Speaker Carolyn Porco

Duration: 3 minutes and 27 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

License: dotSUB Commercial

Genre: None

Views: 1,131 (849 embedded)

Posted by: pangea on May 14, 2008

Report this video as offensive

Translate and Transcribe

Sign In/Register for dotSUB to translate this video.

Share

Embed Video
Embed normal player
Embed a smaller player
Advanced Embedding Options
Embedding Options

Size:

Language:

Embed Code
Embed transcript
Embed transcript in:
Invite a user to dotSUB

Your invitation to join dotSUB was successful

There was an error inviting that user to dotSUB

Video Transcription

Show in new window

[Clapping]
Thank you, thank you.
Carolyn Porco. Planetary Scientist.
I'd like to begin today with a remarkable story
about the inhabitants of a rocky little ocean-covered world
in orbit around an ordinary star
one of hundreds of billions of stars in an ordinary galaxy
in a universe filled with a hundred billion galaxies.
This story goes that these beings, with soaring imagination
and refusing to accept limitations
developed the languages of mathematics and science
became skilled technologists and eventually
flung themselves and their machines off their plantes
and into outer space.
And they did this merely in response to an innate desire
to explore and to learn and to secure their future
and to seek the answers to questions that had vexed them
and every generation of their ancestors before them.
How is it that their small planet and them living on it
came to be?
And what is the great cosmic theater in which
life on their planet had unfolded?
Well this is a story about us.
And we humans have been interplanetary mariners now
for over fifty years.
We have walked on our own moon
and we have sent robotic space craft
to every corner of the solar system and beyond
all in search for answers to these questions.
And these robotic, epic journeys have indeed
rewarded us with insights into the origin of the earth
and its sibling planets
and they have shown us with startling clarity our cosmic place.
The latest chapter in this story is presently being written
at Saturn, where our cameras there have recently acquired
a picture of a sight that no human had ever seen before
a total eclipse of the sun, in which
we can spot across a billion miles of interplanetary space
our own planet Earth
cradled in the arms of Saturn's rings.
[Applause]
As evidenced by your reaction there is something powerful
a powerful recognition that stirs within us
when we see our home floating in the skies of other worlds.
In an instant we can see how small, fragile, and alone
we all really are.
And we can see ourselves, our species brave and unyielding
and it's struggle to grasp the meaning
and the significance of its own existance
and we can see how hopeful we were
to even imagine that we could cross
the enormous distances separating the planets
and how daring and far reaching we are for actually having done it.
And finally, in this picture we can find
the very best in each and every one of us.
We are perhaps the small and troubled inhabitants
of one tiny little planet
but we are also the dreamers of big dreams
and the thinkers and the explorers who took this picture.
One world to another, the extraordinary inhabitants of planet Earth.
And now, let's listen to the moving words
of my friend and colleague the late Carl Sagan
as he describes that pale blue dot.

Speaker Carolyn Porco

Translate and Transcribe

Share

Video Transcription

Other videos from pangea