Pale Blue Dot

[Grand_Admiral_Thrawn]

From time to time I come accross a YTMND that isn't your standard fodder or mindless piece of hilarity. Every now and then there is a YTNMD that actually makes me sit back and question a belief or look at something in a new way.

 

Today I found such a YTMND.

 

I won't link to it as there are far too many links to that site as it is, however I will give you the jist of it here, along with the important pieces.

 

In 1990 Voyager 1 was turned around for one last look at home. At Earth. When that image finally made it back we were presented with a very humbling portrait of our planet.

 

http://www.bigskyastroclub.org/images/pbd_sm.jpg

 

Those two lines are to the left and right of Earth. Earth is that pale blue dot. It accounts for less than one pixel of the image. As though the image alone wasn't enough to huble one into rethinking this planet of ours, Dr. Carl Sagan gave a talk on the photo. In this talk are two of what I think are the most eloquent and truly telling paragraphs written in recent history:

 

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

[malarkie]

Nice find GAT.

 

That puts me in a contemplative (sic) frame of mind.

[PHSYCOBOB]

=o) I like that.

[Mad78]

I am speechless.

[Jahled]

A very, very good post GAT. Thanks for that.

[turtle]

Almost puts life into perspective really.

[The_Dane]

Man you really feel insignificant when you see that.

It completly shut me up for a minute... fascinating. It really puts stuff into perspective

[DarthTofu]

It reminds me of the execution device in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" in which the person to be executed sees how significant they are in comparison to the universe. This, of course, promptly kills them.

 

I'm kinda numb to this variety of stuff, now... I've come to accept that I'm insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I'm already insignificant on Earth. Kinda nice to know that everyone else is insignificant in the Universe.

[Defender_16]

Wow. Never run across this picture before.

 

...... *Looks at it*

[Grand_Admiral_Thrawn]

There was another YTMND that compared the Earth to all the other planets in the solar system, then to the sun, then compared the sun to all the other known stars in the universe.

 

When comparing Earth to the Sun we were but a spec, perhaps a pixel in size. This image simply blew my mind.

[Defender_16]

MUAhahaha. Red Supergiant.

 

Expanded past the diameter of Mars' orbit I'd guess?

[Grand_Admiral_Thrawn]

I think it might even be larger than that Def. The sun doesn't even show on that diagram.

[Defender_16]

I dunno GAT.

 

Sun Diameter - 1.39 Million Km

 

1AU - 149.6 Million Km

 

Mars — Distance From Sun: 1.52 AU

= Orbital radius of 227.39 Million Km

=Orbital Diameter 454 Million Km

 

Ok and that star is... how... big... ....

 

[....]

 

Oh...

 

It is of spectral type M2 and is about 1900 times the Sun's diameter.

 

Ok, so the size I was going for was a mere 400 times the size of our sun instead of Hella-effing-huge. Okay! I messed that one up.

 

EDIT: It's more like, say, Saturn's orbit.

[The_Dane]

It reminds me of the execution device in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" in which the person to be executed sees how significant they are in comparison to the universe. This, of course, promptly kills them.

 

And here there is no cake

 

I'm kinda numb to this variety of stuff, now... I've come to accept that I'm insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I'm already insignificant on Earth. Kinda nice to know that everyone else is insignificant in the Universe.

 

Reminds me of Bender (from Futurama) saying: "I'm so sad I wish everyone else was dead"

[Mitth_raw_nuruodo]

Excellent finds, Krytos.

 

@Def: Only 1900 times the size of our sun. That's not a big deal.

[Mad78]

Scale is something very hard to comprehend when looking at things on a universal point of view.

[Defender_16]

I found a place where scale is even more insane: The Orion Nebula.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula

10 Lightyears across.

 

Jet-driven shocks are formed from jets of material sprouting off newborn T Tauri stars. These narrow streams are travelling at hundreds of kilometers per second, and become shocks when they encounter relatively stationary gasses.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/86/HH47_animation.gif/800px-HH47_animation.gif

[DarthTex]

There was a youtube clip that showed comparisons of the planets & sun, and other stars in the Pluto thread (I think) before the crash . I thought Mad posted it But anyway, I did a search on youtube and found some nearly identical ones (I think the original that was posted had more comparisons. So if you did post it Mad, maybe you could find that particular clip again? ).

 

(this has an audio commentary)

 

The Size of Our World???? (shorter version without commentary)

 

The previous version posted had music as a background, and timewise was somewhere between the two I just posted

[Jahled]

Click to feel really insignificant..

 

I just found this one, though there's another that's slightly more mind blowing. *scurries off*

[The_Dane]

 

(this has an audio commentary)

 

The Size of Our World???? (shorter version without commentary)

 

Those really did the trick for me... I mean we are just so insignificant on the larger scale...

Hmm, I'm actually beginning to believe that there could be someone else out there... there's definately room for more...

[Mad78]

Here is the video I posted... It includes some SW stuff.

 

I feel so small after all this.

[Lord_La_forge]

Here is the video I posted... It includes some SW stuff.

 

I feel so small after all this.

 

You shouldn't.

I can imagine 10,20,100,300 piece "things" at maximum. I think I can guess a distance of about 20 km with my eyes. Maybe a bit more. I did some traveling to Greece this summer with airplane (first time ever). My senses were pretty fooled, and looking out the window was a terrific experience. I only flew an hour but it seemed to be an almost infinite distance from the air..

 

I have a telescope at home and several books of astronomy, spent some time to watch the stars some years ago. I'm pretty sure that for such galactic scales the human mind isn't really prepared. I mean the Jupiter is simple too big for me to imagine it's sizes. Hell, the moon is pretty large too! So as for that big red thing in the end...

 

Ummm, unga-bonga, that huge is really bonga, me eat.

[DarthTex]

Here is the video I posted... It includes some SW stuff.

 

I feel so small after all this.

Thanks Mad! Yeah, that Red Super Giant at the end, must be about the size of our solar system (I like the SW touch )

Edited October 2, 2006 by DarthTex

[Mad78]

So so so big!

[Evaders99]

Does anyone else think of the Universe Song from Animaniacs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0lTO4GB8sw