Pictures of Earth, Pictures of Mars

This is a stock photo. It is Earth in a drop of liquid.

If you zoomed in, and then zoomed in some more, and then kept zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming... you might see something like this:

or this: 

or this:

or this.

This is Mars. It's a photo from NASA.

If you zoomed in, and then zoomed in some more, and kept zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming... you might see this (which would make any geologist very excited):

or this:

or this:

or this.

Just think: in the next 50 years, we'll be there. Some how, some way, we'll be there. 

The future isn't that far off.

How To Get Inspired

There is a lot of stuff going on. In fact, so many things are going on that it's basically impossible to keep track of everything. Besides the Presidential election, which is probably the least interesting thing out there, geniuses are busting their butts to make awesome stuff, rich people are wasting their fortunes doing magnificent things, and millions of people are getting up, going to work, having dinner, and sleeping, day after day after day after day. And all of it is amazing.

As human beings we have the capacity to do anything, and yet, for the most part, we fight. We're pretty good at fighting, actually, except for the part where someone has to lose. But take Richard Branson, for example. He just announced that he plans to explore the five deepest parts of the ocean. Want to know what's there? We have no idea, but if you want to learn, ask David Gallo:

You know what else? Reuters says, "Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB), one of the world's leading space technology companies, today congratulated NASA on the successful launch of five sounding rockets in a stream of launches that took place in less than seven minutes for the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) program." WHAT?! NASA launched five sounding rockets in LESS THAN SEVEN MINUTES. You're probably wondering what a sounding rocket is. It's a rocket with research equipment that takes measurements in suborbital space. That means, soon we'll have taxis to space!!!

Or how about this: Marcin Jakubowski has started an initiative to create a database of farm equipment that can be built at home. He calls it "Open-Source Blueprints for Civilization". You can access the eight designs created so far on his website, here. These could do amazing things for farming everywhere. I could build my own tractor!

Some guy is suing France, another man is on trial for murdering 17 people in Afghanistan, Soldiers are having trouble finding jobs because employers are afraid of PTSD, and scientists now think that billions of habitable planets may be floating about in the Milky Way. That means, we probably have neighbors. Awesome neighbors. Alien neighbors.

As humans, we now have the ability to dive into the deepest depths of the ocean, to research and learn without sending ourselves to space, to actually send ourselves to space, and to find and inhabit new worlds. And I bet you could ask that 17-year-old kid who built a nuclear fusion reactor in his garage, and he could build you a rocket that will get us into freakin' space for good. So we can build our own tractors. In space.

And still we fight.

One day, Earth will look like this for everyone.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll get inspired.

And fly away. Alligator Sky-style.