Small World

When Matthew was young, he had an ant farm, and one of the thoughts that this provoked was that to the ants , that little tank was their world. If you zoom out a little, then the world becomes a little larger as it takes in Matthew's bedside table upon which the ant farm sits. Zoom out further still and Matthew's room is just one of many in our house. Further still and ours is one of many houses in the street. Out again, and we are one street in a town, one town in a county, one county in a country, one country on earth, one planet in our solar system .....

You get it I'm sure. So what is my point? Well Matthew with the wisdom of a child asked how we knew that we weren't simply living in the equivalent of an ant farm on the bedside table of some being many times larger than ourselves. The ants aren't aware of what lies beyond their known world; why should we be any wiser? He had a point.

Once had a copy of a book called Zoom which gets across what I tried to describe above but in pictures instead of words. Long since lost, but I found a copy on YouTube. Worth a look.

Oh, and I thought some people might be interested to see how a picture like this is made up, so I've added the 3 pictures from which this final image was created. Might as well take advantage of this new additional pictures feature.