The Pale Blue Dot
The Earth is basically a miracle wrapped in a coincidence. We should actually take care of it.
This picture was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on 14th February 1990 at a distance of 3.7 million miles from the Sun. If you squint you can see a minuscule cluster of pixels in a ray of sunlight that are brighter than the rest, this is our planet: Earth.
What’s amazing to me about this picture is how small we are in the grand scheme of the universe, but also how much is contained within this one image. Just think, at the time this was taken, this would have captured everyone alive, everything modern and ancient. Remnants of our entire history, just in that one dot.
About six months ago, I got very into watching Prof. Brian Cox programs on BBC iPlayer, and in one of the episodes, he states that the gravitational pull of the other planets in our solar system, particularly Jupiter, helped make Earth what it is today. This clip demonstrates what I’m talking about. It’s honestly unbelievable how so many specific movements of celestial bodies had to happen for complex life to evolve on our planet.
When I’ve spoken to some people about this they say it’s just one big coincidence - and they are right! - but I propose that it is also miraculous. Intelligent extraterrestrial life has not yet been discovered, meaning that as far as we know we are the only world with intelligent life in the universe. Of course statistically speaking aliens probably exist somewhere out there, but even taking this into account, I think we should treat our world with a bit more reverence.
Earth is the only planet in our solar system to have evolved a vast amount of different life forms with a delicate and balanced eco system that helps them all continue to thrive. According to this Natural History Museum article, there are over 2 million different species on Earth (there are assumed to be even more), which is insane. Looking at the picture of The Pale Blue Dot, I am awestruck that so much life exists in such a small place. With that much life teeming on this planet you’d think we’d be taking better care of it.
Earth has a lot of problems right now, to put it mildly, and the majority are caused by humans: war, global warming, pollution, etc. All in the case of gaining power: more power, more money, more land, more resources. Yay capitalism. Us humans have forgotten that we are a part of the Earth ecosystem. We think ourselves separate from nature when in fact we are nature! We are animals that evolved here like the rest of the species that live alongside us. The indigenous tribes of North America do not have a word for nature, because they know something that we have forgotten in the constant progression of our societies: humans are a part of nature and rather than owning the land we belong to it.
I’d like to do more reading on this as I resonate more with this idea than the idea of modern capitalism that constantly pushes us to buy more and own more than we actually need.
Connecting all this space talk to my love of reading, I want to briefly talk about two of my favourite books: The Martian and Project Hail Mary both written by Andy Weir. While they are different stories they have a couple of similar plot points. Spoilers ahead by the way. In both books, the whole planet is brought together by a tragedy and works together to solve it. In The Martian, everyone is trying to get Mark Watney home and in Project Hail Mary, everyone is trying to save the whole Earth from extinction.
Both books contain a lot of hope about the human race, which I think is very much needed right now when there is a lot of fighting and division happening in the world. Friendship is also a key component in these two books, which is also important in my own life. I think friendships are some of the most important relationships anyone can ever have; you can offer each other support and celebrate wins with one another, change each other’s lives for the better - I mean look at Grace and Rocky!
All this to say that: a) I love space (but it’s also terrifying) and b) I hope that one day, the world can come together to solve its problems in real life. Maybe unrealistic, but I want to remain hopeful, even if a lot of things make that difficult.
I’ll leave you with something from my notes app when I was starting to write this post:
Every plant, every person that’s ever existed, every war and every peace talk, every human connection and argument, every voice and every song, every idea and philosophy has taken place on this magnificent, and delicate, blue oasis in the emptiness of space.
Stay safe out there 🌸