Pale blue dot, v2.0

When the Cassini-Huygens probe passed saturn last year it took an extraordinary photo of Saturn eclipsing the sun. Even more amazing was a pale blue dot in the corner of the photo.

That’s us, Earth.

An earlier version of this photo was also taken in 01990 by Voyager, but this new version with the eclipse, amazing clarity, and natural color is even more clarifying. That is all of us, all of our history, friends, family, hopes and dreams — forever. The other planets are not close, easy to move to, or hospitible. This always reminds me that we need to learn how to do terra-forming, not so we can to move to those planets, but to save our own.

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The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

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