Happy Thought for 23 August 2024

Have a Happy Thought:

 Apparently, a lot of you really like maps! (I knew you were my people 😃)

 So here are some map-adjacent things that I’ve been waiting to share with you all.

 1. How many planets outside of our solar system have we discovered? When I was in high school, the answer to that was: Zero.

Now, the answer to that is: literally thousands. You can read all about how we found these and when, and what is so exciting about them… or you can look at these amazing artworks that help us to see them all. If you visit the artist’s website, you can buy prints, wall posters, and I think I saw a jigsaw puzzle in there, too….

Oh, and he also makes fun maps.

Image: The Exoplanet Zoo by Martin Vargic 

Image: Icy and Rocky Worlds by Martin Vargic

 

2. Have you ever thought about just how many cows there must be on this planet? What about the fish in the sea? What about viruses? This artist has put together a visualisation of all of the biomass on the earth. It’s simultaneously humbling and mind-expanding. Check out the artist’s gallery for the full experience, and he’s also got some more amazing science-graphics there, too.

Image: Extract from Visualizing the Biomass of Life by scientific illustrator Mark Belan

  

3. I’m sharing all of this information in one single language: English. But there are a LOT more languages on this wonderful planet of ours. Perhaps you’ve wondered what the most-spoken language is, or how languages relate to peoples and places around the world? Then this “World of Languages” will keep you entertained for a while. That is until you discover the rest of this artist’s work, and fall into rabbit-hole after rabbit-hole.

Image: extract from A World of Languages, by Alberto Lucas López

4. Finally, a completely different way of looking at the world. Literally – what the Earth looks like in radio waves. This has been described as a “radio selfie” of Earth, put together from data from the ROLSES equipment on the Odysseus lunar lander. Basically, this is a snapshot of all of the radio waves we collectively emit from the Earth.

 

Image: Earth’s radio signature looks like from space. Jack Burns et al.