Earth

You’d think we’d know all about our home planet. After all, we live on it. And, we do know quite a bit, just from walking its surface, sailing its oceans, and flying in its atmosphere. But, as any traveller knows, distance lends perspective. It gives us new insights into familiar places, simply by virtue of the fact that we are far away and can perceive home as a place “back there.” You see a bigger picture of your hometown when you’re far away from it. And, so it’s the same with our planet.

I’ve been working on a project focused on our planet’s climate,and so I keep returning to these pictures taken from well away from Earth’s surface. The first thing you notice is the water. And then, the clouds. Which, in our case, also speak of water, but in droplet form suspended in our atmosphere. Here and there the continents and islands peek out, and if you’re close enough, you can see the lush green of plant life. It’s home, but it’s also part of the larger universe. The same laws of physics and astrophysics that operate across the cosmos govern our solar system and home planet. What we observe here we can try to find elsewhere. And if we do find watery, lifebearing planets elsewhere, we may understand them better simply by virtue of studying our own world from a distance, too. And, in a sense, what we find at THOSE worlds, will also help us understand our own.

Earth is an amazing find in a universe populated mostly with galaxies studded with stars and nebulae. There are other planets out there, and most likely many with water and life. We haven’t found the life-bearing ones yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Until we do, that pale blue dot in the middle of the ray of light on the right is a rarity. It’s also one of my choices for one of the seven wonders of the universe.