There are many things that slightly scare me when I think about their scale. One classic, as is sometimes pointed out in room311 is the size of the Universe- an incredibly vast place that I doubt the human brain can even comprehend. Particularly striking for me is when you start to consider what one person may do on a fairly regular basis, such as getting on an aeroplane, multiplied by the population of the Western World (a conservative estimate of ~500 million). This latter example really struck home when I came across the following animation, showing the flight paths of every commercial plane that entered into US airspace over (I think) a weekend:
Click Here
What I find amazing is the counter in the bottom left hand side of the screen. And watch the etherial 'arm' stretch out toward Europe, then return again in a sort of international game of pass-the-parcel.
The first thing I was asked when I told someone else about this was "Does it show it for Sept. 11 2001?". I can certainly understand why this would be interesting to see- watching all the flights disappear into Canada and Mexico would be bizarre to say the least. However, I imagine the FAA would be a little less likely to hand this data to a grad student at UCLA
Click Here
What I find amazing is the counter in the bottom left hand side of the screen. And watch the etherial 'arm' stretch out toward Europe, then return again in a sort of international game of pass-the-parcel.
The first thing I was asked when I told someone else about this was "Does it show it for Sept. 11 2001?". I can certainly understand why this would be interesting to see- watching all the flights disappear into Canada and Mexico would be bizarre to say the least. However, I imagine the FAA would be a little less likely to hand this data to a grad student at UCLA
