Radical Joy for Hard Times by Trebbe Johnson

Author:Trebbe Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623172640
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2018-09-07T16:00:00+00:00

7

They Would Always Touch the Earth

More than twenty years after the famous photo Earthrise captivated people around the world, another image of the home planet showed up to make a different but no less emotional impact on a small group of scientists. That the photograph even existed was due to the persistent urging of the astronomer and popularizer of cosmology, Carl Sagan. For more than ten years the Voyager 1 spacecraft had been streaming farther and farther toward the outer reaches of the solar system, dutifully taking pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and sending them back to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Sagan noticed that there would come a brief point in Voyager’s journey when the capsule would be in direct alignment with Earth, four billion miles away, and he began lobbying for a photo op. He wanted NASA officials to turn the spacecraft around just long enough so it could aim its camera at its planet of origin. The collective intelligence at NASA shook its head: implementing such a plan would take an additional six months and cost millions of dollars. Sagan insisted: this was a rare opportunity the agency would be foolish to pass over. At last he prevailed. So the little orbiter was programmed to pivot around and take a picture of Earth.

The resulting image had none of the majesty of Earthrise. Instead of an orb of ocean and cloud suspended in lustrous black space, this photo showed pixilated bands of black, brown, mauve, and gray. Only some careful scrutiny revealed a tiny pale blue dot in the vast monotones of the cosmos. This little speck was Earth. The JPL employees who had been posting photos of Voyager’s journey on a wall so that everyone at the facility could see them added this one to the collection. But then something strange began to happen. The photo showing the pale blue dot had to be replaced again and again, because it kept getting smudged. For the longest time no one could figure out why. Finally, according to Candace Hansen-Koharcheck, who worked at JPL at the time, they realized what was happening: “People would come up to look at it, and they would always touch the Earth.”1

They would always touch the Earth. The scientists saw that pale blue micro-dot, recognized it, and had to touch it. At that moment they were responding only partly as scientists and technicians who had developed a highly sophisticated project and now had the opportunity to examine closely the results of their work. They were also responding as women and men caught up in amazement at the very existence of their distinctive home in the midst of so much that was patently not distinctive. There, amidst the anonymous strands of universe, rolled Earth, unlikely, lovely, and no larger than a peppercorn, and they were filled with wonder. No wonder they left their fingerprints all over it. The urge to get intimate with the world that moves and beckons all around us is

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