11 September Reflections

[Sir Ulli]

just found this at the BOINC Forums

and that was very very good i thought

Image JPL from Voyager 1

Reflections on a Mote of Dust

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that Astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Carl Sagan

Assignment of the Science is not to open a door to know, but to set a barrier to the endless ignorance. (Galileo Galilei)

taken from here

http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/ap/forum/thread.php?id=173

you dont know who is Dr. Carl Sagan, so look here

Dr. Carl Sagan

on of the first people, who thoughts

is there something out there

just a cut and paste, and no personell meanings, but i found this Very good.

Dr. Carl Sagan

only for info

Carl Sagan is certainly the most visible spokesman of the scientific community of the planet Earth. Through the device they call television, fully five percent of the planet's four and one-half billion humans have actually seen his face and heard his words describing the nature of the Cosmos. His book relating these lectures is the best selling book on science in English, the planet's major language for such discussions.

Professor Sagan's efforts to sensitize his fellow Earthlings to the nature of their cosmic condition, coupled with the psychological relationship inspired by television, have given him unprecedented influence. He has used this influence to catalyze and disseminate a major study warning that warfare might produce totally disastrous climatic and ecological conditions even if a fraction of stockpiled atomic weapons were used. He has championed efforts to prevent the militarization of the near space area around the planet.

http://www.fas.org/sagan.htm

Cosmic Search Vol. 1 No. 2

the best of all...................

http://www.bigear.org/vol1no2/sagan.htm

Ann Druyan, co-producer and story contributor of Contact, co-wrote "Cosmos" and served as creative director of the Voyager Interstellar Recording. Druyan is the author or co-author of several books, including Comet and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which she wrote with her husband, Carl Sagan. She speaks here about making the Voyager Recording, the existence of other life in our universe, conflict and cooperation between science and religion, and making Contact.

http://contact-themovie.warnerbros.com/cmp/int-druyan.html

The Pioneer Plaque

http://www.planetary.org/html/seti/seti-messages-pioneer.html

and so on....

i hope you know who Carl Sagan is

regards
Sir Ulli

 

[hallen]

Thank you Sir Ulli. Well done.

God Bless America. No, God Bless Earth.

 

[TC]

Yes, quite poignant indeed.

 

[Labotomy Jack]

I've heard those words from Carl Sagan before, not in reference to any tragic event, and I found them at the at the time to resonate deeply within me, giving me a persepective that is so often obscured from me. Reading that same passage now juxtaposed against the events of two years passed only heightens those same feelings of humility and awe and helps to put the pain of our daily lives, however great it may seem, into part of a greater tapestry, which is itself just an infentismal part of something inconceivably greater. I mourn the passing of Dr Sagan, along with those of September 11th, feeling poignant over the loss of what wisdom he may have had to offer us in the unkown times to come. However I find my heart warmed by the wisdom he has already given us to deal with our brief, inconsequential existence. The unabashed child like awe at the majesty of the universe, for which Dr Sagan had such am empathic voice, always pulls my gaze skyward whenever events down here seem to want to pull it down.

Excellent post Sir Ulli, thank you.

 

[racecar12]

Beautiful picture and post! Thanks Ulli

 

[papounet]

Thanks Sir Ulli

Iwould dare to venture that Carl Sagan has motivated more than a few of us, and I like to think that through each of the WU we contribute, we work alongside to this great man and his fellow scientists.