On the 7th, news related to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) drew attention. Listrup, who was appointed director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, took the oath at the inauguration ceremony by placing his left hand on the bestseller, “The Pale Blue Dot” written by astronomer Professor Carl Sagan, instead of the Bible. The new head of the center said that Sagan “tried to make science accessible and meaningful to anyone, and made people aware of the importance of space exploration and understanding the stars” and “considered the relevance of the center’s work.”
The ‘pale blue dot’ means the earth we live on. The unmanned space probe Voyager 1 is shown in a picture taken of ‘Earth in space’ in February 1990, about 6.1 billion km from Earth, leaving the orbit of Neptune. Sagan said, “Look at that dot. That’s it. That is us.” The earth we live in is a planet that revolves around the sun, one of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way (‘Cosmos’, Carl Sagan). The stars in the universe are 10 to the power of 22. In other words, it is estimated to be 1 trillion times 10 billion, so the earth is like a grain of sand on an endless sandy beach.
This picture, called ‘the most philosophical astrophotography in human history’, was not easily obtained. Sagan’s contrarian proposal to photograph the Earth by completely changing the direction of Voyager 1, which was sailing with the Earth at its back, was rejected at first. It was difficult to change the schedule of the probe, which reflects the collective intelligence of top scientists, and it was because of concerns about an accident in which Voyager’s navigation, which involved astronomical human and material resources, would be canceled. However, through the courageous decision of the newly appointed person in charge, he learned the fact that he almost missed the fact that the huge earth where humans live in joy and sorrow is like a speck in the universe.
Voyager 1 is at a distance of about 14.794 billion miles from Earth as of 8 am on April 22, 2023. 2 is also following from not far away. Since its launch in September (No. 1) and August (No. 2) in 1977, mysterious space data from the solar system and beyond has been transmitted every day. Today’s data traveled a distance that took more than 22 hours to reach the earth at the speed of light (one-way light time, 300,000 km per second). The communication of a ‘too small human’ living on the dust toward the ‘too big universe’ with a radius of 46 billion light years is amazing. Sagan, who gave mankind wisdom about a peaceful earth and humble humans, and emphasized communication with the universe, was a charming ‘Homo Communicus’.
Jeonggi Kim, Professor Emeritus, Hanyang University, Journalism
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