Tonmoy Deka
Our Pale Blue Dot.
The only home we've ever known.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
Hi ! My name is Tonmoy Deka. An aspiring astronomer, trying to understand mother nature and this universe. My research focuses on the atmospheres of exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets that revolve around stars other than our Sun. It is important to understand these atmospheres because it can help understand the varieties of composition, dynamics and climates that prevail in these planets. What is their chemistry, temperature-pressure structure and the climatic conditions. These will help in understanding the evolution of these systems and the relation to their host star. And finally, even find habitable planets around other stars. Planets like Earth, that will give us a hope, that there is possibly life out there and we are not alone in the universe.
I have done my MSc in Physical Science from Indian Institution of Science Education and Research ( IISER ) Thiruvananthapuram , Kerala. It is one of the premier research institutions of India and it has taught me many things beyond the books and classes. Here I did my first research on earth's atmosphere, where with the guidance of Dr. Pramitha M, I investigated the effects of solar eclipse on the diurnal variations of various components in the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere (MLT) region of earth. Currently, I am a project fellow under Dr. Liton Majumdar at National Institute of Science Education and Research ( NISER ) Bhubaneswar, where I am doing research on exoplanet atmospheres.
This website contains various articles and research findings on exoplanets and other areas of Astrophysics as well. Feel free to contact me if you have any query.