Tag Archives: pale blue dot

Speaking of a Pale Blue Dot…

Posted on by
Reply

I referenced this image in my Yahoo 360 blog, but it’s worth presenting again. Taken by the Cassini spacecraft (currently in orbit around Saturn), it shows Earth as a point of light viewed through Saturn’s rings. You can read more about the image on NASA’s Cassini page. As Carl Sagan wrote, regarding a similar image: “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.”

Visualizing Science

Posted on by
Reply

I just attended two conferences, back to back: the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ironically, held in Baltimore) and Pale Blue Dot III (in Chicago). Although I blogged about both Baltimore and Chicago, I left feeling dismayed on certain counts but also inspired, particularly by a talk given by Aaron Price. So what’s a guy to do but start another blog?

Okay, okay, okay, I already have two blogs, but they have issues. First off, I don’t blog well—in the sense that I tend to write full-blown essays, not concise little blog entries. And secondly, I tend to avoid contemporary science issues; doing science-y stuff as a job every day makes the latter less appealing, but I feel now that it’s part of my brain I need to exercise a bit. Thus, “Visualizing Science: Seeing Science in Everyday Life.”

We’ll see what happens next…