Tonight I would write my blog post. After reading many, I thought that it would be easy to just write about any old topic and post some questions at the end. However, just before I started on the assignment an idea came to mind. I could write about something that really affects me, I could write about a subject that really matters. So I sat down at my computer to compose a deep and interesting post that asked questions which would leave fellow students pondering for longer than just a few moments. So after much time, thought, and effort here is my post.
I have always been interested in speeches, and one of which I enjoy listening to over and over was written by Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was an American astronomer who looked into the night sky with ambitions to understand the universe around him, and a mind capable to match those ambitions.
When Voyager 1 spacecraft took a photograph of the earth in 1990 from the distance of approximately 3.7 Billion miles away, it inspired Sagan to write this speech on his thoughts and questions of humanity.
As you can see in this photograph, the earth appears as a “pale blue dot” centered in a beam of light. All around it is the blackness of space. It is perhaps an understatement that our home looks so small in this picture, that it is almost unrecognizable! (The blue circle is simply highlighting the dot so you can see where it is).
Maybe you see this picture and it just blows your mind! Or maybe you see it and think,
So what, it’s just another NASA space picture.
However, I doubt anyone could have seen this picture quite like Carl Sagan did. When I first found his speech on YouTube I listened to it once and moved on. Then about a week later I found it again and played it several times over. To me, it is simply mind blowing, and I was surprised at how few people actually knew about him. I can often find myself so wrapped up in my own world that I forget about how small our lives really are. I forget that we shouldn’t take our time and our days for granted. Each time I see this video it reminds me of that.
If only one person reading this wOatches the video and finds it interesting or inspiring, then it makes all of the sleep I have lost over this blog post worth it. For everyone responding to this post, I would like you all to think about this image of our planet. As well as the speech that Carl Sagan delivers in the YouTube video (which is also matched with many popular American movies clips). After this, tell me a little bit about what you thought of his speech and the picture. Then tell me what is the single most important thing to you on this “pale blue dot”, and what you think American society’s most important thing is on this dot?
Thank you.
Work Cited
NASA. Pale Blue Dot. 1990. Photograph. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PaleBlueDot.jpg
Sagan, Carl. We Are Here: Pale Blue Dot. 2007. Video. Mogwai. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw
This is a really powerful image of our planet, showing us that in the universe our planet seems so small and insignificant, making us seem even smaller and even more insignificant. After watching the video clip, I can’t determine whether I think that Carl Sagan is making our life on earth seem unimportant or important. Just because we are so small and that all of those things (wars, leaders, love, families, machines…) happen on our planet, it doesn’t make them unimportant or insignificant. I found the speech interesting, more or less, however I prefer learning about the science of the issue rather than the “what’s important” part of the issue. I think my relationship myself and others is the most important thing to me on this “pale blue dot.”
ReplyDeleteWhile listening to this man talk I actually had to turn it off. It scares me listening to that kind of stuff because it really puts our existence into perspective. He’s right. We are insignificant and from 4 billion miles away, or however many miles it was, there is no proof that we exist. We are really just a pale blue dot and all of this nationality that we have is unimportant. Yes you could go very in depth with all the issues we have and the government we hold, but honestly some other alien life form could blow us up and they would think nothing about it. If the entire universe was the size of a room, our galaxy would be the size of a piece of dust. The most important thing we have on this dot is each other. When it comes down to it were just animals and we can go extinct just like the rest of the animal kingdom.
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking about the vastness of space, the size of our planet, it seems fascinating, yet unimportant to me. What is important to me, is what I do in my life and what happens when we all die. I think Carl Sagan wants us to question the existence of our life and why space was created. I think all of this was a part of God's scheme to place us in a world so huge that we could not fathom in order to find ourselves and Him. To me, the most important thing on this "pale blue dot" is living my life as the best Christian than I can be.
ReplyDeleteI think his speech was beautiful, the message it delivered was very meaningful to me. From what I understand, he's trying to say that we in a way are insignificant to the REAL world. The planets and the solar system are so big that we really have no power over anything. The most important thing to me in the Pale Blue Dot is family. Family do me is my most precious gift and I think that to the American society, family is also their most important thing.
ReplyDeleteGoosebumps. Those were the first things that I got while watching this video and looking at the picture. It’s scary to see how big we think we are, but really how small we are in the grand scene of things. When I look at that picture, I always think of the song I hope you Dance, by Lee Ann Walkmack. My mom would always sing me the part “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.” After hearing that over and over as a child, I didn’t really care and understand what my mom was saying. But now that I’m older, and especially looking at this picture, I can really understand what it’s like to feel small. The most important thing for me in this world is my family. Without them, I have nothing.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt is insane how big of a universe we live in. We're so small in such a big place and our big place that we live on is so huge compared to the rest of the world. My family is my most important thing in the universe and Im sure theres someone in a complete different galaxy thinking the exact same thing abiout there family and wondering if there is life elsewhere as well.
