SATURN
BACKLIT BY THE SUN
Steven
Pinker
 One
of these days, Edge may want to run this photo, which
planetary scientist Carolyn Porco,
leader of the Imaging Team for the Cassini mission
to Saturn, showed us at the TED Conference: Saturn backlit
by the sun, with the Earth appearing as a tiny dot in upper
left (shown in the inset blowup). It is not only perhaps the
most stunning photograph ever taken, but the fact that it
has not appeared on the cover of Time, New
York Times, etc., is a sign of our culture's indifference
to science. This is truly awe-inspiring — not just visually
beautiful, but a mind-boggling technical achievement, and
a way to depict the finiteness and fragility of the planet
in a way that we haven’t experienced since the famous "Earthrise" photo from
the Apollo program in the late 1960s. — Steve Pinker
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