Planet Earth
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, 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.“
When voyager 1 pointed its cameras towards the earth 3.7 billion miles away, humans were once again reminded how small and puny they were in the cosmic scale of the universe. The photograph now known as “Pale Blue Dot” (Link here) almost never happened. In 1990, NASA wanted to shut down Voyager 1s cameras to conserve energy, but astronomer Carl Sagan campaigned to get the camera pointed to earth one more time before they shut down, and thank god he did, because we got that image and THAT quote.
When I see that image, I am astounded by the foolishness of some. The foolishness of people in power through history. The corrupt proclaiming they are deities. This is a common reoccurrence throughout history, pharaohs, emperors, monarchs, and even more recently presidents. To claim divinity when you are not even a speck of sand in the scale of the universe is ridiculous. Pathetic.
Earth is incredible, across the millions of planets that we have discovered, we remain alone, the only place that can harbor life. The odds of that are astronomical, which is why, it is not a coincidence.
This documentary requires no comments on it, it has nothing I could really critique. Great shots, great editing, and great narrating by the legend himself. I watched this documentary because it is David Attenborough’s 100th birthday today. Happy birthday.