Press release : First live view of the Whole Earth - Blueturn

PRESS RELEASE – 5th December 2016

Blueturn announces the first live view of the Whole Earth from space, enabling a blue turn for humankind toward planetary consciousness.

For the first time in History, the Blueturn project (www.blueturn.earth) allows everyone to watch the video of the Whole Earth seen from space. The high definition view of our home planet is based on the latest available images received from NASA’s DSCOVR satellite. Blueturn is now inviting people to develop projects of a new kind that will use these images to enable planetary consciousness and participate in this blue turn for humankind.

Click here for an example of Blueturn video
(image NASA/DSCOVR).

Paris, Tel-Aviv, 5th December 2016. The Apollo moon missions exerted a deep influence on humanity’s self-awareness. Beginning with the iconic Earthrise photo taken on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and concluding with Blue Marble, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in December 1972, these images revealed to humanity for the first time the portrait of our planet. This vision of our beautiful and fragile home inspired generations and accelerated the development of ecological movements when environmental issues became paramount. Blue Marble was the first picture of the whole Earth and it remained – until 2015 – the only one as Apollo 17 was the last Apollo mission. Because of its unicity, this picture certainly became the most reproduced in the human history.

In July 2015, the NASA/DSCOVR satellite, first imagined by former United States Vice-President Al Gore in 1998, reached the Lagrangian point L1, one million miles away (about four times the Earth-Moon distance). This is where gravitational forces of the Earth and the Sun are balancing each other, so that the satellite stays eternally on the axis between the two bodies. Therefore, L1 is the best place in the universe to admire the Earth. From this vantage point, our home planet is always fully lit.

Since summer 2015, DSCOVR, with its embedded camera EPIC, has been sending 10 to 20 static pictures of the whole Earth every day. Now Blueturn brings advanced image-processing algorithms to turn these images into motion, and provides the first HD videos of the rotating whole Earth from space. The Blueturn applications launched today make it possible to experience the Whole Earth interactively and on any type of screen, from your smartphones to movie theaters.

« The view of the Earth provided by Blueturn is a landmark in the history of humankind. We have explored the sky and our solar system but before Blueturn we never saw our home planet turning in quite this way. With this project, we hope to generate a new enthusiasm for the protection of our planet and also encourage artistic, meditative and educational projects of a new kind, enabling the next stage of planetary consciousness » explains Jean-Pierre Goux, co-founder of Blueturn.

Watch Jean-Pierre Goux’s Blueturn TEDx video (Paris, June 2016)
(subtitles in English available)

During their journey in orbit or to the moon, many astronauts experienced a profound cognitive shift that elicited a new love for the Earth. It changed their perspective on themselves, the planet, and the human future. This experience is called the Overview Effect, a term coined by author Frank White in 1987. With Blueturn, all citizens of the Earth will now have an opportunity for a similar experience. The view will show how everything on this planet is connected and that « We are one ».

« Seeing the Earth as unified whole from space will lay the foundation for addressing many pressing problems » explains Frank White, author of The Overview Effect book and co-founder of the Overview Institute. « Experiencing the Overview Effect should be seen as a human right and Blueturn represents a step in that direction. »

Blueturn is now inviting artists, school teachers, meditation instructors and others to leverage these images in shows, classrooms, or experiences in general, and spread this planetary view across the world. The Whole Earth experience.

« Blueturn technology allows you to watch the most recent view of the Whole Earth on any kind of devices. Its touch-based interface enables you to feel the Earth in a novel way. You can explore and share on social networks all Earth image history since the DSCOVR images have been made available in July 2015. Blueturn is also a great tool to observe and teach about extraordinary climatic events, while keeping an eye on the dynamics of the global Earth system » comments Michaël Boccara, co-founder of Blueturn and leader of software development.

« It is a remarkable achievement that is bound to both move in inspire people profoundly » says Kevin W. Kelley, author of The Home Planet. Published in 1988, this best-selling book gave the initial inspiration to the Blueturn co-founders decades ago. It showed stunning photographs of the Earth taken from space, accompanied by quotations from astronauts and cosmonauts reflecting on the profound effect of experiencing Earth from the perspective of space. « The original inspiration for The Home Planet was actually what Blueturn has accomplished but at that time it was not possible to put a live TV camera in orbit. So instead I created the book in an effort to evoke in people something of the deep experience that only astronauts have been able to have this far. But now Blueturn brings this deep emotional experience of seeing the Earth live from space to everyone »

« The Blueturn app always starts with a random astronaut quote, as an inspiring way to wait until latest NASA images are downloaded. This is our tribute to Kevin’s seminal work. » says Michaël Boccara.

The Blueturn applications are available for free on the App Store (iPhone, iPad), Google Play (Android phones and tablets) and also as a web app (visible from any web browser on your desktop, whether Mac, PC Windows or Linux). HD online videos are also available on a Vimeo channel to be watched on HD/4k TV or projected on large movie theater screens. Images are updated as soon as NASA releases the daily DSCOVR images (NB: NASA usually has several days of delay due to data processing). A virtual reality version of Blueturn will be released in 2017.

Blueturn videos are public domain and available under Creative Commons license, and can be embedded in any third party project. In the past months, Blueturn images have already been shown in a number of occasions:

Various international private and public events such as MEDCOP22 (Tanger), COP22 (Marrakech), World Social Forum (Montreal), European Space Agency, Celebration of the Paris Climate Agreement at the French Ministry of Environment and Energy…
TV documentaries have already integrated Blueturn images
Yoga lessons using Blueturn images have been given several times.
Classes with kids ranging from 5 to 12 have already experienced Blueturn preparing the next generation of planetary citizens.
Artists have already written songs using Blueturn images

« The Apollo astronauts did not know what Blue Marble would trigger. We do not know what our images will catalyze either. These images are yours, now it is your turn. A blue turn for humankind? » concludes Jean-Pierre Goux.

More on Blueturn

Blueturn is a collaborative French-Israeli project initiated in 2016 by Jean-Pierre Goux (former researcher in mathematics, specialist of energy and environment, author of the novels Siècle bleu) and Michaël Boccara (former virtual reality research scientist, 3D and mobile app specialist). Many others have joined or helped them to constitute the Blueturn team. Contact us to join the team or to create your own project with Blueturn !