24 hours of flight in 2 minutes

NATS, a UK-based air traffic management company, put together this absolutely crazy visualization of what all the planes taking off and landing in Europe look like over the course of a day. The busiest areas are obviously the London airports, which basically just look like a blur of neon-blue plasma, followed by Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan. It’s even more mind-blowing if you consider that every single one of those dots contains anywhere from 50-250 people.

Another thing to consider (and I’m sorry for being a Debbie Downer, but hey, NASA’s saying if we don’t fix this shit it’s the end of civilization) is that airplanes account for a huge chunk of our total carbon footprint. The New York Times estimated that if you take 5 long flights (say, New York to Europe) a year, they may account for up to three-quarters of your footprint. Sounds absolutely insane in the abstract, but this video illustrates its truth in a somewhat ominous way.

The post This super trippy visualization shows the crazy amount of people traveling in Europe every day appeared first on Matador Network.