The Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan [HD]

The spaceship was very far from home. I thought it might be a good idea, right after Saturn, to take one last look home from Saturn. Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any details. Our planet would be just a point of too lonely light, a pixel difficult to distinguish from many other points of light. Voyager would see nearby planets, distant suns, but precisely because of the darkness of our world thus revealed, such an image could be worthwhile if it had been well understood by scientists and philosophers. from classical antiquity that the earth was a mere point in a vast cosmos that encompassed it but no one had ever seen it as such here it was a first opportunity and perhaps also the last in the coming decades, so here are the mosaic of squares placed Above the planets and a background of more distant stars due to the reflection of sunlight on the spacecraft, the Earth appears to be sitting in a beam of light as if there is some special meaning to this small world, but it is just an accident of geometry and optics there are no signs of humans in this image nor our reworking of the Earth's surface nor our machine we are not ourselves from this point of view our obsession with nationalism is not evidence anywhere we are too small on the scale of the worlds we humans are inconsequential a thin film of life on a dark and lonely piece of rock consider again that point that is here that is home it is us in it everyone you love everyone you have ever heard of every human being who ever lived their lives together our joy and suffering thousands of confident religions ideologies and economic doctrines every hunter and gatherer 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 morality every corrupt politician every super every superstar root every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there the dust suspended in a ray of sun the earth is a very small stage in a quick Oh, think in the infinite cruelties that the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel inflict on the barely distinguishable inhabitants of some In another corner how frequent their misunderstandings how eager they are to kill each other the truth of the rivers of blood shed by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they become the momentary owners of a fraction of a point our postures self-importance we have a privileged position in the universe we are challenged by this point of

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light our planet developing the plasma time you are darkness the help will come from Another part to save us, whether we like it or not, at the moment the earth is where we position ourselves.

It has been said that astronomy is an experience that strengthens character and makes us humble; There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human vanity than this distant image of our little world, and the result is our responsibility to treat each other more kindly and preserve and cherish the only home we have ever known.