Cosmic Calendar
“It is disconcerting to find that in such a cosmic year the Earth does not condense out of interstellar matter until early September, dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M on New Year’s Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31; and the time from the waning of the Middle Ages to the present occupies little more than one second.”
In Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden, Sagan presents an interesting metaphor for the history of the universe. If the entire timespan of the universe was divided up into days, weeks, and months, like a modern day calendar, our lives would only occupy a few milliseconds at the most. (With the midnight hour representing present-day Earth, that means Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World only one second before midnight.) Putting everything on a large scale such as this can be a bit overwhelming. It gives me an eerie sense of insignificance to think that our planet Earth is nothing put a speck of dust within the universe as a whole. We may think that we have advanced a great deal within the last couple of thousand years, but we haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of advancing our species. Imagine if we were given the time to intellectually grow more and more, perhaps a measly ten more seconds on the cosmic calendar. I believe human beings have almost limitless potential, and if we are able to survive on this planet for as long as possible, we will do amazing things.
I Can’t Even Begin To Imagine How Long This Took
Not only is this an amazing display of street art, but it is also mind-blowing how the artists were able to incorporate animation into their artwork. It’s neat how they made the graffiti one continuous sequence throughout the video, relating each individual painting to one another. If you watch intently, you’ll see how often they paint and repaint the multiple surfaces used on the building, which must have taken quite a while. This truly is a unique piece of art in the sense that it makes use of both hand painted artwork and video.
via: YouTube
A Dino-Sized Disco Ball
Although it serves no practical purpose, this giant disco ball in Paris is pretty wild:
Michel de Broin, the artist who created the piece, used 1,000 mirrors to build the enormous ball. It’s nearly 25 feet in diameter, and is lit up at night by various spotlights spread around the city. Imagine if this had been around millions of years ago…
via: Gizmodo
I Wish I Was As Musically Inclined As This Guy
I’m always interested in the unusual methods that people use to create entertainment nowadays. It’s these strange methods that are the most entertaining for me. I have always wanted the skills required to create complicated pieces of music. (Oh, if only I was able to take simple little sound bites and turn them into glorious compositions of modern sound.) I guess you could say it’s a small aspiration of mine, but not necessarily a priority. For now, I’ll just enjoy what others are able to create.
via: YouTube
