A storm on the face of the sun

About a minute into this video, you see a little image of the earth drawn to scale, which is dwarfed by the immensity of the solar flare.   It shows the vastness, the beauty and the wonder of the universe.   But I won’t say the power and size of the solar flare makes me feel insignificant as a human being, because we on our little blue marble of a planet have consciousness and intelligence, which the solar flare does not.   As the 17th century Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote—

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.  The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him.  A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him.  But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.

All our dignity then, consists in thought.  By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill.  Let us endeavor then, to think well; this is the principle of morality

Tags: Blaise Pascal, NASA, NASA Photography, Solar Flare, Solar Storm, Thinking Reed