Would You Just Look At That? - Blog Topic #8

As a student I have not been exposed to many variations of maps throughout my education.  I have become accustomed to viewing the world as a flat space, where Asia is thought to be thousands of miles away America and the poles of the earth are long stretches of land secluded from all other places.  As I explored Google Earth from a 3D view I began to see how distorted my image of the world is.  Oceans began to expand and the poles of the earth became centric instead of spread out.  The oceans intrigued me because I never realized how large they were until I poked around the globe.  It is incredible how many remote islands have been discovered with ancient artifacts on them, revealing that human life existed on them before colonists discovered them.

This particular view caught my eye and changed how I viewed the earth.  A normal map displays Antarctica as a stretch of frozen land taking up most of the bottom of the map, while the spherical view of the earth reveals its' true form.  Antarctica's shape resembles Australia in a way and stretches out at one point towards South America.  I never realized how close the southern tip of South America is to Antarctica.  Before when I thought of South America I never thought of it in relation to Antarctica and now I realize that they may have been connected at some point.  I have a completely different perspective of the world after viewing it through Google Earth.