Spot the Earth

[webofevil]

Saturday’s event where the moon changed its colour before our eyes, a rare glimpse of the phenomenon known to scientists as the were-moon, was, like any reminder of the massive size of everything in the universe except us, deeply unsettling. With that in mind, I invite you, via Answers.com, to Spot the Earth.

(NB - Illustration is for comparison purposes only. Objects looming next to Earth may appear closer than they actually are.)

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Thank god we're so stupid. If we had any sense of perspective we'd never get out of bed in the morning, would we?

That came out wrong. You know what I mean.

[strictlytrue.livejournal.com]

If you really want to play Spot The Earth, check out some of the links from the Wikipedia page on Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" - the "family portrait" picture of the solar system taken by Voyager from deep space in 1996.

I seem to be alone in finding the idea of everything in the universe being bogglingly massive rather pleasing. There's a lovely image in another work of Sagan's, his only novel, Contact, where all the worlds in the universe are compared to grains of sand on a beach. But among the grains are just a few tiny beautiful gems - the worlds that harbour sentient life. We're incredibly tiny, but incredibly rare, and incredibly beautiful.

That's it. That's as hippy as I get.