Grand Views of the Grand Canyon
Jan. 19, 2012
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is simply amazing when viewed from an orbital perspective. You instinctively recognize it, even though you have never seen it from this vantage point before. Somehow, your brain can warp all those vacation memories from visiting the South Rim into something recognizable.
But the amazement doesn’t stop there. Sometimes your brain can play little tricks. Under some lighting conditions the Grand Canyon does not look like a canyon at all. Instead, all you see are the arteries on a giant heart, as if someone were performing open heart surgery on Mother Earth.
Push on the corners of your eyes one more time, wait for the flashes to disappear, and now you see something entirely different. Instead of looking out the window of a spacecraft, you are looking out the window of a deep-sea submersible at some mucky-bottom seascape. You now see worms lying on top of the benthic sediment, happily doing whatever worms do on the bottom of the ocean.
So often, in the search for truth in nature, human perception masks how things really are.
Other posts by this author
- A Poem for Saturday: One Planet is Not Enough
- From the Diary of a Space Zucchini: The Frontier
- From the Diary of a Space Zucchini: Preparing for Departure
- A (New) Moon is Born
- From the Diary of a Space Zucchini: Gardener's Spacesuit
- From the Diary of a Space Zucchini: Baby on Board!
- With Warm Regards
- Stray Light
- From the Diary of a Space Zucchini: Happy Sprout Day!
- From the Diary of a Space Zucchini - What Do Dragons Eat?
Jan. 20, 2012
D.M.J. M.
A very interesting perspective indeed ! Great shots !!
Jan. 20, 2012
Jacob F.
Truly unimaginable and quite fascinating! Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Jan. 21, 2012
Dave M.
Truly mesmerising! :-)