Featured Image Credit: YouTube/TRT World
Topics: International Space Station, NASA, Space, Earth, Life
Joe Yates
Topics: International Space Station, NASA, Space, Earth, Life
Floating in space outside our stratosphere offers astronauts both an incredible view of Earth and a new outlook on life.
It's a phenomenon called 'the overview effect', and former NASA astronaut Ron Garan knows all about it, having spent 178 days in space and has accumulated more than 71 million miles floating in space through 2,842 orbits of Earth.
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Explaining what the phenomenon is, NASA wrote: "Space philosopher and author Frank White coined the term the overview effect in a book of the same name, published in 1987.
"The overview effect can create powerful shifts in the way you think about Earth and life. The words beautiful and fragile are often used by astronauts describing the experience."
The agency explains that looking down at the Earth from above can create a shift in the way astronauts view and think about our planet and life itself.
In an interview with TRT World, Garan explained how viewing Earth from space created a desire in him to do things profoundly different to how he had been getting about his life previously.
"I think seeing our planet from the vantage point of space is an absolutely transformational experience," Garan shared.
"I went to space, I didn't see a choir or hear a choir of angels and you know see light come down from heaven or anything like that.
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"It wasn't a flash of an epiphany but I think it was an epiphany in slow motion and what we see from that vantage point I think is the truth, and the truth is that we are one integrated interdependent biosphere teeming with life."
He continued: "Whatever affects one of us affects all of us, that what you see from that vantage point is the true unity that exists, and we as a species are called to embrace that - you need to understand that unity, but we've unfortunately been sleeping on the job a little bit."
The 63-year-old believes that mankind has the completely wrong outlook on day-to-day life - but it was only due to his literal out-of-this-world experience that he came to that conclusion.
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The ex-astronaut turned philosopher grave a great insight into just how he envisions his new take on life.
Speaking with the Big Think previously, Garan explained: "I wake up every morning on my bed, but I also wake up on a planet.
"In the long-term I'm very optimistic because I do see quite clearly a blossoming unity spreading across out planet, a blossoming awareness of our interdependent nature.
"That awareness will eventually reach critical mass, and when it reaches critical mass then we'll be able to solve the problems facing our planet."