Summary of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Voyager 1 spacecraft was sent to explore Saturn in 1981, and in 1990, it took a picture of the Earth as a point of light. The picture was taken from Saturn, so the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail.
#2 The Earth was seen from a hundred thousand times farther away than ever before, from Saturn in 1981, to Uranus in 1986, to 1989, when both spacecraft had passed the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. The picture showed us that we are insignificant beings on a insignificant planet.
#3 The images of the Earth and five other planets were recorded by the Voyager spacecraft. They were sent back to Earth, and they look like points of light, smeared or unsmeared, depending on the angle of the light beam. The Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft.
#4 The Earth is a small stage in a vast cosmic arena. We are a tiny part of the universe, and there is no place for us to hide from the vastness of space.

Sujets

• Sciences appliquées
• Ingénierie
• Sciences appliquées
• Sciences appliquées
• Ingénierie
• Transport
• Civil
• Engineering
• Technology
• Sciences et techniques
• Transportation

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 20 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798350016345
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17 Insights from Chapter 18 Insights from Chapter 19 Insights from Chapter 20 Insights from Chapter 21 Insights from Chapter 22
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Voyager 1 spacecraft was sent to explore Saturn in 1981, and in 1990, it took a picture of the Earth as a point of light. The picture was taken from Saturn, so the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail.

#2

The Earth was seen from a hundred thousand times farther away than ever before, from Saturn in 1981, to Uranus in 1986, to 1989, when both spacecraft had passed the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. The picture showed us that we are insignificant beings on a insignificant planet.

#3

The images of the Earth and five other planets were recorded by the Voyager spacecraft. They were sent back to Earth, and they look like points of light, smeared or unsmeared, depending on the angle of the light beam. The Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft.

#4

The Earth is a small stage in a vast cosmic arena. We are a tiny part of the universe, and there is no place for us to hide from the vastness of space.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The pale blue dot is an experiment that can be done to help you understand how unlikely it is that God created the entire universe just for you and your kind. It’s also worth considering how unlikely it is that different intelligent life forms would believe in the same God.

#2

The fact that light travels fast but not infinitely fast means that we see things in the past. The vast distances between stars and galaxies mean that we see everything in space as it was before the Earth came to be.

#3

The Sun, the Moon, the stars, and the planets all rose in the east and set in the west for our ancestors, who lived out of doors. The motion of the heavenly bodies was not just a diversion, but a way to tell the time of day and the seasons.

#4

The Earth was not at the center of the Universe, as many believed, but the Sun. The picture of the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the Universe was dangerous, and many scholars were quick to assure the religious hierarchy that this newfangled hypothesis did not represent a serious challenge to conventional wisdom.

#5

When Galileo turned the first astronomical telescope to the sky, he found that Jupiter had a little retinue of moons orbiting it, just as Copernicus had predicted for the planets about the Sun.

#6

By the nineteenth century, all scientific geocentrists had been converted or rendered extinct. The long-debated annual parallax was finally discovered in 1837, and it proved that the Earth was indeed circling the Sun.

#7

We seem to crave privilege, merited not by our works but by our birth. We seem to believe that we were created in God’s image, which is why we feel entitled to rule over the universe.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

The seventeenth century saw the discovery of the plurality of worlds, meaning that there are probably billions of planets out there that are not Earth-like. The Sun is but one lonely star in a great self-gravitating assemblage of suns called the Milky Way Galaxy.

#2

The fact that we are in a special place in space and time does not explain our special role in the universe. The fact that we have been given special responsibilities by the Creator raises an awkward question: how is it that there are astronomical objects more than 6,000 light-years away.

#3

The Bible and Qur’an are full of claims about the age of the world that are contradicted by the evidence. The Earth is around 4. 5 billion years old, but the Universe is about 15 billion years old since the Big Bang.

#4

The idea of humans being special exceptions to the laws of physics and relativity is another example of how we think we are superior to other animals. But in the middle nineteenth century, Charles Darwin showed how one species can evolve into another by natural processes.

#5

The idea that the Earth is self-aware has been growing at the fringes of the Gaia hypothesis. But, this was a commonplace belief of both the ancient Greeks and the early Christians.