Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/10/voyager-2-has-entered-interste.html
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I imagine myself looking from Voyager 2 at Earth and I hear:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. 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.
Carl Sagan, musing on the Pale Blue Dot photograph taken by Voyager 1.
Bold- the specific part of the quote that came to mind, my emphasis.
Edited for official video link, clarity, and formatting.
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Does Barclay have to rescue them again?
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safe travels veeger jr.
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“on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”
My father was not one for fiction or romance in general, despite his love for Gilbert and Sullivan and Shakespeare. He hated Carl Sagan and found his attempt to connect science to the layperson silly, but he loved work Lynn Margulis. When Cosmos came out, he was not exactly pleased. He worked for a museums when I was young, and I spend many an hour in one of the last working Mathematica halls at the time. Later I spent countless hours in a planetariums shows. Those moments were immensely important, but when it came to science, nothing stuck with me as much as the juxtaposition of images with pontification by Carl Sagan (Perhaps James Burke). My father sat with my sister and I and watched Cosmos, and he endured the purple prose, and encouraged us to think about what he presented.
Another quote that still rattles in my mind:
“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."
From Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, Book 1994, Quote found at GoodReads
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The thing about space, there’s nothing there. If there was, it wouldn’t be space.
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Voyager 2 : “Damn, I forgot to unplug the iron…”
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So we aren’t actually interested in space, we’re interested in the spaces between space that are not space?
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Can they really say it’s in “interstellar space” though? I mean, it’s outside the heliosphere, but it’s got a long way to go before it hits the Oort Cloud, which is still considered part of the system.
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The Oort Cloud goes most of the way to Alpha Centauri. Where does the Solar system’s Oort cloud end and Alpha Centauri’s begin?
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i assume with whichever one of them smelt it first?
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Semantic arguments, I think. I have read that strictly speaking, the heliospheres of Sol and Alpha Centauri overlap, or at least butt up against each other, depending on definition. The fact is, we just don’t know. Remember when they were flabbergasted that the heliopause was all “foamy” and not at all a sharp demarcation? I am very excited to learn more about what is “out there” and can’t wait to hear more.
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“Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space!”
In time, that will replace “Elvis has left the building!”
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Voyager 1: Haha! … wait. Shit … I forgot to file my Form 1040 …
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