this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Engywuck@lemmy.zip 134 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

Wrong. The arrow points to Mars, not to Earth.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So it's a message from the future specifically for Elon Musk.

His Roadster is beckoning...

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This meme isn’t directed toward humans.

[–] 0ops@piefed.zip 7 points 2 days ago

Cocky-ass martians smh

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Where's Marvin when you need him?

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[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 days ago

Yeah, that's kinda weird

[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was made for the colonists

[–] Nima@leminal.space 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] Zephorah@discuss.online 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Getting a lot of memes with errors like this lately.

[–] henfredemars 12 points 2 days ago

Interaction bait bleed over from commercial social media.

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[–] mo_lave@reddthat.com 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

“Look again at 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. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. 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.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it 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.”

― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Edit: As I took another look at the comments and the picture, the picture points to Mars. I confess I commented because of assumptions that "know your place" and the arrow points to our pale blue dot, Earth. Guilty as charged in reading the headline and not the content. The Omnissiah is not amused at the weakness of my flesh.

[–] baggins@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago

Thank you for reminding us of this. We need it more than ever at the moment.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Beautiful ... thanks for posting this ... Carl Sagan has always been and will always be a great inspiration for me

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[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 2 days ago

Reported for doxing

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

On Mars? TIL

[–] casmael@mander.xyz 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

joke’s on you, I’m zaphod beeblebrox

Joke’s on you, I’m zaphod beeblebrox

[–] LadyButterfly@reddthat.com 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You need to cut back on the pan galactic gargle blasters mate

[–] baggins@beehaw.org 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Zaphod’s just this guy, you know.

[–] LadyButterfly@reddthat.com 5 points 2 days ago

He's a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is

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actually I don't care. I don't have to be the star of the show, I just want to be happy and I'm hot enough to be my own star (or sun to be specific).

[–] SSUPII@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago

I am the result of 14 billion years of cosmic evolution.

I am a thermodynamic miracle.

I am the waking universe looking back at itself.

[–] Electric_Druid@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

I'm insignificant?

Oh, thank God

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's all relative though. Yes, we're insignificant to the rest of the universe, but...

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[–] sirico@feddit.uk 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago (9 children)

Here's the galaxy and our approximate location in this system. To give you an idea of scale .... the galaxy is estimated to be about 100,000 light years across. Meaning that if you could travel at the speed of light (which is impossible), it would still take you 100,000 years to cross the galaxy from edge to edge.

[–] zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 days ago (4 children)

100000 years from an outside perspective, but because of time dilation you could make it take arbitrarily little time from your reference frame.

[–] School_Lunch@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

I liked the character's from Project Hail Mary perspective. The fact that we experience less time the closer we are to the speed of light is almost like an invitation to explore the stars.

Another things that gets me is the time experienced by black holes. We would think of the black hole at the center of the galaxy as some enduring, permanent thing, but with so much gravity, from the black hole's perspective it may only exist for a fraction of a second.

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[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 7 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Epic Spaceman on Youtube had a great scale realization method. If out galaxy was the size of the United States, our solar system would be somewhere around the city of Denver. The neighborhood stars we can individually see with our eyes would be the area of the Denver city lights. The Sun would be the size of a red blood cell, and the solar system's expanse would be the size of a fingerprint.

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Here's another perspective .... this is our local galactic group. Our nearest galactic neighbor is the Andromeda Galaxy ... it's located about 2 million light years from us. Again, if you could travel at the speed of light (which is impossible), it would still take you 2 million years to get there.

Another way of thinking of it is that the light we see from Andromeda today started it's journey when our first prehistoric human ancestors first evolved in Africa 2 million years ago.

So the light we see from Andromeda today started it's journey when our ancient African ancestors looked like Homo Hablis - estimated to have been around in Africa 2.4 million years ago and looked like this

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[–] bryndos@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago

"If you've done six impossible things today, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways!"

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Some little pebble thought too much of itself.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I sure love living in a burning planet where I have to pay taxes to pedophiles who want to send me to a concentration camp.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 days ago

The sun is actually pretty small. Do a comparison between the sun and some of the bigger stars, then we'll see just how insignificant we really are.

[–] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Years ago I was on 2C-B and lounging about in my brother's room, staring at a big glowing plastic moon I had bought for him as a joke, when somehow the word and concept of it sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole of cosmic realization. At first the moon (or perhaps my thoughts surrounding the moon) began to rotate like a planetary body, becoming a parent star in a galactic arm, and eventually the central mass of a galaxy itself, ever turning with long tendril arms orbiting around its perimeter.

As the question of it grew, it became the universe itself, on a profoundly metaphysical level, and I came to the realization that every single living organism, both here and elsewhere in the cosmos, are not so much a part or some greater plan or design, but are instead just individual cells and appendages of recently awakened universe. One that has blinked its eyes from a deep sleep and has slowly become self-aware. And just as a child born blind will at some point use their hands and discover they have a body for the first time, we are tiny (but not insignificant) appendages of that universe discovering and exploring itself, trying to make sense or what it even is.

I found immense comfort in the idea that there is no greater meaning to everything than that. We're just a part of something bigger that is at this very moment trying to make sense of itself, and I don't need more than that.

[–] TheRealLinga@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

The 2C family is quite something. I love this thought though, I mean why the hell not

[–] millie@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Such a weird mentality. Why would being small make us any less significant than something large? Why would being large make us any more significant than something small? Silly.

[–] WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org 6 points 2 days ago

"Hey that's where you live too cunt."

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah but I get to be pretty and kiss girls how much more significant could life be

[–] stupidcasey@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Anyone fixating on size this much is definitely compensating for something.

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