When Douglas Adams passed away in his literate prime, the world lost a great humorist. One of his best characters, Zaphood Beeblebrox, as punishment, to try to bring him some humilty, was placed in a chamber, the Total Perspective Vortex. While in the chamber, he was placed and scaled in relative position to everything in the known universe. Rather than finding this humbling, Zaphod took this to mean HE was the most important thing in the universe.
I have always found this image to be rather humbing, and have used the mental image to help keep life stresses in perspective.
But the image does communicate geography, as the image communicates both site and situation, therefore meeting the definition of geography. This is not an image of our galaxy, by the way, but a galaxy similar to ours. Obviously, the satellite needed to have taken this picture, had this been our universe, would needed to have been launched millions of years ago, and I don't care what Energizer says, eventually the batteries would have wore out before we ever got here.
Now, the new issue of Scientific American has a new image. The image above is missing the "You Are Here" label [pretend it is in the top-right quadrant]. Again, another humbling image of our universe / space-in-our-general vicinity. Authors of the article set forth the notion that, while Copernicus may have been right about the earth circling the sun (silly early Christians, and some silly contemporary Christians), we may be wrong in thinking that we orbit in a normal bit of space. If we adjust our perspective, and place our position close to a void in space, perhaps near the center of the universe (which, indeed might be special after all) we might be able to explain Dark Energy.
Site and Situation, on a Cosmological scale.
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