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Let's talk about Carl Sagan!
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22-02-2009 1:12am#1
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I'd prefer not to use the word prayer, but I know what you mean!
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, Pale Blue Dot, 19940 -
Huge fan of Carl Sagan, his books, TV stuff, and corduroy and polo shirt combos!
I have the Cosmos box set on DVD, and never stop going on at people to read that book.
Oh, and "Contact" for me is one of the best SF books ever.
They don't make atheists like they used too.
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I haven't read any of Sagan's work (I will some day!), but there's a load of videos on YouTube and I love them
This video explained evolution particularly clearly to me:
And this is just a beautiful video that I watch from time to time to put things into perspective:
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I know a lot of people think drugs are bad mmkay. Mightn't be too happy if they find out he was a smoker!
I don't want to cheapen the threda, but this is kind of funny::pac:The Top 12 Theories Developed by Carl Sagan While Stoned
12. The period of rotation of Pulsar JC9270 totally synchs up with
the drum solo in In A Gadda Da Vida, man!
11. "Twinkies, Twinkies, little stars; seem so close, yet are so far."
10. The Theory of Munchitivity: At times, peanut butter is more
valuable than gold
9. The sensor casing from a mass spectrometer makes a handy roach
clip
8. "Some day, with all of our advances in science and technology,
we'll be able to land a man on the sun."
7. The Big Bong Theory
6. If you took a hit while travelling at the speed of light, you'd get one
major rush, dude.
5. Betty Crocker brownies > Duncan Hines brownies
4. "Theory of Joint Relativity": A complex quantum physics equation
that proves that the more pot you smoke, the slower your
automobile travels with you at the wheel.
3. Floyd rocks!
2. A single "You Are Here" sign will work EVERYwhere.
and the Number 1 Theory Developed by Carl Sagan While Stoned...
1. Wow, man! There are, like, a LOT of stars. There must be
*hundreds* of 'em. Maybe even *thousands*. No... millions and
millions! Wait -- I'm onto something here...
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Personally I always found this picture more mind expanding than the pale blue dot
This is a picture taken by Hubble telescope of a tiny fraction of light in the corner of the night sky. The mind expanding bit comes when we realise that the tiny speck of light is actually a number of galaxy clusters, each with hundreds of galaxies, each with billions of stars, and trillions of planets.
And that is just a tiny speck of light in the night sky.
The pale blue dot I feel is some what misleading because if gives the impression that even far away the Earth is visible, and thus has some sort of relevance. But really when the picture was taken Voyager was not "far away" at all. In the scheme of things it was really really close to Earth.
I think it is important for people to grasp how big the universe really is. Even the observable universe may only be a tiny fraction of that actual size of the universe. The universe is big. It is bigger than we can really imagine.
This spills over into areas such as Creationism when people start talking about Earth and life on Earth as being special in the grand scheme of things, the idea that we must have been put here by something.
That makes sense when the universe extends to the glass sphere surrounding the Earth known as the "heavens", but it loses all plausibility when you look at how big the universe actually is. There are probably billions of planets very similar to Earth that probably have chemical life on them. That is even when one considers life arising as being very very unlikely.0 -
I think it is important for people to grasp how big the universe really is. Even the observable universe may only be a tiny fraction of that actual size of the universe. The universe is big. It is bigger than we can really imagine.
Space is big. Really big. It might seem a long way to the corner chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
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I hope I don't shatter any illusions by saying this, but did you know that he was an avid pot-smoker? Smoked the stuff till the day he died!
Expected really, since Carl knew better than most the direction this planet is heading in. The best way to understand the paradox that is the conditions for a lot of life in the universe yet the complete lack of any evidence of technologically advanced life is that as a species reaches technological advancement it quickly destroys itself. Earth would seem to be a case in point.Personally I always found this picture more mind expanding than the pale blue dot
Most of these images can be seen here:
http://www.google.com/sky/
Specifically if you look at the Aegis Survey, covering a minuscule part of the nights sky and reckoned to show at least 50,000 Galaxies.
I think the issue Carl had was how do you get people to understand something as large as the Universe. It's uncomprehendable. I think once you get past a certain scale you stop being able to visualize it. Most people would go through the majority of their life without spending a passing moment thinking about how they are on a tiny hunk of rock hurtling through a vast expansive void that could easily be destroyed in an instance. They are not aware that their position in the universe is constantly moving as the earth rotates and as it orbits the sun.
I think once you understand not only our own insignificance, but also the insignificance of our Sun, or our solar system or even our galaxy that you start to see how arrogant it is for humans to imagine that they are so important in the scheme of things that they can get on their knees and pray and that some God who created all this, spends all his times reworking the world to keep us happy, putting us through trials to test our faith and keeping a record of our sexual activities.0 -
In terms of perspective, I quite like this vid:
It helps you get the scale thing in your head, though of course the space between and the sheer number of stars is a whole other brain melter.0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aAs47NvxL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfs1t-2rrOM
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