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- borkencode, on 11/09/2009, -2/+507http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot.pn ...
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. - etaubeneck, on 11/09/2009, -3/+184If you like Sagan, you will have a hard time not liking this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc - jester55, on 11/09/2009, -1/+168"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
He really was a brilliant man. - enantiodromia, on 11/09/2009, -6/+134Carl Sagan: Scientist. Educator. Philosopher. Stoner.
- Hetman, on 11/09/2009, -2/+130In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas Adams - unclebrownie14, on 11/09/2009, -2/+122Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson are the kind of heroes kids should look up today. ***** I'm 19 and these people are my heroes. ( I'm an electrical engineering student btw lol)
- pixeldust, on 11/09/2009, -1/+84I know it's long but it's my favorite piece from Sagan and I can't find a web link:
Then, at last, completing their long good-bye to the Solar System, broken free of the gravitational shackles that once bound them to the Sun, the Voyagers will make for the open sea of interstellar space. only then will Phase Two of their mission begin.
Their radio transmitters long dead, the spacecraft will wander for ages in the calm, cold interstellar blackness-where there is almost nothing to erode them. Once out of the Solar System, they will remain intact for a billion years or more, as they circumnavigate the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
We do not know whether there are other space-faring civilizations in the Milky Way. If they do exist, we do not know how abundant they are, much less where they are. But there is at least a chance that sometime in the remote future one of the Voyagers will be intercepted and examined by an alien craft.
Accordingly, as each Voyager left Earth for the planets and the stars, it carried with it a golden phonograph record encased in a golden, mirrored jacket containing, among other things; greetings in 59 human languages and one whale language; a 12-minute sound essay including a kiss, a baby's cry, and an EEG record of the meditations of a young woman in love; 116 encoded pictures, on our science, our civilization, and ourselves; and 90 minutes of the Earth's greatest hits-Eastern and Western, classical and folk, including a Navajo night chant, a Japanese shakuhachi piece, a Pygmy girl's initiation song, a Peruvian wedding song, a 3,000-year-old composition for the ch'in called "Flowing Streams," Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, Blind Willie Johnson, and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
Space is nearly empty. There is virtually no chance that one of the Voyagers will ever enter another solar system-and this is true even if every star in the sky is accompanied by planets. The instructions on the record jackets, written in what we believe to be readily comprehensible scientific hieroglyphics, can be read, and the contents of the records understood, only if alien beings, somewhere in the remote future, find Voyager in the depths of interstellar space. Since both Voyagers will circle the center of the Milky Way Galaxy essentially forever, there is plenty of time for the records to be found-if there's anyone out there to do the finding. We cannot know how much of the records they would understand. Surely the greetings will be incomprehensible, but their intent may not be. (We thought it would be impolite not to say hello.) The hypothetical aliens are bound to be very different from us-independently evolved on another world. Are we really sure they could understand anything at all of our message? Every time I feel these concerns stirring, though, I reassure myself. Whatever the incomprehensibilities of the Voyager record, any alien ship that finds it will have another standard by which to judge us. Each Voyager is itself a message. In their exploratory intent, in the lofty ambition of their objectives, in their utter lack of intent to do harm, and in the brilliance of their design and performance, these robots speak eloquently for us.
But being much more advanced scientists and engineers than we-otherwise they would never be able to find and retrieve the small, silent spacecraft in interstellar space-perhaps the aliens would have no difficulty understanding what is encoded on these golden records. Perhaps they would recognize the tentativeness of our society, the mismatch between our technology and our wisdom. Have we destroyed ourselves since launching Voyager, they might wonder, or have we gone on to greater things?
