We went to a science presentation. The whole thing was delivered on a six-foot globe suspended from the ceiling. Most of the time, we saw that globe as the earth. It spun and we could see Australia and the oceans, as with the normal model of the earth. We were told, though, that the spin was an illusion produced by the right pictures being handed off to different projectors around the room. Although we "saw" the earth spinning, the globe actually stayed still, merely hanging.
The presenter said there were only 59 such globe/projector arrangements in the world and 43 of them are in the US.
It didn't seem that important or different, except for the fact that the presenter was using a globe as a whiteboard/screen. But as time went on, it began to seem a worthwhile new medium. We watched weather storms move across various continents. The data was collected by satellite and had a real-time delay of three hours. So, we saw that "biggest in memory" storm sock into already soaked Queensland, Australia three hours after it happened. We saw it from a god-like viewpoint, watching the eye of the storm develop and the whole thing twirling into the land.
Another impressive data-set showed all the airplanes in the air over the entire world as they made their journeys throughout a day. They were represented by small yellow-gold shapes and swarmed like goldfish across land and sea. We were told that about 62,000 flights are made in the world each day and that at any time, a person has about 5000 planes overhead.
For awareness of the entire planet, this method of presenting may well show us new angles about ourselves and our home.
