All the world leaders should be spent to space to understand how insignificant we are and how petty and insignificant our disagreements are.
I've come to decide that all the infinity of the Universe may just as well not exist if there were no sentient beings to experience it.
Even if I were immortal, and had a spaceship that could take me anywhere instantly, I would still ultimately get attached to the stories and struggles of individual beings, no matter how localized and of infinitesimal consequence they may be.
I can imagine that there must be unimaginable beauty out there; endless fields of exotic crystals, planetoids drifting through sparkling nebulas, rogue planets far away from the light of any star, islands floating in the multicolored clouds of a gas giant – even our own planet has many surreal places most people aren't even aware of, like [0] – but even such beauty would become depressing if there is no other being to share it with.
I know that this kind of thinking is a human thing; a member of a hive-mind species may probably never feel that way. An species with no biological mating, or an species where all members are identical clones, may have no concept of love or beauty.
But again, these differences between species, races, and individuals is what makes everything interesting.
Meanwhile, the people who lack personal agency moan and thrash about wondering why we're still so ignorant, even though we're in the middle of the Great Peace, prosperity on a global level is rising rapidly, and our ability to explore the stars is just beginning.
They're all small fish trying to reduce the size of the pond they're in so they seem bigger.
You know what I'm afraid of? Some country's leader will go up there, see their bit, and think "All the rest of that should be mine."
I agree with your sentiment, but writing it is based on the assumption that all people are like you (or us) in our sense of goals and community. It's not true.
But I still like the idea that people can be cured from megalomania by a quick trip to the moon, the space station, or by just driving up and down one of our space elevators.
Most critical? Maybe not. But it is undoubtedly very much a significant and underrecognized factor.
The Overview Effect is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
You say this because you already have a perspective on things.
I just picture me as one of trillions of rocks going around at an extreme velocity around the Saturn ring. Each rock represents a violent pass of this galaxy. We also know there's a black hole in the center of this galaxy, let alone we have many mores across the whole galaxy. What's even more void is this universe is so big, so big, so big we can't even know what's out there. What's with this tiny dot in this universe doing? So much life so much memory so much humanity, yet, we are so tiny. Indeed, we are so insignificant.
Turn our attention back on Earth. Every step we take every air we breathe, every rock we see, has a history. Our ancestors walked on our lands, all sorts of amusing creatures once lived on this planet. What's beneath us are the remaining and the history of planet Earth. Our petroleum oil is the product of the past living organisms. Years from now, our decedents will walk on this land like we do today, wondering about their ancestors' past, what they did, how they lived, amused at our modern fashion taste and our modern technology.
Are we the only intelligent organism out there? Is there another universe? As the universe expands, what does it mean? What's actually space and time without all the mathematics? Can we even picture what it is like for the universe to stretch, like a force field / shield expanding? Could we rewind to the past like in sci-fi movies? Can you imagine what it is like to have hundreds of billions of galaxies around us? Going to M31 would probably take at least 10M years at 60mph.
As I am writing this, new stars are borning, some other stars are about to explode, some stars and planetary objects are ripping apart by black holes, galaxies are ripping each other apart as they collide crossing each other's path, our space explorers out there are watching and analyzing the space out there, and other people whom I may not know are dying on this planet Earth. Mysterious forces are every where. Most importantly, our Sun is heading to a dying state like all of us, eventually the Sun will burn out and as it burns out, the temperature will rise to the point we can't survive on this planet. Eventually we will have total darkness and total coldness here, some billion years from now. Oh, and our planet is four billions old, and this modern human civilization is only roughly 5,000 years ago and "humans" probably around 3-5M years. Our legacy our human world may collapse due to human conflicts or due to cosmetic events, and then maybe we will turn into natural resources too. M31 is approaching and billion years from now we will be in another galaxy collision event. Perhaps the cycle will repeat.
We think everything in this natural world has one order: there's a beginning and there's an end state. But this perception isn't true at all. Our chemical compositions never lost, they just become other things, over time. Some of our human ancestors think when people die they become a star and at night they will shine and look after the livings. Those who died before us are already decomposing and becoming part of everything we experience every day. It isn't far stretch to say those stars out there, trillion miles away from us, perhaps did make up of other living creatures before us, and trillion years from now, our photon, might escape and able to travel to other stars.
This is depressing.
This is a drastic underestimate. Going to M31 would take about 10M years at one-fifth the speed of light (since M31 is about 2M light years away). One-fifth the speed of light is 37,256 miles per second, or about 134 million miles per hour. So at 60 mph, it would take about 2 million times longer, or about 20 trillion years.
But hey, I've got an alright view of a really pretty tree right now!
I urgently need a refresher on astronomy so I can have an intelligent discussion about space with 6-year olds. So much has happened since last time I took it in high school.
This morning: "How to people know there's grass?"
I managed to appease her with a crappy explanation of how sight works (just saying "we see it" didn't fly—we were in the car or I wouldn't have tried being so lazy) but hot damn there's a lot going on there. Like, about 1/3 of philosophy and some good chunks of physics/optics, (neuro-)biology, psychology, chemistry, et c. I'm way too dumb for this job!
Never too early to trigger existential crisis!
Algebra is used, but no heavy math. It's more about the concepts and astronomical/astrophysical viewpoint.
Farthest human has been is 400,000 km [2]. So the farthest we have ever been is around 160 pixels.
[1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=diameter+of+earth&oq=diame...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Fa...
And note they describe that small picture as "zoomed in", So I figure 400km is about 23 or maybe 24 pixels at most =D (or a diameter of less than 50 pixels).
Waiting for someone to find an even better estimation!
The two most likely outcomes are humans will expand into the stars or we go extinct (or we're already in the former and this is just a simulation).
There are hi-res cameras that are smaller than a coin now available to consumers, so I can't even imagine what could be used by scientists.
Is it because they need to be transmitted back to earth, and 1 channel would be better than 4?
Those filters are typically wheels that are rotated mechanically.
Plus, the design of Cassini design of Cassini started in the 1980s and many of the part decisions would have been made then - even then they would have favored rugged, tried-and true technology over anything cutting edge. Actual launch was 1997.
To me you lose a lot of details when you remove the color (although I would think there isn't a lot of color in space).
That's here. That's home. That's us.
I like the rendition of that quote at the end of the COSMOS documentary series.
The first: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/5915/
The camera is set to let only a little light in, perhaps by having a shorter exposure or something similar. Not enough light comes in to make out the stars but the brighter objects come through clearly.
If they more light, even to see the stars then the brighter objects would appears whitewashed with brightness and may even otherwise interfere with the photo.
That's the anniversary of the first human spaceflight, celebrated as Yuri's Night (and also, awesomely, my birthday):
> Yuri's Night is named for the first human to launch into space, Yuri Gagarin, who flew the Vostok 1 spaceship on April 12, 1961.
As far as we know, we're the most exciting thing going on in this corner of the universe. There is probably no other place that has conscious beings in that photo. We are massively important, primarily because we can recognize our own importance.
This isn't to say it isn't good to be humble. It certainly can be. But we're pretty damn incredible.