Pale Blue Dot

See that pale blue dot in the pic below?

That’s earth as seen from Saturn (900 million miles away), taken by the Cassini spacecraft. And guess what:

“It's very difficult to capture pictures of the Earth from this distance because we're so relatively close to the Sun.”

When alive, Carl Sagan hoped such a pic might be taken by Voyager. What he wrote in “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” would apply just as much to the Cassini pic:

“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.”

Why the desire?

“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.”

But more importantly:

“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.”

Which would hopefully ram home the point that:

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”

Now contrast all of that that with how we act:

“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.”

Sadly, pic or no pic, it’s unlikely we will change…given our nature, we are very likely going to argue about such pics themselves, as this xkcd comic shows!