pale blue dot

Download
Share  Add to  Flag Embed
Views:
 
Category: Science & Tech..
     
 
License:   All Rights Reserved

Presentation Description

A video of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot essay, set to music from the movie Contact, which was based on Sagan's novel of the same name.

Comments

Presentation Transcript

Slide 1: 

Look again at that dot.

Slide 2: 

That’s here.

Slide 3: 

That’s home.

Slide 4: 

That’s us.

Slide 5: 

On it, everyone you know

Slide 6: 

Everyone you love, everyone you ever heard of

Slide 7: 

Every human being who ever was

Slide 8: 

http://xmbill.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/gpw-200702-49-nasa-iss007-e-10807-space-sunset-20030721-pacific-ocean-large.jpg Lived out their lives.

Slide 9: 

The aggregate of our joy

Slide 10: 

And suffering,

Slide 11: 

Thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines,

Slide 12: 

Every hunter and forager,

Slide 13: 

Every hero and coward,

Slide 14: 

every creator and destroyer of civilization,

Slide 15: 

Every king and peasant,

Slide 16: 

Every young couple in love

Slide 17: 

Every mother and father, hopeful child,

Slide 18: 

Inventor and explorer,

Slide 19: 

Teacher of morals,

Slide 20: 

Every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”,

Slide 21: 

Every saint and sinner in the history of our species

Slide 22: 

Lived there – on a mote of dust

Slide 23: 

Suspended in a sunbeam.

Slide 24: 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Slide 25: 

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors

Slide 26: 

So that, in glory and triumph,

Slide 27: 

They could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Slide 28: 

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel

Slide 29: 

On the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner,

Slide 30: 

How frequent their misunderstandings,

Slide 31: 

How eager they are to kill one another,

Slide 32: 

How fervent their hatreds.

Slide 33: 

Our posturings,

Slide 34: 

Our imagined self-importance,

Slide 35: 

The delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe,

Slide 36: 

Are challenged by this point of pale light.

Slide 37: 

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

Slide 38: 

In all our obscurity,

Slide 39: 

In all this vastness,

Slide 40: 

There is no indication that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Slide 41: 

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.

Slide 42: 

There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.

Slide 43: 

Visit, yes.

Slide 44: 

Settle, not yet.

Slide 45: 

Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

Slide 46: 

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.

Slide 47: 

There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits

Slide 48: 

Than this distant image of our tiny world.

Slide 49: 

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another

Slide 50: 

And to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot

Slide 51: 

The only home we’ve ever known.

Slide 52: 

These words were written by Carl Sagan in his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot.

Slide 53: 

An inspiration to the world, he passed away in 1996.

Slide 54: 

His words will echo into eternity.

Slide 55: 

“The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will, one day, venture to the stars.”