Space makes Scoble cry (me, too)
Posted by Fred on February 29, 2008
We now know what will make Robert Scoble cry - the immensity of the universe and our tiny little place in it, as visualized by Microsoft Research’s Worldwide Telescope. MS describes WWT as “a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space telescopes to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe.” That is, perhaps, the world’s most boring description of a service that is incredibly amazing. Even an astrophysicist gets a little giddy talking about it:
“The WorldWide Telescope takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth … and in space … and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe. This new resource will change the way we do astronomy … the way we teach astronomy … and, most importantly, I think it’s going to change the way we see ourselves in the universe,” said Dr. Roy Gould of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. “The creators of the WorldWide Telescope have now given us a way to have a dialogue with our universe.”
It’s a pretty one-way dialogue, but the images released so far for the as-yet-unavailable service do pack quite a wallop. Here are three, stolen shamelessly from the TEDBlog:
