LEVEL 75 PALADIN Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot An excerpt from the book. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw "The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having." "It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos -- but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last." "So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth's surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal." "Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was 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 mother and father; every hopeful child; every inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; 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 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. 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. 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. 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. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known: the pale blue dot." 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delonemonkey Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LEVEL 75 PALADIN Posted August 13, 2009 Author Share Posted August 13, 2009 Its just fucking wild that I sit here worrying about car insurance and parking tickets, making money, "success". And it really doesn't fucking matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheoHuxtable.. Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 2:14 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LEVEL 75 PALADIN Posted August 13, 2009 Author Share Posted August 13, 2009 http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/08/hell_yeah_hubble.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delonemonkey Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 Its just fucking wild that I sit here worrying about car insurance and parking tickets, making money, "success". And it really doesn't fucking matter. yeah man. we are like butterflies alive for a day thinking its forever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheoHuxtable.. Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 I just got done watching the documentary "Beyond The Big Bang" on Blu-Ray. Highly recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LEVEL 75 PALADIN Posted August 13, 2009 Author Share Posted August 13, 2009 This is dope, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R@ndomH3ro Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 fuck bitches, get money Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demolishun Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 what if i was immortal,,, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheoHuxtable.. Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 To scale, if the earth were the size of a period (".") in a book, the Milky Way Galaxy would be about the size of the continental United States. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HighGravityCane Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 Basically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twonpoo Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 great post. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Earthworm Jim Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 My brain hurts... :( 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R@ndomH3ro Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 Basically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaxRoach Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 great post. yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the radiologist Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 Great thread. Got into astronomy and astrophysics for a couple of years a while back. Shit is an endless shitpot of curiosity. Waste of my time, considering one day I'll die and be transformed into a space owl free to soar to the 1900 diameter sun.....sun star. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delonemonkey Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 If you were to look in the inside of an atom the nucleus would be so small it would be comparative to the nucleus being the sun in our solar system, with uranus or the farther planets being the orbiting electrons. And every single thing is made out of these, which look no different from one another and which are not solid but constantly in motion. The electrons orbit the nucleus so fast that it is like they are everywhere at once, so its like a solid object yet completley empty at the same time. fuck i am high edit :hahaha i wrote at the same town Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HUSK Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 those blue dots are aliens having sex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
423894 Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 The vacuum within a single hydrogen atom is(10^-23 cm^3). If you were to take the latent energy from that there is more there than all the mass of all the stars and all the planets up to 20 billion light years away from Earth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the graff giraffe Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 god made it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
humbert Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 To scale, if the earth were the size of a period (".") in a book, the Milky Way Galaxy would be about the size of the continental United States. Pretty mind boggling.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nsmbfan Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 im going with a god on this one. not your god, not my god..... but god. or... the ending of Men in Black. with the aliens using galaxies as marbles. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Harris Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 2:14 That man couldn't of had a better answer. Smart guy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1988 Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 nice thread. nice post. good job fellas. *milky way grenades--the props are from me not 1988. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GZOO Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanfullofretards Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 6:05 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanfullofretards Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 http://www.break.com/index/the-ultra-deep-field-in-3d.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SystemFailure Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 Any of you remember thinking about the awesome prospect of Earth spinning through space when you were a kid? I do. I was absolutely astounded. Hell, when I have one of those "weed moments" I just start gazing and ponder it for a while. So damn interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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