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Originally Posted by SSJTWIZTA
oh and a little off topic but, whats so appalling about hawking?
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Notably that once he published Brief History and became famous, he left his wife and three children to marry his nurse.
EDIT for more content.
When Sagan referenced the pale blue dot, he was referring specifically to the photograph above. The circled dot is (obviously) the Earth, as seen by Voyager 1 from a distance of about 4 billion miles. I love that photograph for the same reason Sagan did; it gives an incredible sense of perspective.
I will warn you ahead of time that even a lay study of cosmology can get pretty intense. There aren't many authors who are interested in writing on the subject in such a way as to make it accessible to the layman, which basically means that once you've exhausted the few 'beginner' texts out there you either have to give up or move onto the more advanced works. This, in turn, requires you to have a working knowledge of physics (both Newtonian and quantum), astronomy, and relativity to start with. A lot of the concepts are extremely difficult to wrap your head around, not least of which is the sizes and distances involved. The above photograph was taken at a distance of 4 billion miles. Travelling at a highway speed of 75 mph (and therefore assuming you drive like I do) it would take you just shy of 6000 years to get to that point, assuming no rest stops.
That's about 1/1500th of a light year.
Our galaxy at it's widest is approximately 100 000 light years from one end to the other.
Is your mind blown yet?