In 1989, Voyager 1 passed the orbits of Neptune and Pluto.
The mission of the voyager spacecraft was complete.
And so, the cameras were turned back to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Earth we call home.
After a 12 year, 4 billion mile journey to the edge of the solar system, this is what Voyager saw of
our home, the Earth...
The Voyager space probe is nearly the fastest vehicle ever created by man.
and will travel across the depths of space for millions of years to come.
11 miles
...every second.
The closest sun to our own is proxima centauri. a little over 4 lightyears away.
At 11 miles/second, voyager wouldn´t reach proxima centauri...
...until around 73,500 A.D.
...but most stars are much farther away.
How about the 3 stars of orion´s belt?
The closest one, Alnitak, is about 800 lightyears away.
...190 times the distance to proxima centauri.
meaning that given 13.5 million years
Voyager could go from here...
...to here
Our galaxy is estimated to contain more than 200 billion suns.
Starting to see the scope of things?
NO.
It turns out, the milky way galaxy is not the only galaxy.
This is a small part of a deep space image taken by the Hubble telescope.
The full image contains around 3000 galaxies.
...and covers an area equivalent to a grain of rice held at arms lenght.
One 27,000,000th of the whole sky.
Cosmologists estimate there are roughly 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
Now look again at the pale blue dot
Take a good, long look at it.
This is our home.
Did God create the whole Universe just for that speck?
or did God create the whole Universe just for ONE of the 10 million species of life located there?
Take it a step further.
Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or religious subdivision.
...Or perhaps the whole universe was created only for humans on that pale dot...
...who think a certain way?
Or, pick another dot...
Perhaps they, too, cherish the notion of a God who created everything just for them.
How do you defend your own beliefs?
I´m an atheist.
I don´t know why the universe happened or the meaning of life.
But I believe that to answer that question with any cerainty is an attempt to elevate one´s ego to a
level of relative importance...
...above and beyond the simple reality that is elegantly revealed and shown evident.
With this photograph