But now, we travel the few
remaining light minutesto a blue and cloudy world,
third from the sun.
The end of our long journey is the world where we began.
Our travels allow us to see the Earth anew 啊s if we came from somewhere else.
There are a hundred billion
galaxies and a billion trillion stars.
Why should this modest planet
be the only inhabited world?
To me, it seems far more likely
that the cosmos is brimming over with life and intelligence.
But so far, every living thing every conscious being every civilization
we know anything about lived there, on Earth.
Beneath these clouds the drama of the human species
has been unfolded.
We have, at last, come home.
Welcome to the planet Earth.
A place with blue nitrogen skies oceans of liquid water cool forests soft meadows.
A world positively rippling with life.
In the cosmic perspective,it is, for the moment, unique.
The only world in which
we know with certaintythat the matter of the cosmos
has become alive and aware.
There must be many such worlds
scattered through space but our search for them
begins here with the accumulated wisdom of
the men and women of our species acquired at great cost over a million years.
［卡尔萨根的宇宙.05-Cosmos.Digitally.EP05］
We would build canals.
But that's exactly what
Percival Lowell believed was happening on Mars in his time.
The idea of a canal network
built by Martians may turn out to be
a kind of premonition because, if the planet
ever is terraformed
it will be done by human beings whose permanent residence
and planetary affiliation is Mars.
The Martians will be us.
［卡尔萨根的宇宙.07-Cosmos.Digitally.EP07］
The sky calls to us.
If we do not destroy ourselves we will one day venture
to the stars.
There was a time when the stars
seemed an impenetrable mystery.
Today, we have begun
to understand them.
In our personal lives also, we
journey from ignorance to knowledge.
Our individual growth reflects
the advancement of the species.
The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.
13
How would we explain all this to a dispassionate
extraterrestrial observer?
What account would we give of our stewardship of the planet Earth?
We have heard the rationales
offered by the superpowers.
We know who speaks
for the nations.
But who speaks
for the human species?
Who speaks for Earth?
It is as if here were a god who said to us:
I set before you two ways.
You can use your technology
to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets
and the stars.
It's up to you."
