In 1995, this was the best photo we had of Pluto. It’s 16×16 pixels in greyscale, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, which at the time was the most powerful optical telescope ever built.
Twenty years later, in 2015, the New Horizons space probe took this photo of Pluto.
What’s interesting is how the first photo definitely shows a brighter area slightly right and below center. In the higher-resolution image, that’s clearly the large white area of nitrogen ice.
What’s even more interesting– to me, anyway– is the dramatic progress planetary science has made in those twenty years. There are many ways this metaphor of progress could be applied to daily life. One I like to think of is how we might view someone we don’t really know. Perhaps we meet them and chat for a few minutes, or perhaps we just see their behavior from afar. What we know of them, and the story of their life, is a grainy greyscale 16×16 pixel image. There might be a bright detail, either positive or negative, we latch onto. We might feel like we know them well enough to predict them, admire them, judge them, or condemn them.
But when we take the time to really know them, our understanding and our view of them can change radically. We can see the craters from eons of meteorite impacts. We can see the frozen, inhospitable nitrogen ice. Maybe we can imagine the cold, dark, lonely depths where they’ve been. And we can also see the color and beauty and majesty in them.
Of course we can’t get to know everyone to that degree. It may take twenty years! Yet even knowing that, sometimes I find myself looking at the low-resolution greyscale image I have of someone, and catching myself judging them. I remind myself that everyone has a story, everyone has a reason for being who they are and doing what they’ve done, and it’s unfair and short-sighted of me to think I know even a fraction of it.
Let’s all be a little more forgiving, a little more understanding, a little more caring, and a little more humble. Let’s look for the beauty.
