Carl Edward Sagan is an American scientist, astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astro-biologist, and author. He inspires us because he helps us to consider our position in the universe. A facilitator training session we always come back to explores the photograph, Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan. It is a photograph of planet Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about six billion kilometers away from Earth. In the photograph, Earth’s apparent size is less than a pixel – the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space. Our Education Director, Tyler Howard, explains the idea Carl Sagan had about taking the photo in the first place, that seeing the Earth’s size relative to the vastness of space gives perspective to our place at the centre of the universe. In Sagan’s own words “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena”.
For some, the recognition that we are on such a small stage may be humbling, but on the flip side, we are also the only life we know of in this huge universe – thus we are unique and special. We discuss how it makes us feel, and how and what it is communicating. Ultimately, the picture may evoke different feelings and thoughts for everyone – there is no wrong or right way to feel or think about it. The point is however, that our facilitators are required to think and it challenges all of our perspectives. Furthermore, looking outward at space allows us to view ourselves as the global species that we are.
This is what Carl Sagan narrates as the Voyager 1 space probe stares at the Pale Blue Dot:
“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, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
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