biosphere, and no other planets that we have detected appear to have such capacity (except for a few that are in the right zone for the existence of liquid water, which does not mandate the presence of life).

In the grand cosmos, we might seem petty as we fight over patches of our speck hurtling through space. But when you consider not just the vastness of space, but also the rarity of intelligent life, we become very significant indeed.

God adds another dimension to our importance, but that would be irrelevant to you, so just consider our advancement.

[Motor Jax]

from what i've seen, there are many, many galaxies just like ours

and i've wondered if there are suns and orbiting planets in them as much as in ours

but with all the vastness of space, we haven't even been outside of our own galaxy

oh, if only technology would just hurry things along

i need a vacation, sitting on a beach and drinking a rum and coke on some distant planet

[ShaiGar]

You'd still need to get out of the Oorts Cloud.

[Ool]

Yeah, yeah, but the reason we’re still living on the outer crust of that speck of dust, like mold on a wall, is because we just can’t think big. I mean, the Sun wastes two billion times more energy into deep space than it shines down on this world and we’re having a crisis because we’re running out of oil and living space.

Give me a break!

Why haven’t we been back to the Moon in over a generation? Why aren’t we focusing our resources on space elevators and solar power satellites, redirecting solar energy from geostationary orbit down here as microwaves?

I don’t know about humbling, but it’s really depressing that we can’t seem to get out of this gravity well…

[TheLastMohican]

from what i've seen, there are many, many galaxies just like ours

and i've wondered if there are suns and orbiting planets in them as much as in ours

but with all the vastness of space, we haven't even been outside of our own galaxy

oh, if only technology would just hurry things along

i need a vacation, sitting on a beach and drinking a rum and coke on some distant planet

A current estimate for the Drake Equation is N = 2.3, based on Drake's own estimates for many of the values. If you multiply this by the number of galaxies, you get a very large number. But that number, huge as it is, is a extremely small fraction of the total planets. Therefore, while perhaps not unique, we are extremely rare.

We could also say that gold is insignificant. All the gold mined in the world is estimated to be equal to a 50-foot cube of solid gold. That's a lot of metal. But consider that we are talking about that amount of metal in the volume of the earth, and you see why gold is so valuable.

[Motor Jax]

oh, i knew i loved the Drake Equation! thanks for bringing that up, since i didn't even think about it

[Moriarty]

In the grand cosmos, we might seem petty as we fight over patches of our speck hurtling through space. But when you consider not just the vastness of space, but also the rarity of intelligent life, we become very significant indeed.

The idea of intelligent life squabbling over a patch of a speck hurtling thru space seems more than just a little quirky. Mix in some superstitious motivations for behaving in such a way, and you have a recipe for the inspiration this piece was based upon.

[ShaiGar]

A current estimate for the Drake Equation is N = 2.3, based on Drake's own estimates for many of the values. If you multiply this by the number of galaxies, you get a very large number. But that number, huge as it is, is a extremely small fraction of the total planets. Therefore, while perhaps not unique, we are extremely rare.
Intelligent shades of blue outnumber us.

We could also say that gold is insignificant. All the gold mined in the world is estimated to be equal to a 50-foot cube of solid gold. That's a lot of metal. But consider that we are talking about that amount of metal in the volume of the earth, and you see why gold is so valuable.

It's not valuable. What intrinsic value does gold have? Other than being used for roofing (malleability). I cannot eat it, Drink it, Read it or Have sex with it.

[Moriarty]

Intelligent shades of blue outnumber us.

Clever reference.

[TheLastMohican]

The idea of intelligent life squabbling over a patch of a speck hurtling thru space seems more than just a little quirky. Mix in some superstitious motivations for behaving in such a way, and you have a recipe for the inspiration this piece was based upon.

*sigh* But are you understanding my point about the significance of the scale?


It's not valuable. What intrinsic value does gold have? Other than being used for roofing (malleability). I cannot eat it, Drink it, Read it or Have sex with it.

That is basically my point. It has no intrinsice value. What makes it valuable is its rarity, and if not for that, it would not be so valuable (valuable as in being tradable for other practically valuable things).

[Moriarty]

No need to get exasperated. I understand the (seemingly) insurmountable odds.

