Published December 28, 2009 03:08PM
You can’t take a hiking trip around the universe, but if you could, it might feel like this: The American Museum of Natural History created an astounding video tour of our known universe, starting in the Himalayas, continuing to the edges of our perception, and returning home in a mere six-and-a-half minutes.
Everything in the video was created to scale by astrophysicists using the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe. It resembles our own Google Flyovers, only bigger. Prepare your mind…for a mind explosion:
“The Known Universe” was created as part of the exhibition “Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe,” at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
If you could visit anywhere in the universe, where would you go? (Don’t you dare say Uranus.)
—Ted Alvarez