If you’re like me and tend to gaze up at the night sky and wonder about life and the meaning of it all then you can’t help but be swept up in the events of the past few weeks.
NASA estimates that 1 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy alone
NASA New Horizons Crew find ice on Pluto
Kepler Deep Space Probe Dedicated to Finding Exoplanets Like Earth
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Space travel has recently changed from being nostalgic kitsch memory from the 1960’s to being fashionable once again. Along with wearable tech, robots, 3D printing and biotech, space exploration is going to mean big business in the next decade.
Suddenly people who are not scientists or astronomers are getting excited again by space and the frontier beyond earth.
This brilliant film simulation takes place at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).
What’s interesting is that this film is paradoxical to our perceptions of time and space. The film takes a whole 45 minutes for a beam of sunlight to reach from our sun to Jupiter and its moons. In actual reality 186,000 miles per second is unthinkably fast and the distance unfathomably far. This reveals a lot about how we use videos. Our expectations of the medium are so impatient. Time, distance and reality are thrown into chaos – it’s hypnotic.
I love the strange and hypnotic soundtrack to this video, which is deeply jolting and repetitive and yet undulating in tones and listenable. It reminds me of a weird operatic Phillip Glass soundtrack to the film Koyaanisqatsi. If you have never heard what I’m talking about then have a listen.
This real time narrative that charts light travelling from the earth to the outer reaches of the solar system is like a bucket of cold water over the head, about how truly remarkable yet paradoxically insignificant we all are.
Read more on Huff Post.
Content Catnip 
So many amazing ‘gifts’ on this post. The vid of a travelling beam of light, the Philip Glass soundtrack and the link to the film. Am transported 🙂
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Thank you Tish you are very much welcome. I watched that 45 minute epic trip and was transported again too. It seems to have some magical effect when I watch our earth careening off into the distance everything on my mind also dissapears because it all seems so small and insignificant. Everything feels so small and at the same time so large. Lots of hugs to you xxx
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Any means of stepping out of ourselves is a blessing. It frees us up to think creatively. We have become so ego-bound, or even egg-bound. Both, I feel, have similar effects 🙂
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I love that idea egg bound, so true we are both egg-bound and ego-bound. Some other pursuits like meditation and yoga can work in the same way, make one feel small and yet infinite at the same time.
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