I
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 for decades to come.
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 nationalisms 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; hopeful child; 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.
This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It talks about the photo of the same name, Pale Blue Dot, taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.
The short film was produced by David Fu.
Cosmos: Carl Sagan
The Planets
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Some Like It Hot
The Big Lebowski
Moulin Rouge!
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Memento
The Elephant Man
Das Leben der Anderen
Amelie
Red Beard
The Ten Commandments
Glengarry Glen Ross
Terminator 2 – Judgment Day
The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers
Yojimbo
2001 – A Space Odyssey
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Life Is Beautiful
Cinema Paradiso
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Dead Zone
Ultimate Jordan
Leon – The Professional
Once Upon a Time in the West
Vanilla Sky
Gattaca
Gladiator
Braveheart
Red Sorghum
Hero
Reservoir Dogs
Gangs of New York
American History X
Taxi Driver
Mystic River
Citizen Kane
The Right Stuff
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Dancer in the Dark
The Usual Suspects
Miller’s Crossing
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Rounders
Scent of a Woman
The Infernal Affairs
What Time Is It There?
Brazil
Superman – The Movie
North By Northwest
The Shawshank Redemption
Patton
Mission To Mars
Blade Runner
Rear Window
Lady and the Tramp
The Proposition
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Feathers in the Wind
In the Mood for Love
Singin’ in the Rain