Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Building on the sense of cosmic scale evoked by the “pale blue dot” image, Sagan opens the second chapter with a question: How seriously can we take claims by any one group of humans that this world was created for or belongs to them? Sagan explains that Earth is short-lived in comparison to the age of the universe. He imagines a scene where a father shows his daughter a distant star and explains that what she sees is just the light reaching her, that light takes a long time to cross space, so long that the star may not be there anymore. That long-gone star might have supported life, now also gone, just as Earth will one day be gone.

Sagan argues that human pride is rendered ridiculous in this context. He recognizes that it was perfectly natural for early humans to look up at the night sky and believe they were at the center of existence. It is human nature to imagine the world with us at the center, often at the expense of others. Scientists, being people, too, are not immune to this. Everyone bought into the delusion that Earth was at the center of the universe.