So Far From Home

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I listened to a beautiful piece of radio this afternoon [on BBC Radio Four], about the Voyager missions, which I found moving, humbling and to be frank, very Zen in placing us all collectively and me personally very firmly in context within the vastness of the Universe and of time itself. One of my all-time heroes, the astronomer and frankly, a great philosopher in his own right, Carl Sagan, who was deeply involved in the Voyager programme; had the prescience, vision, insight; call it what you will, to ask that Voyager I be turned around to face home, six billion kilometres away, and just before being flung out into deep space, so that it could photograph the Earth before it left, finally blinded, as our ambassador to the stars and an unknown future, in 1990: the year before my son was born. The presenter of the programme herself was only born the year the mission was launched. The resulting image: The Pale Blue Dot. Beautiful, humbling and terrifying in equal measure. Pure Zen.

BTW - I've finally worked out - though I haven't really tried that hard in the past ;0) - how to put up a 'Follow' button. Feel free if you want to avail yourself! Nos Da!


Comments

  1. Anonymous30 April 2024 at 08:21

    I have you bookmarked and like to watch bits of code have "exceptions" vis eBay's crap for adding to my Watch List didn't work for a week! I just click on it after I've read my gmail accounts.
    Oh where is it and what does it look like?
    ATB
    Joe

    ReplyDelete

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