Pale Blue Dot Animations

There is a whole world to explore within a pinhead. Consider that an atom is roughly seven orders of magnitude smaller than a pinhead, something you can still see with the naked eye. If you blew up that pinhead to the size of the earth, you could at last hold an atom in your hand like you would, say, a water balloon.

And then there is Carl Sagan shrinking the massive size of the earth to a pale blue dot.

This "joyful, sad, sweet, and wonderful" animation posted on PBS Nova's blog got me thinking. It captures an excerpt from Carl Sagan's book A Pale Blue Dot.


Pale Blue Dot - Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo.

Science is a tool that can help us better appreciate the beauty of nature. It doesn't reduce the mystery and art of life by explaining/revealing its underlying mechanisms; rather the opposite, it gives us more perspective.

Taking a walk outside helps me see I'm a tiny creature amidst people, cars, buildings, trees, mountains... I'm still trying to imagine zooming out on me, my city, California, the US, and then the earth until there is nothing but a pale blue dot...