Quite frankly, I struggle in crafting a well-thought-out response, for I am far less eloquent than Dr. Source: NASA for both imagesĪstronomers face versions of this question frequently, particularly when major space exploration missions get funded, or robots land on another world. Right: The cleaned version of Voyager 1’s image released on its 30th anniversary, February 12, 2020, by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Earth, the tiny pale dot, “ suspended in a sunbeam,” was one of the last things the probe saw. Carl Sagan‘s awe-inspiring speech, taken from a distance of about 6 billion km on Februby Voyager 1, only 34 minutes before the cameras were forever shut down. Left: The famous “Pale Blue Dot” image, referenced in Dr. As wondrous as the cosmos can be, as exciting as learning about the origin and the ultimate fate of our Universe is, and as humbling as it feels knowing that the very elements we are made of were once formed in the centers of stars, we cannot deny that we only have this Pale Blue Dot. We have been asked some variation of this at some point in our astrophysics careers, especially so in the past year where our lives have been completely upended by a global pandemic. “Why study the Universe when we have so many problems on Earth?” As we study and characterize atmospheres of planets parsecs away from us, Earth’s own is changing in front of our eyes. Extreme weather patterns, with California wildfires becoming a way of life and Texas freezing over, rising sea levels threatening island nations all around the globe, and declining biodiversity leading to loss of essential life are all being exacerbated on a daily basis. Source: The New York TimesĬlimate change is, and will continue to be, the defining crisis of this century, and its effects will be felt by every single human. An eerie scene of the Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco, CA, USA), with an orange sky backdrop, as a result of the smoke and ash from the August Complex fires.
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