The Pale Blue Dot and Why It’s So Important

Carl Sagan and The Magic of His “Pale Blue Dot”

I remember watching his wonderful TV series, Cosmos, in 1980. It was the first time that I had seen astronomy and cosmology popularised, and I was fascinated.

Carl Sagan was an American scientist with a wonderful voice and a knack of simplifying complex concepts.

The video below is called The Pale Blue Dot. Most people interpret Sagan’s words as a vision of the human future in space.

I don’t.

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometres or 3.7 billion miles from Earth. It was Sagan’s suggestion to do so.

In the photograph, Earth is shown as a tiny dot in the vastness of space.

Sagan uses this image to show how insignificant we are, and how preposterous our concerns and wars are.

He’s right.

But to me, it also emphasises just how precious our planet is – how perfect it is – and how limiting it is.

Limiting because once we mess it up, it’s a closed system.

Waste doesn’t disappear. Everything that we put into the planet, stays there.

We only have one chance.

Once something is extinct, it’s gone for ever.

Once we push the limits on climate change too far, it’s too late.

To me, his image conjures up our need to protect our planet – our home.

As Sagan says at the end: “to preserve and cherish The Pale Blue Dot”

Our only home.

Warm regards

Related:

• Why should we be green and ecofriendly anyway?
• Why we’ve stopped caring about the environment
• What you DON’T know about climate change and your health