OBSERVATION 014
Press the picture to reduce the points.40,000 → 625 → 40 → 1. Restore at any step.
At fewer points, dots grow and trails linger to help you follow their paths.
“Listen” maps the displayed points to sound.Changing the count rebuilds the sound.
The sun is not standing still.
As it goes, the planets leave spirals along the road it has travelled.
What remains in this picture is not how things are now.
The right edge is the present; the further left, the further back.
So what you see is not orbits but the track left behind.
The inner planets are wound tighter.
What is close to the sun goes round faster, so it winds many times over the same distance.
The innermost has wound more than seven times; the outermost has not managed half a turn.
Both are moving forward at the same speed, and this is how differently they are left.
The thin line running through the middle is the sun's road.
The spirals alone would suggest where the road is,
but that would leave it to the imagination, so it is drawn as one line.
Fingerprint of this equation
sha256:1666cea1a44daa0ff55fcd40242ca7c10f6f576f9de103d72df6ad9451f5c0a8
The same point number and time give the same coordinates.
Trails and the appearance of points depend on rendering settings and the device.
The button above takes the equation out as it is. To count it again yourself:
pbpaste > f.txt && printf %s "$(cat f.txt)" | shasum -a 256
Take it and run it.What appears when you change the equation? Run and rewrite this equation →