https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=173.13.203.241&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T01:34:18ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1246:_Pale_Blue_Dot&diff=45667Talk:1246: Pale Blue Dot2013-08-02T14:58:30Z<p>173.13.203.241: </p>
<hr />
<div>To call this a "simple call for funding for space exploration" completely misses the point of the Ba'al theology with which it is intertwined.<br />
<br />
:I think it completely misses all the points of the comic. --[[User:Kronf|Kronf]] ([[User talk:Kronf|talk]]) 11:44, 2 August 2013 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:This comic makes philosophical claims that cannot be falsified. Randall can't be serious about the soul eater. That's so dark. Theology? Sort of. But quite undeveloped. More like mythology. Does make one wonder: Why is there ''really'' something rather than nothing? ''&mdash; [[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 12:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC)''<br />
<br />
:Took at shot at adding something on this. (Long-time reader, first-time editor. Will create account at some point.) --[[Special:Contributions/173.13.203.241|173.13.203.241]] 14:58, 2 August 2013 (UTC)</div>173.13.203.241https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1246:_Pale_Blue_Dot&diff=456651246: Pale Blue Dot2013-08-02T14:55:45Z<p>173.13.203.241: /* Explanation */ Title text (those more into Lovecraft should expand)</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1246<br />
| date = August 2, 2013<br />
| title = Pale Blue Dot<br />
| image = pale_blue_dot.png<br />
| titletext = 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. There is no road out of this oblivion; we must embrace it. We must join with the darkness. Ba'al the Annihilator offers us no happiness, no answers, naught but the cold embrace of the void. To imagine any other end is delusion. We must give in to the will of Ba'al, for he will one day consume us and our world alike. I therefore call on Congress to fully fund space exploration, and to join with Ba'al, the Eater of Souls. Thank you.<br />
}}<br />
==Explanation==<br />
<br />
The {{w|Pale Blue Dot}} is a picture of the Earth taken in 1990 by the {{w|Voyager 1}} spacecraft at a distance about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). The picture was part of the {{w|Family Portrait (Voyager)|Family Portrait}}, a series of images of the entire {{w|Solar System}} from beyond it. <br />
<br />
The picture was taken at the request of {{w|Carl Sagan}}, a well known space scientist at that time. In 1994 Sagan wrote the book "{{w|Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space}}" inspired by this picture. In the book, Sagan waxed eloquent about the picture in a widely-quoted passage. Cueball quotes from a condensed version of this passage until he is interrupted by an argument over ''which'' speck in the picture is actually the Earth. When Cueball cries out in exasperation that it doesn't matter, then the entire authenticity of the image is called into question. This pokes fun at the fact that the {{w|Pale Blue Dot}} picture has very little visual attractiveness, apart from the viewer's knowledge that the central speck is actually our home planet seen from a great distance. <br />
<br />
The first two sentences of the title text are also a quotation from Sagan's paen to the Pale Blue Dot picture, but then the text veers humorously into a very non-scientific conclusion about pagan deities.<br />
<br />
The title text evokes the Cthulu Mythos[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulu_mythos], as expounded in fantasy/horror works by H.P. Lovecraft and, later, August Derleth, which features a cosmology in which humanity is doomed to destruction through the workings of vastly more powerful supernatural forces. The text references Ba'al[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27al], originally a Semitic deity since associated with demonic or otherwise evil forces.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:Cueball: Consider this pale blue dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. Everyone you love, every human being who ever was, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived out their lives on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. All our -<br />
:[Heckling]: I think that's a stuck pixel. We're the speck on the left.<br />
:Cueball: ...Ok, ''this'' pale blue dot is everything you -<br />
:[Heckling]: No you were right before. ''That'' one is earth.<br />
:Cueball: ''Look it doesn't matter!''<br />
:[Heckling]: I knew it.<br />
:[Heckling]: I think this is just a lens cap picture.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Philosophy]]<br />
[[Category:Science]]</div>173.13.203.241