This thought, in somewhat shorter form, is what greets me most mornings when I wake up, and most nights before I sleep.
The next step after this is to realise that one day, no matter what endeavours we make to mark our place, no matter what monuments we raise to ourselves or our gods or heroes, no matter whether we do good or bad with our lives, with our society or with our entire world, one day, our sun – the very thing that makes life possible on earth – will supernova. In that moment, everything we have done, everything we have achieved, all that we are and all that we were will be utterly, irrevocably lost. No archaeologist will find remains, no monument will speak of our being, our names, forms and languages will be forgotten, and we will have counted for absolutely nothing in the schemes of the universe.
The universe tends toward entropy, and one day there will be nothing left in it that ever knew you or ever even conceived of our existence.
Our universe also shows a kind of fractal self-similarity. Somewhere, on a single grain of sand on the bed of the ocean, an entire civilisation – too tiny for us to even comprehend – is probably gazing up into the endless blue thinking exactly the same thing.
Maffu, don’t know if you’ll read this, but… by the time our sun destroys the Earth, humans will hopefully have colonized some other planet and moved there. I suspect we will destroy ourselves long before the sun does. I mean, complete destruction, every living person on earth destroyed. Technology keeps advancing and people are still as messed up as always. In the past, one crazy person could only do so much damage. These days, one crazy person can do a whole lot of damage, pretty easily. It’s only going to get worse.
Well that’s depressing.
How do I get off that pitiful little crumb?
Awe inspiring!
very depressing – seriously
Billions and billions of stars out there and we think that we are the only living beings. – Carl Sagan –
Cali,
It’s not depressing to think we’re that small it is only depressing to think that being small matters enough to be depressing.
That happens to be the place I take my daily crap!
This thought, in somewhat shorter form, is what greets me most mornings when I wake up, and most nights before I sleep.
The next step after this is to realise that one day, no matter what endeavours we make to mark our place, no matter what monuments we raise to ourselves or our gods or heroes, no matter whether we do good or bad with our lives, with our society or with our entire world, one day, our sun – the very thing that makes life possible on earth – will supernova. In that moment, everything we have done, everything we have achieved, all that we are and all that we were will be utterly, irrevocably lost. No archaeologist will find remains, no monument will speak of our being, our names, forms and languages will be forgotten, and we will have counted for absolutely nothing in the schemes of the universe.
The universe tends toward entropy, and one day there will be nothing left in it that ever knew you or ever even conceived of our existence.
Our universe also shows a kind of fractal self-similarity. Somewhere, on a single grain of sand on the bed of the ocean, an entire civilisation – too tiny for us to even comprehend – is probably gazing up into the endless blue thinking exactly the same thing.
Everything’s a small dot if you look at it from far enough away. So…Sagan pretty much discovered backing up. And now he’s dead. What a genius.
LOL @ Derek
Maffu, I did the same acid in ’69, but I came down….
Maffu, don’t know if you’ll read this, but… by the time our sun destroys the Earth, humans will hopefully have colonized some other planet and moved there. I suspect we will destroy ourselves long before the sun does. I mean, complete destruction, every living person on earth destroyed. Technology keeps advancing and people are still as messed up as always. In the past, one crazy person could only do so much damage. These days, one crazy person can do a whole lot of damage, pretty easily. It’s only going to get worse.
and yet were cutting nasa’s budget again 🙁
taken by voyager 1 or vger for you trekkies,it really is a great pic I love it
Wait! How do we know it’s not the dot next to that? Eh? EH?!
Don`t you just love someone telling you something you already know ?
Hello, Pale Blue Dot? The Cosmos?
Science as a Candle in the Dark?
C’mon, Sagan is a manifesto for clear thought.