Or perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them. Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all humans will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms. Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on. - mkriss5681, on 11/09/2009, -2/+77Carl Sagan got me hooked on science shows as a kid growing up in the 80's. He's a personal hero. And in his memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Ug-dJrdmc - inactive, on 11/09/2009, -2/+70Carl Sagan taught me how to make a rational argument:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan - jtens, on 11/10/2009, -1/+53I really don't want to hijack this thread and make it about religion. But I have to say Carl Sagan's explanations of the universe are one of the principle reasons I am not religious. I say this from a place of love, not anger or some of the atheistic furor often found on digg. When you watch Cosmos or read his books, you know the universe is much much bigger than our narrow view here on this planet earth. It's so majestic, so enormous that it makes religion seem petty and small. As Carl Sagan did, I look forward to a time when humanity is united in its exploration of this vast unknown, and beyond the conflicts (religious or not) and suffering commonplace today.
Happy Carl Sagan Day. - AndrewDB, on 11/09/2009, -2/+52Don't forget overall cool guy.
- iCosmos84, on 11/09/2009, -0/+44This quote will never cease to humble me. Moreover, it will never cease to provide a sense of scale; we are an infinitesimal speck; a planet orbiting an ordinary star, in the suburbs of a barred-spiral galaxy, among several hundred billion other galaxies. And yet, it is the only home we know. This pale blue dot is our small stage. It is our interface with the grand ocean of the Cosmos.
You are remembered Dr. Sagan. - PersianSpice, on 11/09/2009, -2/+45The man who proved that just because you smoked cannabis doesn't mean you're retarded, everyone. Hope he's been resting in peace.
- SpeedSteamBoat, on 11/10/2009, -0/+40To the contrary, I believe the message isn't "nothing matters" but rather that we aught reconsider our priorities.
We should realize that property is not worth bloodshed and violence. To conquer a quarter of the world would still be to "be the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot."
Religious, political, and economic doctrine are all as perpetually transient as they are inscrutable from the perspective of the cosmos. Again, hardly the kind of thing worth fighting over.
The message is that we aught to realize what really matters. We are all together in a tiny, desperate existence against a backdrop practical infinity. We're all floating together on our pale blue dot, and for that reason we aught to care for each other and the planet which is both our mother and our only life-raft in the hostile seas of the universe. Every day there is a world of unparalleled beauty set out before us, filled with people just looking for love in this world. The tragedy is they are looking in all the wrong places. The beauty is that it's all they really ever ask for.
This passage is one of the single most inspirational things I had ever heard when I first saw it several years back. I still revisit it from time to time as a reminder. Sagan isn't a nihilist. Instead, he asks that we move past our primitive and cursory concept of "meaning." That concept necessitates so many troubled and trouble causing ideas such as God, such as property, such as country, such as enemies and allies. All of these are offered up to the insatiable appetite of the beast which demands forever "What is the meaning of this?" The tragedy is that we do not often stop to see that thousands of years of searching has cost us greatly and given us practically nothing in return but suffering.
We are thinking creatures. We live most of our lives out in our heads. It was, I believe, Carl's aim here to tell us "Hey, stop worrying about all that so much and look what's right in front of you: It's beautiful." - pipo9, on 11/10/2009, -7/+47Thanks to Dr. Sagan i became an atheist, i now appreciate life more and im a better person. Dr. Sagan, you are sorely missed.
- tymufc, on 11/09/2009, -1/+40billions and billions.
- DestroyedAUS, on 11/09/2009, -1/+38On a similar note to those above who posted the Sagan "Glorious Dawn" remix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk&fea ...
This one is fantastic too. "We are all connected"- Sagan, Nye, deGrasse Tyson & Feynman - brownsound00, on 11/10/2009, -0/+36That last paragraph did it for me. Holy *****
- hayataco, on 11/09/2009, -4/+39http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
son of a - JediPilot, on 11/09/2009, -0/+34http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
Carl Sagan reading it. Gives me chills every time. - santiago1, on 11/09/2009, -3/+33 He's not dead, he just realized he'd rather not be on the same planet with retards like you
- joculator, on 11/09/2009, -2/+30I saw him once at the New York Public Library, arriving for some event. He was going in the entrance on 42nd street, exiting a limo. He gave me a dirty look; I was thrilled.
