Wonder Index · 5 pages
Five windows
on our world.Past, now, imagined, spoken & foretold.
One page shows how we got here, from the Big Bang to this morning. One shows the universe as it is this second, from live data. One maps the futures that great science fiction writers imagined, and how those futures leaked into the real world. One puts every language on Earth into a single tree, and follows the words that travel between them. One scores real forecasts against what actually happened.
Page 1 · Live data
Everything, Right Now
A scrolling journey outward from you to the edge of the observable universe. Every number is live or computed from physics while you read.
- 00You — how far Earth has carried you since you arrived, births, lightning, world population
- 01Motion — your real speed through space, and both Voyagers, live
- 02Earth — 3D globe with today's earthquakes, the ISS, fires, storms, real day and night
- 03Humanity — every Wikipedia edit on Earth as it happens, plus this day in history
- 04Sky — today's Sun in 8 kinds of light, space weather, asteroids passing today
- 05Scale — scroll from the Planck length to the whole observable universe
Page 3 · Deep time
The Deep Past
How we got here. One scroll from the Big Bang to this morning, with real data at every step: moving continents, fossils, extinctions and the air.
- 01Time ruler — 13.8 billion years, with the universe squeezed into one calendar year
- 02Your place — where your city sat 250 million years ago, and the fossils under it
- 03Moving continents — 540 million years of drift in 15 seconds
- 04Life's rise — 541 million years of fossil counts
- 05Five near-endings — the mass extinctions, played out
- 06Carbon dioxide — 800,000 years of ice, then today's live reading
Page 2 · Data stories
Atlas of Imagined Futures
Twelve of the most celebrated science fiction series — 67 books, from Asimov to Liu Cixin — turned into data, and connected to each other and to the real world.
- 01Galaxy of books — every book is a star; every series a constellation
- 02When they were written — 75 years of publishing set against real history
- 03How much time they cover — from a few years to the end of the universe
- 04The screen effect — live Wikipedia readership spikes when films and shows arrive
- 05The idea genome — which series share which big ideas, and who is closest to whom
- 06Roots & echoes — what inspired each series, and what it changed in the real world
Page 4 · Human language
Every Language on Earth
Every spoken and signed language as one living family tree. Fly to any of them, drop the tree onto the map, watch which ones are falling silent, and follow the words that travel.
- 01The tree — 7,901 languages that grew from shared ancestors, drawn as one circle
- 02Families — search any language and a light runs down its branches
- 03Earth — the tree falls onto the map; where languages crowd together
- 04Falling silent — which are fading, by region and by how few speak them
- 05Voices — live Wikipedia edits, language by language, as they happen
- 06Words — tea, coffee and sugar on their journeys, and who lends words to whom
Page 5 · Scored forecasts
Predictions vs Reality
Real forecasts from experts, science fiction and futurists, scored against what happened. Every entry shows its sources.
- 021900 — all 28 forecasts for the year 2000 from one magazine article
- 031964 — Isaac Asimov's World's Fair of 2014, scored line by line
- 04The gap — how far off the dates were, from Jules Verne to solar power
- 05Curves — four forecasts drawn against the real line
- 06Never said — famous blunders that the record does not support