What does the Earth look like?

LiptonCambell
LiptonCambell: For most people, the subject should be obvious- the Earth looks like this;

liptoncambell's Picture

But does it really? I mean, to aliens, they may be viewing the Earth like this, and still be right;

liptoncambell's Picture

Or even this;

liptoncambell's Picture

All of those maps are correct.

How does one map the Earth depends greatly on this interpretation. The difficulty of presenting a Sphere flat has alot of issues- The most common map is the Mercator map(the first map above) for example, Greenland looks HUGE- but it's actually quite small, and is just being stretched out through an illusion, causing objects on the poles get a little....wonky....

Take for example, Africa and Greenland- Greenland appears to be almost as large as Africa- but in reality, Africa is 14 times the size of Greenland. Or what about Alaska and Brazil? They appear to be about the same size, but in reality Brazil is 5 times larger than Alaska.

Areas near the equator appear smaller, while areas near the poles appear larger.

To experiment with this fact, try this puzzle, that has countries that are outside of their usual place, making them seem far larger than they really are;

https://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledrag.html

You can further experiment with this fact with the following link, that allows you to move the Earth around and see how different map types distort things in different ways....

http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/transition/

It ends up there's many different ideas on how the Earth should appear on a map...

liptoncambell's Picture
(Edited by LiptonCambell)
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LiptonCambell
LiptonCambell: And ontop of that, perception plays an important role in all of this. As humans, our eyes can only see so much- our eyes, after all, only detect wavelengths and interpret them- but there are wavelengths we cannot sense at all. For example, Ultraviolet, Xrays, Gamma Rays, and going the otherway of wavelengths, you have infrared, microwaves and radiowaves....these are all undetectable to us, but to Alien life? They may just be. So while Earth may definately look a certain way to us, it may look dramatically different to a species that can view these other wavelengths.

For example, this website compares our view of the universe, versus how it looks in different wavelengths;

http://www.chromoscope.net/

And even more interesting is how Earth might look in other wavelengths;

liptoncambell's Picture

None of those visuals of Earth are wrong, it's important to note- and there is no "true" Earth....it just depends on what you can see....

It seems that the appearance of the only place we'll be spending our entire lives on isn't as simple as you would think....

(Edited by LiptonCambell)
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Bourbaki
Bourbaki: Sure, sight is visual. You don't even have to go as far as wavelengths, just think about people with their glasses on and off - they see very different versions of the world.
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Corwin
Corwin: Also, our visual perception of the Earth is limited to only 3 dimensions. Modern Physics suggests that there are as many as 11 dimensions. But to try to picture the geometry of a poly-dimensional object existing in poly-dimensional space would be beyond our comprehension, and something we could only express with equations scribbled on a blackboard.
Just as a hypothetical being existing in only 2-dimensions would be unable to imagine a sphere or a cube.
(Edited by Corwin)
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LiptonCambell
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