- Shadic, on 11/10/2009, -1/+28 WOOP!
- exarkun15, on 11/09/2009, -2/+28I've been watching through Cosmos again and everything he says is pure poetry.
- AmnesiacJack, on 11/09/2009, -1/+25Carl Sagan changed my life by listening to him explain how the universe works. He was able to explain in a way that let me truly appreciate how amazing every thing is, and how often we take it all for granted regardless of how much we tell our selves that we don't.
- iCosmos84, on 11/09/2009, -0/+23Eddie, I agree that it appears to belittle human existence, or our sense of self-importance. But I think, in the context of Sagan's work, particularly in Cosmos, he tempered this sense of existential hopelessness with a message of conservation. Time and again, he warned of nuclear holocaust and spoke of how precious life is on Earth. Therefore, he both gave a sense of scale, to humble us, and a sense of purpose, to inspire us to protect our "pale blue dot."
- utopiannative, on 11/10/2009, -0/+23What always gets me is his patience and exuberance about the discovery process that is science. In addition to being brilliant, he was joyfully passionate and in constant awe of what he saw around him.
"There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any"
- Demon-Haunted World (p59) - brownsound00, on 11/10/2009, -0/+22Bill Nye was awesome. Do you guys remember when science was actually cool? At least back in my day... science was everyones favorite class (other than gym). What happened!
- lennybird, on 11/10/2009, -0/+22Feels good, knowing I'm not the only one who shrinks to an atomic level and receives major chills when reading/hearing this. I raise my glass to you, fellow men; for though we may not always see eye to eye, our lives are too rare to wander so ignorantly, and lonesomely. Cheers.
- joculator, on 11/10/2009, -2/+24...then we got beers and picked up some hoes.
- frieddonuts, on 11/10/2009, -1/+22wow- your internet cynicism is so impressive! why can't we all be as uncaring as you?!
- Atario, on 11/10/2009, -1/+22He was a hoopy frood who really knew where his towel was.
- erostar, on 11/10/2009, -0/+20http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html
Carl Sagan was just way to cool. - etaubeneck, on 11/10/2009, -0/+19AHH
- Hellicus, on 11/10/2009, -0/+19WOOP!
- Pilot85, on 11/10/2009, -0/+18"Dear sober self:
I am hungry. Please remember to purchase snacks ahead of time. Thanks!
Stoned Carl" - enantiodromia, on 11/10/2009, -0/+17I think the other things tell the story :)
- Rain12913, on 11/09/2009, -0/+17Interesting stuff: http://www.druglibrary.org/think/~jnr/sagan.htm
"I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high..."
That's something I never thought I'd hear Carl Sagan say. - finklehorn, on 11/10/2009, -0/+17AHH AHH
- AndrewDB, on 11/09/2009, -0/+17Billions and Billions of stars.
Rest in peace Mr. Sagan. - dafragsta, on 11/09/2009, -4/+19... constantly threatening to turn it into a black hole.
- ProfessorRiffs, on 11/10/2009, -0/+15He changed my life. Happy birthday, Carl.
- pelican2164, on 11/09/2009, -2/+16One of the best sci-fi books I've ever read is Contact. For me it's, right up there with Asimov and Huxley.
- joculator, on 11/10/2009, -0/+14suffice it to say that what Madonna and Angelina Jolie did to that horse in Central Park could have us all still in jail.
- copypastry, on 11/09/2009, -0/+14saganmind
- m4ngo, on 11/09/2009, -3/+17I didn't know I shared the same birthday with Carl Sagan
- etaubeneck, on 11/09/2009, -0/+14great minds think alike?
- EddiePotato, on 11/10/2009, -1/+14If apple pie did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
- aquapete, on 11/10/2009, -0/+13ive been watching too many carl sagan mixes on youtube, i was surprised when he wasnt speaking in autotune =)
amazing, thanks. - evillawngnome, on 11/10/2009, -0/+13Personally, blue dot means more to me than our national anthem. I'm a geek though, so i guess that's to be expected.
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