Our Place in Space

I've been following the latest installation by Oliver Jeffers. It allows people to find out their Place in Space: to put Earth into its context.

"The only place where... stories are told."

Astronauts have the 'overview effect' when they look down on the planet and Oliver wanted to show the scale of the Solar System.

Oliver has created a walk way which runs through the city of Derry and is shortly heading for Cambridge.

See more details here.

If you can’t get to Belfast or Cambridge this summer, there is a free app which allows you to follow the walk virtually. Download it from this link.

One of the aims of the walk is to consider scale – an important idea in geography too.

There are also teaching resources to download exploring some of the ideas, which may be of interest even if you don’t follow the trail. Let us know if you take part with your class, or perhaps your family.

The trail is about humanity's place in the solar system.

It's going to Cambridge after Belfast. The route will take it through Cambridge.

What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility.”

Haruki Murakami

There's a lovely free illustrated app by Oliver Jeffers as well, where you can take a virtual route if you can't get to the location where the walk is installed.

Listen to Oliver taking a walk with Clare Balding on her programme 'Ramblings'.

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