Colin Todhunter: Next Stop Iran. Who will Save Us?

One of the most awe inspiring photographs ever taken was by a machine, not a person. The Pale Blue Dot is the name of the photograph. It is an image of the Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager spacecraft, some six billion kilometers away from our planet as the craft was about to leave the Solar System. The Earth appears as a miniscule dot, almost lost in the vastness of space. The blue marble is another image from space that also shows the Earth. It was taken by the US Apollo 17 spacecraft in 1972. The entire planet is a vivid, enchanting swirl of deep blue oceans, scattered white clouds and solid green land masses set in stark contrast against the apparent emptiness of space. To see the magnificent fragility of Earth hanging in a mind boggling expanse of blackness is as wondrous as it is humbling. The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan commented on the Pale Blue Dot by saying that from out there in in space, there is no inkling, no clue whatsoever, that there is life here. There is no possible comprehension of the intensity or magnitude of human joys and wonder, prejudices and sufferings. Beneath Earth's colorful blue mask from space,lies a sorry tale. It is a tale about the hundreds of millions of deaths due to pointless wars and conflicts that have taken place down the ages. We have had little compulsion in destroying living creatures in their droves, and gorging on and depleting finite natural resources, and we destroyed in a blink of an eyelid what took the Earth millions of years to nurture. Sagan once asked us to consider how much blood has been spilled by generals and emperors, just to become temporary masters of one part of this small blue dot, and how much cruelty has been visited time and time again by one set of the planet's inhabitants on a barely indistinguishable other set of inhabitants. Sagan is not alone!