In 1990, Voyager 1 spacecraft was leaving the solar system for its grand tour of the Universe, looked back at our solar system and snapped a family photo of the solar system and the first selfie of the earth. This photo was taken from the other side of Neptune. When the first few images emerged, Earth was nowhere to be seen. When the scientists at NASA looked carefully, they saw this pale blue dot in the sunbeam. Such a small insignificant speck in some humdrum area of a universe can harbor life (as of today) of around 8.7 million (approx) species.

Carl Sagan in his book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space shared deeper reflections on that photo. I think these are the best possible words ever spoken:

In 2012, Voyager left the bubble of the Solar System and is now somewhere in space between the stars. It will stop communicating with earth after 2-3 years but will remain and meander there in the vast space for few billion years and might encounter some intelligent life in its long and eternal journey. The Voyager contains a compilation of few music records, few images from the earth such as mountains, oceans, rivers, man-woman images, greetings in different languages.

That’s our way of saying ‘Hello..we are there..do look out for us’ to our cousins (if they exist) in the Universe.

After a few billion years, the earth may or may not exist in this form. The continents will be shaped and reshaped. The human being may evolve into some more intelligent being. Who knows?  But a Hello is still a Hello!

The Voyager will remain even after we are long gone!

Isn’t this so spiritual?