Think about it, human beings...Americans...launched the Voyager 1 space probe 40 years ago (in 1977) and sent it to explore Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1980) and their moons before taking this picture in 1990, and the Probe would go on to support observations of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter in 1994.
NASA Scientists designed the command sequences and and did the calculations and coding, sent it to the spacecraft over the course of several hours, panned the cameras to compensate for the probe's speed (over 40,000 miles per hour) took the photo and then waited several hours as bit by bit, pixel by pixel, the image was relayed to Earth via the Deep Space Network.
This photograph was not intended to have scientific merit, but simply to show our place in the Universe.
As Carl Sagan himself described it:
We succeeded in taking that picture, 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.
[...] 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, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994
Why is this important? It's very simple, really. This was a great accomplishment.
This operation was done with a Republican president in the White House, there was conflict in the world, hell the Cold War was still winding down. We still found the time to take on a challenge for no better reason than because we could do it, to demonstrate nothing so much as our own human frailty and smallness against the vastness of the Universe.
It takes a strong and confident nation to do that.
When this was done, America absolutely was great.
What changed?
Fundamentally, One of my biggest problems with our society right now is a whole we're not doing much more than going to work and getting paid. We're not even thinking ahead, as a whole. We think in terms of the next Quarter, the next quantifiable period with numbers attached, etc. We need to think bigger. Seriously, Think about the amounts of money that could be made, new fields of technology opened up, etc. if we as a nation much less humanity as a species set our sights on going to Mars...never mind well and truly reaching for the stars.
There's literally resources we can't even imagine out there, adventure and wealth enough to be had to fill the dreams of the most amoral pirate capitalist to overflowing, if only we made up our mind to go out there. That's what gets me is just how *Small* these people think, as personified by Donald Trump and his cabinet of Billionaires. If we'd apply ourselves the stars could be within our reach in a generation or two...we could rise to the literal heavens. We could, to paraphrase Melville, seat ourselves Sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and that would be just a start. But, some people at and near the top of this train-wreck we currently call a society would rather that we stay here and kill each other while we run out of stuff.
We have people who would rather sell out our country to the Russians, or rather see it burned to the ground, than see gays or liberals or minorities or non-Christians or women or whoever else disagrees with them get an equal share of this one decent-sized patch of that little blue dot in the vast blackness of space.
Look at that, look at it really, go ahead and explain to me how ANY of that makes any damned sense, and why you think we should throw away all that we have, on the altar of one man's bottomless ego. Oh yes, that is what will happen. There is no greatness in someone so self-absorbed. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Go ahead, Take your time, show your work, I'll wait.
Republicans...The picture that is the entire basis for this post happened on YOUR watch...and now various coders, hackers and other volunteers are having to back up Climate Change and Earth Science data (and are beginning to do the same with biological, cultural and other scientific information already) because of the current right-wing aversion to facts, reality and science. Ya'll can do better than that and you Damned well know it.
Facts, reality, science and truth do not go away simply because we refuse to save the data or because we refuse to talk about them.
Look at that picture, and go right on ahead and tell me how corporate profits or pissant human ideology or religion matter worth a shit in the grand scheme of things.
No matter how much money this or that rich person makes, you'll never be able to see it from 40 AU away.
The vast blackness of space that takes up all but 0.12 pixels of that photograph, on the other hand? That's a literal, scientifically-testable concept of Eternity right there.
Whether God exists, I cannot say with certainty. I *Believe* that He does, but my Belief does not equal Fact.
But Eternity, facts, reality and truth are testable things. I choose, based on my Christian upbringing and Church background, to believe that God exists. Therefore, I have faith.
I have enough faith in God to understand that my faith in Him need not be threatened by other views. I have enough respect for facts, reality and truth, hell,,,for myself...not to believe in conspiracy theories and silly bullshit.
Seat thyself Sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was no duplicate;
~Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter CVII, the Carpenter.
We all inhabit a pale blue dot in the vast blackness of space, sharing our immediate solar system with eight other planets, but surrounded by uncounted and uncountable stars. All of us, whatever our color or creed or race or religion or station in life are much alike, because we are all human beings. But we are each one unique, each one having felt the touch of the Creator whether He is known or knowable or unknown or even whether or not we accept His existence. We are endowed with a mind, and a soul, and can be each one made new if we so desire to be. We each have charge over our own souls. We all have some control over our circumstances. Only we, at the end of the day, can define ourselves.
Take a look up at the night sky, lose yourself in the wonder of it, and come the light of dawn, choose to start again, with courage and with hope.
The future, and whether or not we will ever rise to touch that Eternity that hangs over our heads every night, depends on it.
Together we rise, or none of us do.
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