“A Pale Blue Dot” science talk at the María Inés Gasca Center

I gave the talk “A Pale Blue Dot” at the María Inés Gasca Center in Mexico City in November 2017, during a visit home from my doctoral studies in Manchester. We began with the photograph of Earth that Carl Sagan asked the NASA team to take with Voyager 1 as the probe traveled far beyond the planets, an image in which our whole world appears as a small, pale point of light. From there we talked about what had to happen for that picture to exist: the antennas that sent commands to the spacecraft and received its data, the engineering behind the mission, and where Earth sits in the Solar System.

The girls asked many thoughtful questions, and their curiosity carried the afternoon. At the end I turned the questions around and asked each of them something about the talk; every answer was correct, and each girl received a book to take with her. I hoped they would leave with the inspiration of curiosity and knowledge, and with the feeling that their questions belong in science.

We need more women scientists, and that future begins by inviting girls into discovery early. A talk about a single photograph can hold astronomy, engineering, and a question about our place in the universe at once, which made it a good way to show what science feels like from the inside.