In an article on “Cosmic Log” on Msnbc.com you can see a visualization of what the planet earth looked like around 500 million years ago. When you look closely, the familiar image of the blue and green ‘marble’ spinning through the blackness of space turns out to be strikingly different from how it looks today. The continental land-masses are grouped together in the southern hemisphere in an arrangement that feels ‘alien’ to anyone familiar with a modern globe or map of the world. The fact that our own planet has changed so dramatically, albiet over an incredibly long time span, is poingant as we think about the earth on Earth Day.
The visualization was created by a team at the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. Abel Mendez, who led the team, says that he thinks the project will help people realize how fragile the planet is, and how it changes.
It is interesting to consider our role in this process of change on planet earth. Of course, all of recorded human history is limited to pretty much the last 10,000 years. When compared with the length of time that earth has been around, which scientists estimate at more than 4 billion years, one thought must be how incredibly short humanity’s time here has been! And yet human beings clearly can produce dramatic changes to the planet in a relatively short time.
There is a traditional philosophy in many cultures which values harmony and respect for the balance of nature. This philosophy, known as ‘Hong-ik’ in Korea, can be described simply as ‘widely beneficial’ lifestyle which takes into account the good of the group as much as the individual. As we reflect on the state of our planet earth on Earth Day, it seems we need to truly embrace this ‘Hong-ik’ mindset to better deal with many of the issues that are so troubling in our modern world, from war to pollution, health and the meaning of life. Because if we cannot move forward together, we will inevitably fall apart individually.
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Tags: Earth Day, environment, natural history, peace, progress
