Posted 06.15.2011 at 4:45 pm
12 Comments
Geo-Cosmos
If you want to see what Earth looks like from space, become an astronaut (or, barring that, a space tourist). For the next best view, pay a visit to Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation where a massive, nearly 20-foot spherical OLED orb--the world’s first large scale spherical OLED--offers a satellite’s-eye view of the planet in super high resolution.
“Geo-Cosmos” is made up of 10,362 OLED panels that display continuously-updating satellite footage of our tiny blue marble, representing what our planet looks like from space in something close to realtime. It replaces an earlier model covered in LED panels, offering museum-goers a full 10 million pixels, a resolution 10 times greater than its predecessor.
And like any good museum exhibit, Geo-Cosmos is interactive. Touchscreens surrounding the globe allow viewers to tap all kinds of earth science data streaming in from all over the world, like simulations showing the origin of the March 11 earthquake that devastated Japan and the dispersion of all of that energy via tsunamis that reached all the way around the Pacific. See it for yourself below.
12 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
Technology
140 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.
Innovation Challenges
Popular Science+ For iPad
Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page
Download Our App
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Follow Us On Twitter
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
June 2012: Invent Your Own Anything
The 6th annual Invention Awards are here, from an inflatable tourniquet to a better lobster trap to spring-loaded hocket skates. This issue is all about the celebration of invention.
Plus: Making synthetic biology breakthroughs in a garage, building a constantly-moving ping-pong table, and a ridiculously overpowered barbecue.
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Technology
- Engineer Details Plans to Build a Real, Burj-Dubai-Sized Starship Enterprise in 20 Years
- Video: Amazing Coating For Bottles' Interiors Lets Ketchup Flow Like Water
- Magnetic Jet Injection Device Can Shoot Any Drug Through the Skin, No Needle Required
- 100-Year Starship Project Forges Ahead With First Round of Funding
- Russian Space Chief: 'We’re Talking About Establishing Permanent Bases' On the Moon
- The Dawn of the Commercial Space Age is (Probably) Happening This Weekend
- Living in the Future: Multitouch, or How I Learned to Love the Mac
- Backpack Radar Can Detect Ambushers Within 150 Acres
- Video: In Record-Breaking Parachuteless Skydive, Man Jumps 2,400 Feet Into a Pile of Boxes
- Would You Ride This Pencil-Shaped Capsule To Space?
Most Emailed
Technology
- NASA Says: Please Don't Touch Our Stuff When You Go to the Moon
- SpaceX Dragon Successfully Captured by International Space Station
- Backpack Radar Can Detect Ambushers Within 150 Acres
- This Summer, Take a Class on How to Design a Space Hotel
- Today in Good Reads: A Q&A With a Military Bioethicist
- Magnetic Jet Injection Device Can Shoot Any Drug Through the Skin, No Needle Required
- Video: In Record-Breaking Parachuteless Skydive, Man Jumps 2,400 Feet Into a Pile of Boxes
- Video: Paratrooping Roomba-Style Drone Concept Could Help Clean Oil Spills
- Snazzy All-in-One "Vancouver Poles" to Replace Ugly Urban Forest of Cell Towers and Cables
- Would You Ride This Pencil-Shaped Capsule To Space?
Most Viewed
Technology
- Living in the Future: Multitouch, or How I Learned to Love the Mac
- NASA Says: Please Don't Touch Our Stuff When You Go to the Moon
- SpaceX Dragon Successfully Captured by International Space Station
- Backpack Radar Can Detect Ambushers Within 150 Acres
- This Summer, Take a Class on How to Design a Space Hotel
- Today in Good Reads: A Q&A With a Military Bioethicist
- Magnetic Jet Injection Device Can Shoot Any Drug Through the Skin, No Needle Required
- Video: In Record-Breaking Parachuteless Skydive, Man Jumps 2,400 Feet Into a Pile of Boxes
- Video: Paratrooping Roomba-Style Drone Concept Could Help Clean Oil Spills
- Snazzy All-in-One "Vancouver Poles" to Replace Ugly Urban Forest of Cell Towers and Cables
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2009 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
(Sings) "I've got the world on a string...."
Very cool! Couldn't they use some kind of reflective strips or something to put in the gaps between the panels? Wouldn't that make the whole thing look seamless?
That would make for an awesome game of risk.
beautiful invention. i want to see one comprising of the entire solar system. each planet, moon, asteroid belt etc. this would of course take an entire football field to fit.
Looks like the globe from the Venus project....cool!!
@JediMindset just about every text book or magazine picture or model you have seen of the solar system is GROSSLY exaggerated. They could simply make a LED model like you propose and have inaccurate scale like most other models of the solar system. it would still be COOL AS ####
from London, ON
That's one giant disco ball
jPod! Douglas Copland invented this!!!
@JediMindset, if the earth was only the size of a peppercorn, pluto would be about a half mile away (three football fields!) I think the OLED effects at that size would be a little unimpressive.
@inaka_rob
yeah i think down scaling it would work and look best.
@suddenmischief
like i said down scaling from the actual size and putting them in the sky would look awesome!! imagine seeing it in a cloudless night sky? you would be amazed.
i think the sun would look awesome in this format. than we should try other solar systems. how bout alpha centauri? i think a twin star system would be bomb.
This is somewhat like NOAA's Science on a Sphere.