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Friday, March 30, 2012

The Weird of the Natural World: What If We Looked Down at the Earth, and It Blinked and Looked Back?

 ESA/NASA
The planet on which we live houses so many secrets.  Someday, if we're unlucky, we'll learn them all.

The photo above sets the mind a' spinning...

Taken from the oft forgotten International Space Station orbiting in the firmament 240 miles above our gourds by Dutch astronaut (and, judging by his picture, weekend basketball coach) Andre Kuipers, the picture shows what is known as a Richat Structure, geological anomalies that are somewhat shrouded in mystery.

Perfect.

What caused it, then?  What shall we imagine birthed this 30 kilometer, spiraling ring in present day Mauritania and the Western Sahara Desert, but what was once a vast, fertile jungle?

It could be the fossilized remains of an eye socket.  It could be a naval to the hollowed out, populated spaces below us.  It could be an uncovered nautilus shell of antediluvian sea creatures that weren't measured or constrained in relation to human size or present earthly physics.  It could be an impact crater of something vast and fast landing on earth.

It could be anything we want to be, if we tilt our head in a slightly different direction, open our eyes, and imagine what could be looking back at us right this very second.

4 comments:

  1. It's an amazing picture, brother.

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  2. Thanks, my dude.

    There's so much amazing, cool shit out there, I can't stand it sometimes...

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  3. When I hit the lottery this is where I will build my evil, underground lair.

    -Justin Steele

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