1990年，NASA的旅行者一号（voyager 1）在完成其预定使命后，在离地球60亿公里的地方，回望太阳系，给太阳系拍了一些照片。在这些照片里，有一张有我们的地球，在那里地球仅仅占了一个pixel，就是淡蓝一点。这张照片因此得名暗淡蓝点（pale blue dot）
这个照片是在著名科普作家Carl Sagan的要求下拍的。他其实早在1980年，在旅行者一号跨过Saturn的时候就提议让旅行者一号给地球拍一张照片，但是当时人们担心在距离太阳还这么近的距离上回头看，会把旅行者1号带的相机烧掉（从Satrun看来，地球离太阳太近，给地球拍照就不可避免给太阳拍照），所以一直到1989年，计划才真正得到开展。据说人们花了大力气给旅行者一号写代码发指令，才得以让其回头，又等了很久才传完数据。
Carl Sagan让旅行者一号拍这张照片的用意是明显的，没有什么比这张照片更能说明人类的渺小了。
Carl Sagan后来有本书就叫pale blue dot。在书中，他这样写道，
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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
这里文笔真的太好了。不知道有没人有能力有意愿将之翻译为中文？
人民的名义是一部好片子，里面孙局长对仕途失去兴趣，开始瞭望星空。其实任何人如果感受了宇宙的博大，理解了人生的有限和短暂，都不可能对仕途有什么兴趣。如释伽牟尼佛在金刚经中所言，一切有为法，如梦幻泡影，如露亦如电，当作如是观。
注：本文受汪诘老师视频启发。视频见
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