I'm still not impressed with the product of those long odds at work. I'd suspect the odds of a specific human mind actively and meaningfully contributing to the progressive efforts of the human race are similar to the odds that any specific planet could evolve intelligent life in the first place.

[Tenacious B]

Why haven’t we been back to the Moon in over a generation?
We're going back, soon, and will establish a base there as practice/get-off for manned trips to Mars. This, of course, is assuming that the why-explore-space-when-we-haven't-fixed-all-of-the-problems-at-home crowd doesn't screw it all up, which is a depressingly likely scenario.

There are people working on space elevators. The problem is manufacturing a carbon nanotube strand (even just one) that is long enough to reach space and yet have zero defects.

[Ool]

We're going back, soon, and will establish a base there as practice/get-off for manned trips to Mars. This, of course, is assuming that the why-explore-space-when-we-haven't-fixed-all-of-the-problems-at-home crowd doesn't screw it all up, which is a depressingly likely scenario.

Of course the answer to that is, the problems at home are fixed by going to outer space with the purpose of exploiting its resources, which are a) energy and b) living space.

Energy would solve our dependence on fossil fuels changing our climate. Heck, it would solve our dependence on climate. If we had enough cheap, clean electricity we could desalinate and detoxify water and pump it wherever we need it ourselves, without having to rely on nature to evaporate and rain it down on mountaintops for us. We could also grow our stuff under electric light, heat and cool our homes, electrolyze the carbon out of the air if photosynthesis isn’t sufficient…

Space could enable us to house and feed orders of magnitude more people than the outer crust of this planet ever could (most of whose resources in its interior are more out of reach to us than the surface of Venus). We wouldn’t have to set aside so much land for agriculture, encroaching on other living beings’ habitats if we could grow food and live in artificial habitat drums rotating in the sun (particularly if we could transport stuff up and down easily by elevator).

I don’t even care about Mars all that much. After all, it would only be another planetary surface—just another speck of dust—and we already have that living here…

There are people working on space elevators. The problem is manufacturing a carbon nanotube strand (even just one) that is long enough to reach space and yet have zero defects.

Yeah, I know. It’s only become realistic recently, and so far we don’t even have any earthly structures yet that would prove that they work. But even without the elevator, redirecting solar energy down to Earth from places like the Moon would solve so many of our problems.

Well, maybe we were simply lazy because oil was so convenient and cheap. Sometimes too easy a life can be a curse when it comes to trying to reach your potential…

[Tenacious B]

Of course the answer to that is, the problems at home are fixed by going to outer space with the purpose of exploiting its resources, which are a) energy and b) living space.

Energy would solve our dependence on fossil fuels changing our climate. Heck, it would solve our dependence on climate. If we had enough cheap, clean electricity we could desalinate and detoxify water and pump it wherever we need it ourselves, without having to rely on nature to evaporate and rain it down on mountaintops for us. We could also grow our stuff under electric light, heat and cool our homes, electrolyze the carbon out of the air if photosynthesis isn’t sufficient…

Space could enable us to house and feed orders of magnitude more people than the outer crust of this planet ever could (most of whose resources in its interior are more out of reach to us than the surface of Venus). We wouldn’t have to set aside so much land for agriculture, encroaching on other living beings’ habitats if we could grow food and live in artificial habitat drums rotating in the sun (particularly if we could transport stuff up and down easily by elevator).

Exactly, if only the general public and those in power were so aware.





Tenacious B added to this post, 2 minutes and 33 seconds later...


I don’t even care about Mars all that much. After all, it would only be another planetary surface—just another speck of dust—and we already have that living here…

Mars is just the first step, like Columbus reaching the Canary Islands. And it looks like there is some killer rock climbing and spelunking to be had there. If we don't terraform it to look like Earth, it would make a great "outdoors" park.





Tenacious B added to this post, 3 minutes and 12 seconds later...


Well, maybe we were simply lazy because oil was so convenient and cheap. Sometimes too easy a life can be a curse when it comes to trying to reach your potential…
Yeah, back in the early 1900's you could come out to east Texas, stick your pocket knife into the ground, and become an oil baron. Those days are long gone, but I'm looking forward to increased nuclear power and smarter/more efficient ways of harnessing solar power. We could establish solar arrays on the moon, or even try Mercury and sun orbiting solar power stations. It would be such a terrible shame to confine our existence to one little blue spec of dust.