2023-04-22 07:15:40
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[EN VIDÉO] The image of our Earth “Blue Marble” recreated by computer “Blue Marble” is the first photo of our fully illuminated Earth taken by…
A few days ago, Makenzie Lystrup took over as head of the Goddard Space Flight Center, one of NASA’s main field centers. The first woman in this position. And symbol among symbols, she then took an oath no longer on the Bible, but on a copy of the book « Pale Blue Dot » — understand “A Little Blue Dot” — de Carl Sagan paru en 1994.
A symbol because what scientists call Pale Blue Dot, it’s actually a photo that has become iconic. Iconic. A snapshot returned by the Voyager 1 probe, in February 1990. Its last glance at the Solar System, when it was more than six billion kilometers from our Earth. An iconic photo, first, because it remains, even today, one of the most distant photos we have of our planet. Which appears on it as… a little blue dot.
A symbol also because the image has no real scientific interest. The original photo is grainy. And it must be admitted, we can barely guess our Earth in a ray of the Sun. A small blue dot of only about one pixel. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the shooting, in 2020, NASA had also published a revisited version of this image.
When he asked for this photo, Carl Sagan knew that it would show nothing of interest from the strict point of view of the scientist that he was. But he hoped that by discovering our Earth as a little blue dot, humanity would become aware of its fragility, its vulnerability. May she become aware, too, that she is nothing more than a small dot in the immense cosmic ocean.
An image that gives perspective
So who better than Carl Sagan himself to describe the emotion that emerges from this photo? From this little blue dot… “From this distant vantage point, Earth may not seem of particular interest.
But for us it is different. Look again at this point. It’s here. It is our home. It’s us. On him everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve heard of, every human being that ever lived, lived their lives. The sum total of our joys and our sufferings, the thousands of religions with certain convictions, of ideologies and economic doctrines, all the hunters and gatherers, all the heroes and all the cowards, all the creators and destroyers of civilizations, all kings and all peasants, all young couples in love, all fathers and mothers, all hopeful children, inventors and explorers, all moral teachers, all corrupt politicians, all “superstars ”, all the “supreme guides”, all the saints and sinners in the history of our species have lived here — on a speck of dust suspended in a ray of sunshine.
Our postures, the importance we imagine ourselves to have, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. In our darkness, in all this vastness, there is no sign that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
No planet b
Earth is so far the only known world to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, where our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settling in, not yet. Whether you like it or not, for the moment it is on Earth that we take our stand.
It has been said that astronomy inspires humility and strengthens character. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the madness of human vanities than this distant image of our tiny world. For me, this underlines our responsibility to live more brotherly with each other, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known. »
Words — and an image — that could take on even more value in the context of the climate crisis, the ecological crisis that we are experiencing today.
Barely half an hour after taking this iconic shot, on February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 turned off its cameras for good. To save energy that would be precious to him to continue on his way. In August 2012, the mission entered interstellar space. It is now the furthest man-made object from our Earth of all time.
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