Our earth home is an ordinary rocky planet in the solar system, because the earth gave birth to life, and there is an intelligent civilization like human beings, which looks quite different from other celestial bodies, so in the past, our human ancestors once thought that the earth was the center of the universe, and the stars and the sun in the sky orbited the earth according to certain laws. But with the progress of science, we humans have gradually discovered that this statement is wrong, and the earth is not the center of the universe.
In the face of the vast universe, the home of the earth on which human beings depend for survival is nothing but a bottomless blue ball, very small. The universe is bigger than we can imagine, and some photos released by NASA have made us deeply aware of our insignificance and insignificance.
The first image was taken by the Cassini probe near Saturn, about 1.4 billion kilometers from Earth, and the other was taken by the Voyager 1 probe in the depths of the universe, about 6.4 billion kilometers from Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens probe was launched on October 15, 1997, and has two parts, of which the Cassini orbiter is mainly used to orbit Saturn and explore Saturn and its satellite systems, while the Huygens probe is a lander, and its mission is to land on the surface of Titan.
After almost seven years of flight, the Cassini-Huygens probe arrived at Saturn on July 1, 2004, began its exploration of Saturn, and finally orbited Saturn for more than 10 years, before the Cassini probe made a controlled re-entry into Saturn's atmosphere and reduced to ashes on September 15, 2017.
As the largest and most complex planetary probe launched by mankind at the end of the last century, it was controlled by scientists to crash at the last moment of its life, which seems indeed a pity, but scientists cheered after seeing this probe crash into Saturn's atmosphere.
This is because some of Saturn's moons are special, and on some moons, the environment is relatively superior, and they have some conditions for giving birth to life. For example, when the Cassini probe orbited Saturn, it collected material ejected into space by the moon Enceladus, and after analyzing these materials, scientists found some key substances related to the origin of life, "hydrogen cyanide", and scientists believe that there is likely to be unknown alien life on Enceladus.
At the end of the Cassini-Huygens mission, it ran out of fuel, and in order to prevent the probe from running out of fuel and crashing into the moons that might have extraterrestrial life, threatening these extraterrestrial life, scientists issued a command to control the Cassini probe to crash to Saturn. Because Saturn has a dense atmosphere, it burns up when the probe re-enters the atmosphere.
After orbiting Saturn for almost nine years, the Cassini probe took this image on July 19, 2013, looking back at Earth from the gap in Saturn. At that time, the Cassini probe was 1.4 billion kilometers away from Earth.
Because Saturn was just blocking the sun's rays at that time, the depths of the universe in the picture were pitch black, but in the pitch-black photo, there was an inconspicuous little bright spot, which was our home on Earth, and there was an even smaller small bright spot next to the earth, which was the moon.
This is what the Earth looks like in the depths of the vast universe, and if it weren't for the sun's rays hitting the Earth, we wouldn't be able to see the Earth near Saturn, 1.4 billion kilometers away.
"Dim Blue Dot"
Similar images were captured by the Voyager 1 probe, which has traveled farther than Cassini and is the farthest flying object in human history to date, at a distance of more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth.
In 1977, the Voyager 1 probe was launched, followed by Jupiter and Saturn, and after completing the observation of these two huge gas planets, the Voyager 1 probe flew into the depths of the universe.
On February 14, 1990, scientists instructed the Voyager 1 probe to adjust the camera orientation, look back at the solar system, and take a "family photo" of the solar system, including the eight planets, which was the last photo sent back by the Voyager 1 probe. And the photo where the Earth is located is the most famous, known as the "faint blue dot".
In this "faint blue dot" photo, the Earth is only 0.12 pixels in the whole image, which is very small. At the time of taking these pictures, the Voyager 1 probe was already 6.4 billion kilometers away from Earth, much farther than when the Cassini probe took pictures of Earth.
So in the "dim blue dot", the earth is just a very inconspicuous little bright spot, and the moon is no longer visible.
The images of these unmanned spacecraft transmitting back to Earth in the depths of the universe hundreds of millions of kilometers or billions of kilometers from Earth have made many of us feel incredible. The earth, as the home of our human beings, was once considered the center of the universe, but these images tell us that the earth is too small in front of the universe.
These photos may also cause many people to feel frustration and despair. Because the Voyager 1 probe has been flying for more than 40 years, the distance from the Earth is so far away, but until now, the Voyager 1 probe cannot even see the edge of the solar system, and if you want to leave the solar system, you still need to fly for tens of thousands of years.
This means that we human beings will not be able to get out of the solar system for a long time in the future, and the earth may be our only home, and we may be trapped in the solar system and trapped on the earth.