We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot

This all revolves around a photograph taken by a small spacecraft a little over 20 years ago.  Carl Sagan thought for a while it’d be a good idea to have the spacecraft turn around and snap a photo of the Earth.  Fearing damage to the spacecraft the controllers were reluctant.  It was February 14, 1990 and Voyager I had completed all of its primary mission objectives.  Now was the time to have Voyager turn around and snap a photo.  If they had waited much longer the Earth would be too distant to even register.

So here we are.  We are given this photo.

The Pale Blue Dot. As taken by Voyager I some 4 billion miles from Earth. February 14, 1990.

It sure doesn’t look like much.  To us, it is everything.  Now, I could go on about this and that regarding the photo.  The thing is, it’s already been done.  In fact, so well done, that to redo or try and out do it would be folly.  Now to read what is said about the photograph is one thing but hearing the voice of Carl Sagan means a little more.  It was his idea, so his words and voice are fitting.

The original audio was from an audio-book I do believe.  Some crafty people have done things with it in videos.  This one is probably the best I’ve found.  It really is moving. (Yes, yes, I posted this video on Facebook a while back, I know.)  So have a look now.

We are here: The Pale Blue Dot

Here is the text:

Consider again, 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.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say;  That one is worth everything we’ve ever known.

Things you probably don’t think about: Why can’t we see Venus overhead at night?

We all know the planets are out there, orbiting tirelessly around the Sun.  How do we know? Well, we can see them, and most with the naked eye!  Something you might not have thought about is why we can see all the planets overhead at night except Venus and Mercury.

Why is that?

Here is the simple answer:  Our orbit is outside of Venus and Mercury’s orbit.  Therefore when they are directly overhead it is daytime to some degree.  Have no fear, I’m a fan of using imagery.  Take a look below.

Note: light travels out in all directions obviously and this is not to scale either

So you can see there, when the Sun is overhead, the orbits of Venus and Mercury are also overhead.  Since they never travel outside of the Earth’s orbit, we never see them overhead at night.  Mars on the other hand is commonly visible at night (as is Jupiter and Saturn).  We also go around the Sun faster than Mars so we actually lap it (it goes around every 1.8 Earth years).  Neat huh?

Venus is often called the Morning or Evening Star.  That’s because we see it either before the Sun rises or after the Sun sets, depending on where all the planets are at the time.  After it rises far enough in the morning sky, the sky itself becomes too bright to be able to easily see it.  Though it is possible.  As for setting, it just dips below the horizon.

Just recently we were also able to see Mercury in the evening sky.  The window to capture that rare moment was small; just a couple of weeks I believe.  I snapped a photo which you can see in an earlier post.

So there you have it of something you probably never wondered about in the first place.

Everytime I see anything to do with Twilight…

Astrophysics: 1 - Vampires: 0

Just a note: I really troubled over this idea for a while.  I wanted a multi-panel comic with dialogue between Edward and Bella.  It was overly complicated in the end and I also realized one glaring thing: WHAT dialogue?  They hardly even speak in the films.  They mope, sulk, pause and stammer.  I think this image gets my message across pretty well

Invaders From Mars (if we ever make it that far)

Just imagine this scenario:

We send man to Mars.  We send more men to Mars.  We begin to colonize Mars.  We purposely raise the temperature of Mars to increase atmospheric pressure and free up frozen water.  We begin to terraform the planet.  The planet is now taking on a familiar Earth like appearance after several hundred years.  Humans are genetically altering themselves to live in a 1/3 gravity lower pressure environment.  Humans aren’t so human anymore and can now survive with no pressure suit and only a breathing mask.  People born on Mars are now Martians.  Fewer Earthlings make the trip.  Mars grows in population.  Earth continues to snub Mars.  Relations are strained and tensions are high.  Mars is running out of Earth-only life sustaining resources.  Martians invade Earth!

It’s like rewinding back from the future!  Ok it’s far fetched but it’s theoretically possible that one day Martians (our descendents) will invade Earth for some reason.