Mars rover Curiosity snaps 'pale blue dot' image of Earth, Moon NASA's Jet propulsion Laboratory has published the first image of the Earth and Moon taken from one of the camera systems aboard the Curiosity rover. We look very small indeed. Earth from Mars You are here (click to enlarge) Curiosity's mast camera took the picture of us on Sol 529 of its mission to Mars (January 31 in …
It's been many years since anything has so much as brought a tear to my eye. I read Pale Blue Dot over a decade ago. Seeing these pictures, and reading Dr. Sagan's words again, reminded me of how they are some of the most moving and awe-inspiring moments of my life. If we could get the whole human race to stop their bullshit for two minutes and really contemplate all of the ramifications of these pictures, we'd make a giant leap as a species.
>>"Forget any dream of moving out and colonizing other planets because although we are an intelligent species we are definitely not a wise one."
We as a species are capable of great wisdom and great foolishness. Your mistake is to think that they are inseparable. The foolish might remain here, but the wise will eventually shake us off in their pursuit of the stars.
"Commenting on the small blue dot, somebody once said to me "doesn't it make you realise how insignificant we are". I had to say "no, we built that spaceship, we sent it on it's way to the stars; insignificant, I think not".
Thank you Carl."
Indeed, and what magic he made on television and on radio.
Now to another IMNSVHO great man who influenced many things, including this medium [1], we are "[...]An invisible dot on an invisible dot. Infinitely small. [...]". I think that he was speaking through the character of the Total Perspective Vortex's guardian (Gargravaa I think).
[1] Though he used a Mac.
This came in the same week as the report of the ~900 000 year old footprints of a family in Norfolk, that have now been destroyed by the tide (but fortunately after they were recorded).
They were human, but of at least a different race and more likely a different species.
At one end of the scale of civilisation we are looking at our planet and its moon from a long way away with a robot probe, and looking into our own deep past and trying to understand long extinct human groups. At the other, we have people paying other people to claim the Earth is 6000 years old, and yet other people killing our nearest relatives out of greed.
It's just beyond comment.
>>I wonder if it's as bright as Venus has been this last week?
Venus has vast clouds of vapourized Sulphuric Acid giving it an albedo just shy of a polished mirror. I doubt the Earth shines half so bright, unless you're watching on radio wavelengths, in which case we probably dazzle.
Mine was — “Crikey, *of course* a Martian civilisation would be able to see our moon! I wonder how their early philosophers would have wrapped their heads around that one?What conclusions would they have reached in their own time?”
,
(I am aware that there isn't actually a martian civilisation, at least not in terms of what we'd consider one!)
Martin Budden : "and throwing (nuclear-powered laser-armed) tin cans over the fence."
There's an alien robot on Mars powered by nukes and armed with lasers spying on Earth. It talks to orbiting mother-ships.
It was sent there by an Alien Species to scope out the planet for possible colonisation sites, among other tasks.
Do our leaders know this? That aliens are sending nuclear-powered, laser-armed robot probes to our near neighbours?
We should tell them. If we slant it right we might even get a Starfleet out of it.
It does make me wonder whether some politicians who want to cut research budgets for this kind of work do so because they do not like being reminded how insignificant all of us are.
I rather like looking up at the stars and realizing that on the one hand all our worries are not that significant, and on the other hand, that I am a bit of star-dust, a tiny supernova remnant that has woken up and wonders about the stars. Physically we might be small, but in terms of imagination we can be great indeed. Unfortunately, the same can hold for our egos.
I hope I can take some snaps of Mars as it approaches opposition next time round. I might not be able to see Curiosity, but I hope to improve on an earlier attempt
Seems to me the image enhancement worked just as it should. But in any case, thanks very much for the link to the full-size pic. It should have been included in the original article. I am constantly amazed how little use news sites make of the linking abilities of the Web. Are they afraid we'll find something more interesting and never come back?
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Interestingly (well, at least to me) Tennyson and his circle saw that this was where things were heading, and he wrote this before the Origin of Species. "She" is Nature, "types" are species:
From scarpèd cliff or quarried stone
She cries "A thousand types are gone
I care for nothing, no not one"
He couldn't spell out too clearly that we were one of the species doomed to extinction because in those days atheism in the UK was a major circulation loser. (Also, a completely irrelevant note, in 1844 stone, gone and one all rhymed - so much for the King's or Queen's English being unchanging. Language too evolves.)
Since an image, a thought has made me stop and think in quite this way. The quote it in the article was almost an epiphany - something that I'd considered before but not that ... powerfully. The comments, also - the one about being a piece of a supernova that came alive now looking back at it's (ultimate?) creator honestly bought a tear. That comment, and others like it here, are the reason I keep coming back to this site.
And yet - humans are the reason that picture was ever in existence. I honestly feel the high point of mankind's achievements came 40 to 50 years ago with the Apollo and Mariner/Gemini/Voyager projects. There was a man on the moon more than half a century ago. We should have had a long-term, if not permanent, lunar colony there by now. Yes, I'm sorry, even if it killed a few people in the learning process, the same as the start of space flights did. A few heroes made the ultimate sacrifice to help inch humanity along the way to the stars, which, on whatever timescale you please - is where we'll eventually need to be in order to survive.
The skies will be clear tonight. I will be sure to look, and wonder which of those soul stirring splashes of arcane brilliance, colors whirled from the universe's palette onto an infinite backdrop I came from.
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