THE PALE BLUE DOT

Earth

Images of the Earth from space hold a profound ability to illicit philosophical reflection. They lead us to position ourselves within the vast timeline of the universe and to question our place within it. They force a big-picture view of humankind’s achievements and contributions, and prompt speculation on the future of our species. These images contain a radical power to shape our collective consciousness, acting as a mobilizing force for the shared beliefs and moral attitudes of society.
So far this collective consciousness has been shaped for the better. Although only a small handful of individuals have witnessed these sights first-hand, the widespread dissemination of these images of the Earth from space has variously been credited with catalyzing the environmental movement, global action on policy, and spurring transnational collaboration.
The most influential of these images is Earthrise, an ‘unscheduled’ photo taken by the astronauts of NASA’s Apollo 8 mission in 1968 while scouting for landing sites on the Moon. It was the first time our planet was seen to rise above the horizon of another. Commander Frank Borman later recalled the moment as ‘the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me’. The tiny, solitary blue sphere, surrounded by darkness, spoke of the fragility of Earth and the need to nurture it. It adorned the cover of the first Whole Earth Catalog where it was described as having ‘established our planetary facthood and beauty and rareness’ and became the icon of Buckminster Fuller’s concept of ‘Spaceship Earth’, a call for international cooperation on issues of global importance.
In his 2008 book Earthrise: How man first saw the Earth, Robert Poole reflects upon the almost-instant effect this image—and the similar Blue Marble photograph released in 1972—had in forging our collective conscience for the environment. ‘As soon as the Earth became visible […] it began to acquire friends, starting in 1969 with Friends of the Earth. The years 1969-72 saw no fewer than seven major international environmental organizations come into being.’ Released at a time when knowledge and awareness of the harmful effects of pollution on our atmosphere was rapidly spreading, these images of the Earth from space gave the environmental movement a tangible symbol to fight for.
Another NASA photograph, known as the Pale Blue Dot, inspired one of the most reflective and deeply moving passages on our position within the Universe. Voyager 1, having completed it’s primary mission and upon leaving the Solar System, turned its cameras around and directed them back to Earth from a record distance. Within the image, Earth takes up 0.12% of a single pixel, set against the vastness of space. The astronomer Carl Sagan, who requested the photograph, wrote of it in 1990:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. […] Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. […] To me, [this image] underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
Despite Sagan’s insistence that ‘this is where we make our stand’, images from space increasingly offer us the possibility of another home. Neil Armstrong’s stirring ‘one small step’ moonwalk in 1969 collapsed the science fiction idea of colonizing other planets and demonstrated it as a scientific possibility. But even more tellingly, when NASA returned to the Moon in 1971, they brought with them the ultimate symbol of home and American independence: the automobile. The photos of the lunar lander, with a flag firmly planted and the rover parked outside, made the potential of colonizing space a future we could grasp and relate to. This was the lunar equivalent of the proud suburban homeowner, standing outside, with the American flag adorning the porch and the Chevy in the driveway.

La Pale Blue Dot (in italiano pallido punto blu o pallido puntino azzurro) è una celebre fotografia del pianeta Terra scattata nel 1990 dalla sonda Voyager 1, quando si trovava a sei miliardi di chilometri di distanza.
L'idea di girare la fotocamera della sonda e scattare una foto della Terra dai confini del sistema solare è stata dell'astronomo e divulgatore scientifico Carl Sagan.
Nel suo libro Sagan espone i suoi pensieri sul significato profondo della fotografia:
La foto con un campo visivo leggermente più ampio che mostra più sfondo
« Da questo distante e vantaggioso punto di vista, la Terra può non sembrare di particolare interesse. Ma per noi, è diverso. Guardate ancora quel puntino. È qui. È casa. È noi. Su di esso, tutti quelli che amate, tutti quelli di cui avete mai sentito parlare, ogni essere umano che sia mai esistito, hanno vissuto la propria vita. L'insieme delle nostre gioie e dolori, migliaia di religioni, ideologie e dottrine economiche, così sicure di sé, ogni cacciatore e raccoglitore, ogni eroe e codardo, ogni creatore e distruttore di civiltà, ogni re e suddito, ogni giovane coppia innamorata, ogni madre e padre, figlio speranzoso, inventore ed esploratore, ogni predicatore di moralità, ogni politico corrotto, ogni "superstar", ogni "comandante supremo", ogni santo e peccatore nella storia della nostra specie è vissuto lì su un minuscolo granello di polvere sospeso dentro ad un raggio di sole. La Terra è un piccolissimo palco in una vasta arena cosmica.
Pensate ai fiumi di sangue versati da tutti quei generali e imperatori affinché, nella gloria e nel trionfo, potessero diventare i signori momentanei di una frazione di un puntino. Pensate alle crudeltà senza fine impartite dagli abitanti di un angolo di questo pixel agli abitanti scarsamente distinguibili di qualche altro angolo, quanto frequenti i loro malintesi, quanto smaniosi di uccidersi a vicenda, quanto ferventi i loro odi. Le nostre ostentazioni, la nostra immaginaria autostima, l'illusione che abbiamo una qualche posizione privilegiata nell'Universo, sono messe in discussione da questo punto di luce pallida. Il nostro pianeta è un granellino solitario nel grande, avvolgente buio cosmico. Nella nostra oscurità, in tutta questa vastità, non c'è nessuna indicazione che possa giungere aiuto da qualche altra parte per salvarci da noi stessi.
La Terra è l'unico mondo conosciuto che possa ospitare la vita. Non c'è nessun altro posto, per lo meno nel futuro prossimo, dove la nostra specie possa migrare. Visitare, sì. Abitare, non ancora.
Che vi piaccia o meno, per il momento la Terra è dove ci giochiamo le nostre carte. È stato detto che l'astronomia è un'esperienza di umiltà e che forma il carattere. Non c'è forse migliore dimostrazione della follia delle vanità umane che questa distante immagine del nostro minuscolo mondo. Per me, sottolinea la nostra responsabilità di occuparci più gentilmente l'uno dell'altro, e di preservare e proteggere il pallido punto blu, l'unica casa che abbiamo mai conosciuto. »

