You know those moments where you’re bored and just clicking around when you come across something super awesome? Well, that happened to me today. Our friends over in Japan have blown my mind again.
The Tokyo National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation has built a model of the Earth. They did this with 10 362 dynamic OLED (organic light emitting diode) panels! The “Geo-Cosmo”, also known as the Tsunagari project, consists of panels that automatically update based on satellite imagery. The most impressive part? All of the changes that we see on the globe are virtually real time – the panels change as the Earth itself changes. The panels are also all interactive too; if you go to the exhibit, you can actually change a couple things around!
As I mentioned earlier, the panels on the Geo-Cosmo are all interactive. Because of this, visitors can explore 2 major features of Earth’s activities through this simulation:
1) Transitions from one season to the next:
The panels allow for visitors to change the seasons that are appearing on the panel. In other words, you could go and focus in on one area, and see how the changing seasons affect the satellite imagery. Another way to take advantage of this would be to watch the whole globe and see how some parts go green in the summer and some parts go white in the winter, and see how this green and white patches move across the globe.
2) Climate change simulations:
One of the biggest deals in the scientific community lately has been the issue of climate change. Are we heating up the planet at an accelerated rate? Is everyone gonna die because humans are too addicted to using things that emit greenhouse gases? The Geo-Cosmo takes a look into that, as it simulates the Earth’s global climate up to the year 2100. The verdict? Temperature rises. Unfortunately, the Museum’s website did not tell me by how much. But if anyone wants to fly over to Tokyo and let me know, that’d be great! 😀
All in all, I thought this was actually something that was super cool. Amazing how much technology is advancing!
