Richard N. Ruprecht

I wish to add to the discussion of what Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Duryan convey in “Pale Blue Dot.” While rejecting the “geocentric” view of our Solar System, one can focus on the relative sizes of planets and the vast distances between them to conclude that planet Earth is but a “dot” in space. Our current understanding of the orbits of planets and objects in our Solar System further rejects any geocentric notion of the Earth as any more significant than a dot, vulnerable to obliteration by any asteroid wandering too close to Earth’s orbit. But the fact that we have not discovered life, let alone intelligent life, anywhere else in our vast Solar System is what makes our “blue dot” of Earth so uniquely significant and precious. The Earth may appear insignificant in terms of size in the cosmos, but it remains the only hospitable habitat for human life discovered to date. As far as we know, and for as far as we can see, the cosmos is mostly empty space, dotted by galaxies of stars and uninhabitable satellites. “There is no Planet B,” is the message I took from “Pale Blue Dot.” We best treat Earth as THE precious, fragile, most important object in all of the universe. Preserve and protect our pale, blue dot—it is the only home our generation will ever know. Preserve and protect each and every living thing on Earth, for these are the only living things that we know of in all of the universe. R. Ruprecht, 2/15/2022