Friday, October 05, 2007

Tiny brown spot, on a pale blue dot.

The Pale Blue Dot:


What you see up there is a piece of human history. That, my friends, encircled by a blue circle is the earth, seen from a distance of 6.4 billion kilometres. It was taken by Voyager 1 on Valentine's day 1990. Colloquially known as the pale blue dot, the earth at such a distance covers just 0.12 pixels. This is where you and I and the rest of humanity that has ever existed has lived. And this is where, undoubtedly most of us will meet our end, as have most people before us. This picture was taken after years of lobbying by Carl Sagan. If you don't know who he is, I suggest you stop reading this blog, and go watch some MTV or something.

I looked up the article on Wikipedia, my favorite online resource for information(Which is the reason: I regularly contribute corrections as well as material to it. Yes, yes I know, I am a nerd, there is no denying fact.) and they didn't find the date Feb 14 interesting, I know it is just another day for a person like me, And I am not a big fan of this day, but for millions of others I would think this is a special day, I wonder if people remember what they were doing the day this was taken ?

I would have been in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, attending school, for that was where I was on Feb 14, 1990. :D

The photo reminds me of how lonely we as a species, along with our other planet-mates, are. Frightening.

Here is a video on youtube you might like to watch if you liked the snap. Carl Sagan: We are here

Existentialism !
You draw me, like the flame that draws a moth.
I, now, know of the joy in getting burnt by thee
- Siegerkranz Meer

2 comments:

Varun said...

I wonder how they were able to communicate with the Voyager at such a great distance?! i need to read on that.

JerryKantrell said...

well the distance would be a few light minutes, they could use regular
EM radiation as the medium I guess