This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
In December 1968, the crew of NASA's Apollo eight spacecraft became the first human beings to orbit the moon.
The astronauts on board, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, had a stunning view of Earth rising over the lunar horizon that Christmas Eve.
A televised broadcast of the event became the most watched tv program at the time.
Oh, my God.
Look at that picture over there.
There's this earth coming up.
Wow, that pretty.
William Anders captured the moment in a photograph that came to be known as Earthrise.
It showed our planet in a way people had never before seen, a vivid blue and white orb suspended against the vastness of space.
Earthrise wasn't just a beautiful photograph.
It became a symbol of the environmental movement and had a profound impact on how people view our planet.
Beautiful, but fragile and deserving of our protection.
The picture inspired the launch of Earth Day.
It's a global movement that is still around decades later.
It involves billions of people around the world, all of this inspired by a simple, beautiful image.
This week on hidden brain.
The power of beauty, why we are so moved by it, the ways it influences our behavior, and how our attraction to beauty might unlock the secrets of the universe.
In the early 1990s, Anjan Chatterjee was a young neuroscientist working at the University of Birmingham in Alabama.