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Food for thought
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 20:10
by markfiend
You see that pale blue dot? That's the Earth.
Carl Sagan wrote:From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any 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.
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 20:14
by emilystrange
it shore is purdy...
*sigh*
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 20:59
by boudicca
YES. Fcuking
yes. I couldn’t say it better myself.
Carl Sagan has become a real hero of mine of late, on account of
The Demon-Haunted World – Science As A Candle In The Dark – an absolutely fantastic book. The ideas espoused in it have shed more light on my life than a biblical epiphany ever could. I would urge anyone and everyone to read it. I have had a pantheistic/ “Einsteinian atheist� bent for many years, a sense of immense awe and wonder towards the universe and an enormous sense of comfort and beauty in the reality of our insignificance within it – but the addition of an understanding of the scientific method and the rules of critical and sceptical thinking has been a real candle in the dark to vanquish my own demons, and it’s no exaggeration to say it’s been changing my life (and is continuing to do so).
The man is a legend and his words resonate with wisdom. The marriage of skepticism and wonder is a match made in heaven.
Fcuking kudos to you Mark for posting this
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 21:00
by boudicca
Incidentally, Dawkins on Darwin is on at the moment!
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 22:13
by eotunun
Carl Sagan
was an outstanding person and the even mix of a poet and a scientist.
That's why he manages so well to wrap the simple truth into as intensive quotations.
One can not remain untouched by his works.
I remember the series Cosmos was on german TV in July/August 1983 here in Germany. All of my family (Back then we were still a happy foursome) sat like enchanted and watched the program. I remember those nights very well, and I guess back then was when my initial fascination for physics and science in general was sparked. I don't even try to imagine how many lives he changed by means of his works.
After reading or hearing Sagan, things seem so simple and clear.
Isn't it fascinating how simply the world's big problems can be pointed out and how solutions can be found by applying mere logic thinking and a bit of constructive spirit?
One of the great ones, that's for sure.
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 22:27
by markfiend
boudicca wrote:Incidentally, Dawkins on Darwin is on at the moment!
Some laugh out loud moments, and some that almost made me despair.
re the pale blue dot: space is big. I mean really big. You might think It's a long way to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...
The sheer size of deep space (and deep time come to think of it) just boggle the mind.
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 22:35
by mh
"When you're lost it's so relentless".
Top photo,
Mark; there's a high res version of it too that makes for fabulous wallpaper.
Re: Food for thought
Posted: 18 Aug 2008, 23:00
by Dodges Unlimited Inc.
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 09:51
by timsinister
You're just an insignificant dot on an insignificant dot...
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 14:00
by markfiend
I was working something out. If you drew a scale-map of the Solar System at a scale where the Earth was 1cm from the Sun, all the planets out to Neptune would fit in a circle 30cm in radius, the 'Plutinos' and other Kuiper belt objects extend out to about 55cm away from the Sun. The Voyager 1 probe has got just over a metre from the Sun...
...and Alpha Centauri is more than 2.75 kilometres (1.7 miles) away...
...and the Milky Way galaxy is about 64000km across...
...and the furthest reaches of the visible universe are about 9million km away.
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 14:15
by weebleswobble
and tom-tom still can't find my hoos
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 14:28
by emilystrange
marky, would you like me to find you something to do?
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 14:54
by Harvey Winston
Great thread.
And a lot less painful than the total perspective vortex!
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 17:39
by markfiend
emilystrange wrote:marky, would you like me to find you something to do?
It's amazing what sh!te goes through your head at five am when you can't sleep
Posted: 19 Aug 2008, 23:05
by 6FeetOver
markfiend wrote:emilystrange wrote:marky, would you like me to find you something to do?
It's amazing what sh!te goes through your head at five am when you can't sleep
Welcome to
my hell. Muahahaha!
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 09:58
by eotunun
"
Commander! There ith a planet that hath carbonium bathed lifeformth on it, an they throw around with radioth!"
"Is there coffee on that planet?"
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 12:19
by Dark
A lot of people do this, look at how huge the universe is and feel insignificantly small. I do it from the other way around:
I start just thinking of the forces involved in keeping one nucleon (proton, neutron, whatever) in existance.
Then lots of them join together as an atom, surrounded by electrons. These atoms all come together, constantly sending energy to one another in order to simply stay together, moving distances so small we can't see them without the most powerful microscopes.
To put their sizes into perspective, a single strand of hair is around a million atoms in diameter. So just take a minute to think how many make up a finger, an arm, a whole body.
After a while, even the capability of this body to even type this message, moving all those particles, and their energies, completely astounds me.
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 14:00
by markfiend
Good point.
In the third episode of 'The Genius of Charles Darwin' Dawkins picked up a handful of dirt and said something along the lines of 'there are more bacteria in here than there are humans on the planet.'
It's a bit ick-making but there are probably more bacteria in your mouth than people in the world... (about 12 times as many according to one source I googled)
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 14:38
by weebleswobble
Gordon's Alive?
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 20:35
by Purple Light
I could really really get into this thread but I wouldn't log off for hours & I've got better things to do.
However, Carl Sagan was a God, shame he died. The film Contact, based on his novel is one of the very few occasions where I think a film does the book justice. (I'm sure I'll get shot down for that one...
)
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 21:01
by Almiche V
eotunun wrote:I remember the series Cosmos
I remember that aswell and was transfixed by it. Brilliant series.
Speaking of Hitch-Hikers:
"2000 years after a man got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if everyone was nice to each other for a change"
Love that quote.
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 21:09
by eotunun
I love all five parts of the trilogy.
Remember the joke with Zaphod coming out off the total perspex vortice?
I read it, took a walk with the dog and, half an hour after reading I noticed the point. All of a sudden, in the middle of nowhere between Bonn and an even less maningfull town, a sixteen year old bloke puzzled his dog and a few birds by breaking out into mad laughter for no obvious reason.
Douglas Adams moments..
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 21:38
by markfiend
Purple Light wrote:The film Contact, based on his novel is one of the very few occasions where I think a film does the book justice. (I'm sure I'll get shot down for that one...
)
I've not seen the film.
I dug the punchline of the book -- somewhat similar to this xkcd comic:
http://xkcd.com/10/ (spoiler)
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 21:46
by eotunun
markfiend wrote:Purple Light wrote:The film Contact, based on his novel is one of the very few occasions where I think a film does the book justice. (I'm sure I'll get shot down for that one...
)
I've not seen the film.
I dug the punchline of the book ---- SPOILER ALERT
somewhat similar to this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/10/
The size of an atom equals BBC-code [size=1
].. I tried to enlarge it with [ctrl] [+]-impossible.
Posted: 20 Aug 2008, 22:01
by markfiend
better?
