Today, as I and most of the world wait on tenterhooks for the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election, I read a news article about the Voyager 1 spacecraft probe, launched back in September 1977. It explained how NASA is instructing it to turn off and on various components to attempt to extend its amazingly long life from 15 BILLION MILES away! That distance is beyond my comprehension and totally blows my mind! Voyager 1 operates beyond the heliosphere, which is the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles well beyond Pluto’s orbit. The space probe’s instruments directly sample interstellar space.
Carl Sagan, Encyclopedia Britannica
On a day in which our nation appears to be divided on many issues, I am reminded that unless we step back and see not just our country, but the entire planet as our joint home, we are likely to continue our history of self-destruction. On Valentine’s Day 1990, a day on which we celebrate love, Voyager 1 at a “mere” 4 billion miles away turned around and took one last shot of its home planet before it flew beyond Earth-sight altogether. This was done at the suggestion of the famous, late astronomer, Carl Sagan, who later wrote about it in his book, Pale Blue Dot, published by Random House in November 1994.
As you either celebrate or mourn the results of today’s election, please read this excerpt from Pale Blue Dot and allow its truths to both soothe you and spur you on to keep moving forward with the best and most selfless of what humanity has to offer for our small world.
From—
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan, 1994
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.
Thanks for stopping by. Y’all come back, now. (And hold this little world, with all of its inhabitants, close to heart…no matter who is in the White House.)
Kathryn
Carl Sagan left us far too soon.
He, with his view of the universe, had perspective.
We, on the other hand, have so much less in our domain. We live on this pale blue dot and make mountains out of what, in the big picture of the universe, is so trite.
May we adjust our perspective and become better people.
Adults. People who can separate emotion from their reactions. Caring people who pledge to do better. To be better.
To stand back and see the bigger picture.
Excellent points, Chris!