Former NASA space cadet Ronald Garan didn't just float around in space for 178 days to find out that the earth isn't flat.
Rather, he experienced the 'sobering realisation' that us humans are all 'living a lie'.
The 62-year-old had an uninterrupted view of planet earth and what he discovered was not on the cards.
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Having flown 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits throughout his career at NASA, Ronald has surely felt the 'overview effect' more than once.
The term is coined by scientists as the feeling of 'unexpected and overwhelming emotion' astronauts get when taking a look at earth from space.
Now, when the former NASA astronaut was onboard the International Space Station, he spotted a long line of lights stretching across Asia.
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He then realised it was a man-made structure of the border between India and Pakistan.
In a TED talk from 2016, he said: "Initially, I wrote this off as a strange reflection of moonlight on a river.
"I was very intrigued. It turns out that this was not a natural reflection at all.
"I've always said that you can't see borders from space, apparently I was wrong.
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"The earth, when viewed from space, almost always looks beautiful and peaceful.
"But was this an example of man made changed to the landscape that was clearly visible from space."
And in a 2022 interview with Big Think, Ronald opened up on why he thinks that humans are 'living a lie' and our general outlook on day-to-day life is backwards.
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He explained: "When I looked out the window of the International Space Station, I saw the paparazzi-like flashes of lightning storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them.
"And I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet's atmosphere.
"In that moment, I was hit with the sobering realisation that that paper-thin layer keeps every living thing on our planet alive.
"I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life.
"I didn't see the economy. But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it's obvious from the vantage point of space that we're living a lie."
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He insisted we need to focus on more important issues like the climate crisis, instead of the economy.
"It's obvious from the vantage point of space that we're living a lie," Garan added.
"We need to move from thinking economy, society, planet to planet, society, economy. That's when we're going to continue our evolutionary process.
"There's this light bulb that pops up where they realise how interconnected and interdependent we all are.
"We're not going to have peace on Earth until we recognise the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."
Topics: NASA, Space, Global Warming, Environment
Anish Vij