It’s one of those things we all know, because we’ve learned it in school or from our parents. Or we’ve seen NASA pictures from out of space showing us the little round ball we live on. But for our everyday perception and outlook the earth may as well be flat. We don’t actually feel the earth’s curvature or the fact that we’re being hurled around our own axis at a crazy speed every 24 hours.
To actually see and feel it in real life is quite a thrill, and one of the special places I go to renew that truly awe-inspiring phenomenon that we’re all walking on a big balloon and that everything in our lives and in nature operates in cycles is a little known trail right above the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, just south of Half Moon Bay in Northern California. To capture this truly mind-boggling view and the curve, I had to take ten photos and patch them together:
I know the conventional wisdom is that it was Galileo Galilei who discovered the earth wasn’t at the center of the solar system but I can’t help but think that the indigenous Ohlone people who inhabited these hills long before any Europeans ever set foot in the area knew exactly what was going on. Spending your days out in the open without all the modern day ob- and distractions would surely leave you with a deep understanding of the rhythms of the universe.
Spending so much of our lives in buildings, cars, and all kinds of other boxed inventions I think our worldviews also have become a bit confined, and with it our philosophy, politics and relationship with mother Earth. Much of what our energy is dedicated to is building square things with tops and bottoms, lefts and rights. But really, this is what the planet we live on looks like. In the morning…
and in the evening…
When you read the history books it says that the Ohlone were primitive, but that in itself is with a very narrow view from our own box. You could argue that it’s quite primitive to think that there’s an up or a down, left or right, east or west. While it’s part of our human expression and survival to create these markers, it can be very liberating to stand on the ceiling sometimes. Or walk on the wall — try it, it’s quite fun…
As above, so below.
Peace and blessings from the grand carousel!
Do some more of these paste ups. One instance is not a proof. *-D
you mean in the same spot? I actually had a physicist email me, saying it’s not physically possible. Maybe it’s one of those optical illusions, but I swear it looks in real life exactly as it does in the photo(s).
Sven,
How did you ever think of putting the pictures together to see the curve? It’s awesome and so creative. Thanks for sharing something so wonderful!
Pam
I thought of it the minute I saw it. I was just such an amazing view and that was the only way I could think of to share it. Incidentally I got an email from a quantum physicist who said it’s not possible to see the earth’s curvature unless you’re 30,000 feet in the air. He even provided me with the formula that proved why I couldn’t have seen what I saw. Haha, magic works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?
Gotta love magic…we can’t let the magic die, so would you keep on seeing things you can’t see? Thanks.
hehe, “seeing things you can’t see” — that’ll drive a muggle nuts! 🙂