Google's satellite timelapses show the inconvenient truth about our planet

Google’s new Timelapse project allows you to see how anywhere in the world has changed in the last 32 years; from evaporating lakes to exploding cities, it’s a document of recklessness

The image of the Earth from space is so seared into human consciousness that it is hard to conceive what it was like to live without the picture of our planet as a blue sphere that we all now carry in our minds.

The first photographs of the Earth’s surface seen from 100 miles were taken in 1947. By 1968, the famous Earthrise image photographed by the crew of Apollo 8 framed our planet as a beautiful oasis in black space. Today, stunning and intensely informative pictures of the Earth’s surface are being taken from space constantly: so comprehensively, for so long, that Google has now created timelapses that show three decades of change.

Continue reading...