MY CLIENT IS NOT IN A HURRY

"My client is not in a hurry," Antoni Gaudí used to say. The pious architect was speaking of God, explaining why the Roman Catholic Sagrada Família church was taking so long to complete. Nearly a century later it remains a work in progress—a dream of spires and ornate facades rising hundreds of feet above downtown Barcelona, drawing the eyes (and euros) of some two million visitors a year. This November Pope Benedict XVI consecrated it as a basilica. A final completion date of 2026 appears likely. And if history begets history, the time is ripe to reappraise Gaudí's epic endeavor—and the prescient ideas behind it.
The Sagrada Família has always been revered and reviled. The surrealists claimed Gaudí as one of their own, while George Orwell called the church "one of the most hideous buildings in the world." As idiosyncratic as Gaudí himself, it is a vision inspired by the architect's religious faith and love of nature. He understood that the natural world is rife with curved forms, not straight lines. And he noticed that natural construction tends to favor sinewy materials such as wood, muscle, and tendon. With these organic models in mind, Gaudí based his buildings on a simple premise: If nature is the work of God, and if architectural forms are derived from nature, then the best way to honor God is to design buildings based on his work.

As the Barcelona scholar Joan Bassegoda Nonell notes, "Gaudí's famous phrase, 'originality is returning to the origin,' means that the origin of all things is nature, created by God."

Gaudí's faith was his own. But his belief in the beautiful efficiency of natural engineering clearly anticipated the modern science of biomimetics.
Born in 1852 near the town of Reus, Gaudí grew up fascinated by geometry and the natural wonders of the Catalonian countryside. After architecture school, he eventually forged his own style—a synthesis of neo-Gothic, art nouveau, and Eastern elements. For Gaudí, form and function were inseparable; one found aesthetic beauty only after seeking structural efficiency, which rules the natural world. "Nothing is art if it does not come from nature," he concluded.
In 1883 Gaudí inherited the Sagrada Família from another architect, who had laid a traditional neo-Gothic base. Gaudí envisioned a soaring visual narrative of Christ's life, but knew that the massive project could not be completed in his lifetime. For more than 12 years prior to his death in 1926—he spent his last year living at the site—he rendered his plans as geometric three-dimensional models rather than as conventional drawings. Though many were destroyed by vandals during the Spanish Civil War, those models have been vital to Gaudí's successors.
"They contain the entire building's structural DNA," explains Mark Burry, an Australia-based architect who has worked on the Sagrada Família for 31 years, using drawings and computer technology to help translate Gaudí's designs for today's craftsmen. "You can extract the architectural whole even from fragments. The models are how Gaudí met the architect's challenge: taking a complex, holistic idea and explicating it so others can understand and continue it after your death."
Adrian Bejan says the facades of the Sagrada Família are based on the golden ratio, the geometric proportion "behind all aesthetically pleasing art." The distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University, whose "constructal law" states that design in nature is a universal phenomenon of physics, calls Gaudí a forebear and a "tightrope walker on the line bridging art and science. He understood that nature is constructed by laws of mathematics. What is strongest is inherently lightest and most efficient, and therefore most beautiful."
At the heart of Gaudí's vision is a timeless truth. As Bassegoda writes: "Looking toward the future, the lesson of Gaudí is not to copy his solutions but rather to look at nature for inspiration … nature does not go out of fashion."
By Jeremy Berlin