February 14, 2020. Thirty years ago today, after passing Neptune on its way out of the solar system, Voyager-1 snapped Earth's first selfie -- the famous "Pale Blue Dot". Carl Sagan poignantly reflected on that image, with words that continue to resonate today.
[Video: 3min]
'he did not believe in God but “thought it crucial that people believed in him”.’
The hypocrisy that @DanielDennett identified as “belief in belief” is rife.
https://t.co/SVEEqCGAhz
To become a brain-surgeon, bridge-designer, airline pilot, ship’s captain, you need rigorously examined qualifications, fitting the serious responsibility. To lead a major country with nukes & a trillion-scale budget … er … let me see, what are your qualifications?
SCIENTISTS: “We’ve produced the first-ever image of a supermassive Black Hole, 55-million light years away”
RESPONSE: “Oooh!”
SCIENTISTS: “We’ve concluded that humans are catastrophically warming Earth”
RESPONSE: “That conflicts with what I want to be true, so it must be false”
“On Being Round” — Chap. 8 of **Astrophysics for People in A Hurry** discusses how the laws of physics conspire across the cosmos to prefer spheres. If you think Earth is flat you’ve never read this chapter or you have yet to establish a relationship with objective reality.