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Where Are We Now?
No, I'm not referring to the question asked at increasingly short intervals by small, bored children on a long journey. Although, come to think of it, perhaps we are, as a species, like small children on a long journey in this universe. And where we are in this universe is what this post is about.
This interactive flash animation, by Cary and Michael Huang, allows you to zoom in and out to see the scale of what we currently know about our habitat. The original, which displays in a bigger window, can be found on their website. There are also links there to a couple of variations on the theme.
It reminds me of an old film called Powers Of Ten, made by the office of Charles and Ray Eames, which I featured in a post way back when (but I can't find it so here is the You Tube link).
Most of the time, my consciousness is concerned with my immediate environment, my physical needs and wants, my desires, and also, those of the people and creatures who share my immediate environment. I also spend time thinking about the state of the world, and what I might be able to do to influence what's going on. But sometimes, it's good to put it into the wider context of the universe, where, looking at it dispassionately, we appear to be insignificant in the extreme. A good antidote to species arrogance.
There seems little doubt that at the vast scale of the universe, what we do here on our little mouldy pebble will not have any more affect on the universe than a single ant climbing up the side of a house has on our solar system. But what we do does have an effect on each other, our yet to be born children, and all the other occupants, both current and future, of this planet. And that's good enough reason for me to think we should think carefully about our actions.
I hope that in a hundred, a thousand, or even ten thousand years time, human beings will still be pondering our place in the universe, even though they are sure to understand more about it than we do today. Here's a question to ask ourselves on a regular basis: Is the way I lead my life likely to help or hinder future generations? Hopefully you will want to be one of the helpers.
The flash animation above is hosted by Primax Studio who specialize in digital design and website optimization.
