Hi, we're here from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about how leaving Earth changes your perspective,

why there's a fountain in Barcelona that pumps out pure liquid mercury and how

researchers came up with a set of core beliefs that measure how you feel about the

world. Let's satisfy some curiosity. Humanity could benefit from getting a new worldview.

And by worldview, I mean quite literally a view of the world from outer space.

Today I want to talk about a phenomenon called the overview effect.

That's the term for the change in perspective that many astronauts have reported

after looking down on our tiny planet from way up in space.

It was described by Apollo 14 pilot Edgar Mitchell,

who was the sixth person to walk on the moon. He said, quote, you develop an

instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a

compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon

international politics looks so petty you want to grab a politician by the

scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, look at that, you.

I'm just going to say unquote at this point because he chose to use some pretty

colorful language but you get the idea. Another famous example of the

overview effect comes from Carl Sagan. In 1990 the Voyager 1 probe took a snapshot of Earth from 4 billion miles away.

The image inspired Sagan to write this famous passage in his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot. Quote, look again at that dot.

That's here.

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