ReplyDeleteI thought his speech was really good. It made me think about things I normally don't think about on a day to day basis. However, the video and picture don't really have an effect upon me. Yes, it is crazy how small our world is even though everyone thinks it huge, and nothing else matters to them. The most important thing to me in the blue dot is my family. Without family you are nothing. Family makes you who you are. I also think that is what America's most important thing is too, family.
ReplyDeleteI find thing like this incredibly fascinating. To think that our giant planet is just a near speck compared to space. Its kinda hard to grasp. The most important thing to me would have to be my mom because I love her oh so much. Now a days in the Us, the most important things to people are material goods and money.
ReplyDeleteIt’s crazy and even scary to think that Earth is sitting in a beam of light where there is no sign of humans in the above picture. Even worse, we seem so insignificant and powerless, which is what I think Carl Sagan was trying to get across in his speech. "On the scale of worlds, we are too small," states Sagan. Its as if he wants to question the existence of our life. The way the movie clips inside the short film were displayed was perfect. It was very entertaining to watch and something I never thought of or even knew for that matter. Family and the way I choose to live my life are the most important things to me on this tiny blue dot known as Earth.
ReplyDeleteThis video made me really question if other life forms could actually exist or not. I'm not sure if it's because of the visual display that was shown of the earth on the video, but man, i never saw earth in that perspective before. Looking at it now, earth is just a tiny speck, not even a fraction of a fraction of the tiniest number possible when compared to the galaxy. It really makes me confident to say that we are not the only life form in the galaxy. I mean, its impossible. If we can exist in this gigantic galaxy, why wouldn't other specks hold life as well? As for the most important thing to me in this little blue speck, I would have to say my family and brothers of my fraternity top the list.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to imagine that we are so small in the retrospect of the universe. We can not even think how big the universe is because we have nothing to compare it to. I would like to think there is some God responsible for all of this so that in the end there is some afterlife where I could see all that there really is out there. But on talking about what is important to me would be my family.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting that video, I actually really enjoyed it. I had no idea what the picture was until after I had watched the video/listened to the speech. The picture makes me realize how many things we as humans get worried about/ wrapped up in which are so so so trivial in the bigger scheme of things. The most important thing to me on this "pale blue dot" is my family which sounds super cliché but it’s true. I think society would say something along the lines of their loved ones being the most important thing on this little planet.
ReplyDeleteI think the picture is quite powerful. People always get so consumed in their little lives and forget that they are only one part in ata vast universe. I think th that the most important things in america is the patriotism and I think the most important thing is our awareness of others.
ReplyDeleteThis was very powerful. This showed us how small and almost insignificant we can be but it also makes us see that to be significant we have a lot to do. I think the most important thing for us to do is to live our lives as we see fit, to accomplish goals we set for ourselves because at the end of the day we are just a dot.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis video is one huge paradox. You're trying to show how insignificant we are but by doing so you've just given people a sense of significance, which is not a bad thing but you're doing it for the wrong reasons. You're giving people a sense of significance by making them think they are more insignificant than others. First off, just because something is small or large does not determine its significance. Some of the most important discovers have been on a microscopic level. A disease, that is microscopic, can wipe out an entire culture of people and devastate the lives of many. So saying we are insignificant because of our size is not only derogatory, but false. So if you're going to make the argument that we should be more open-minded and aware of our insignificance, calling us small is not the way to do it. As of right now, our lives are extremely important, especially those of biologists, cosmologists, and physicists. We, in our ability to adapt and comprehend knowledge and logic, have a responsibility to preserve what we have discovered and continue our expansion of discovery because as far as we know, we are the only ones who can. Saying we are not important in the universe would ultimately lead to apathy. Just as the comment above, she's now concluded that we should only seek to set goals for ourselves and complete them. Our lives should be dedicated to the preservation and evolution of our extremely rare evolutionary cycle. We are so incredibly rare most people don't realize how ridiculously special we all are, and I'm not in any way speaking on part of a religion. No, the stars died for you and if you think I'm insane for saying so, you've obviously never learned anything about the origin of the earth and the periodic table. If you really want an eye opening experience, watch Lawrence Krauss's speech "A Universe from Nothing" where he mathematically and logically concludes that we can come from nothing, have come from nothing, the big bang is entirely logically acceptable, and that we can have a point in time of origin without the need for a supernatural being.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo&list=PLF7FE39C418E656A4&feature=mh_lolz
I think his speech is really interesting. It is good that he reminds humans that our planet needs to be taken care of by us and that humans need to be kinder to each other because we are such rare beings. I have seen this picture and video before from my high school but seeing and hearing it again still blew me away. The picture really puts how small and possibly rare we are into perspective because seeing Earth from this far away is also extremely rare. The most important thing to me on Earth is my family and friends and American society probably shares those same feelings.
ReplyDeleteI have always heard about how vast and spacious space is and how we have not even scratched the surface of the universe, even our own galaxy. It amazes me how we are trying so hard to go beyond where we already have based on space craft and even photographic images as if our exploration isn't enough for even one minute. I say we need to realize we possibly will never map the entire universe and just allow our minds to imagine the farther reaches of the galaxy.
ReplyDelete