secrets on the earth there are only a few, for instance when previously unknown animal or plant species are discovered. Despite the rather exact mapping of almost every square meter through the use of modern satellite technology, but there are still gaps.
How this data collection can help to increase knowledge for environmental change, but also more and more in our everyday lives, invades, shows the documentation “the Measurement of The earth”. You will see next Saturday (20.15 Uhr, Arte).
Without the city of London, with the zero Meridian at Greenwich in the Southeast of the city, the Surveying of the earth would not be possible. The semi-circle was established in 1884, there, is perpendicular to the earth’s equator, runs from the North to the South pole is the axis of reference for all longitudes of the earth and the world time and date. A Weltzeittag begins when in Greenwich is midnight. So, the physicist and TV presenter Harald Lesch explains it right at the beginning of the film, when he visited a globe manufactory, the handmade, unique items to craft.
Then it goes to Germany. One of the archaeologically valuable finds in Germany, the sky disc of Nebra is (a copy is currently on display in Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau). The 3600 year-old bronze disc is in Gold, the sun, a Crescent moon, and 30 stars, including the star of the Hyades cluster. With this disc, the Winter and summer, you can turn to determine, on the basis of the Solar radiation, it works as a calendar and for the farmers in the determination of the time for sowing and harvesting is important. Later, Lesch makes the traces the development of maps, the geographer Gerhard Mercator Cratosslot (1512 – 1594), as well as the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769 to 1859).
Today, the data characterize collectors from All our everyday life. In Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, employees of the German centre for air and space travel (DLR) are working on a major project called TanDEM-X, a three-dimensional map of the entire world. The researchers want to bring with the help of satellites, cameras, and drones in experience, how our earth looks like in Detail, and work on a global terrain model with a precision of the heights of one Meter.
Stefan is the Director of the German remote sensing centre, and is responsible for the preparation of the data. He says in the Film: “earth observation satellites make continuous measurements of the entire earth visible. Thus, the changes to our earth can be mapped exactly”. This is especially true for glaciers, groundwater, sea, soil, forests, and volcanoes.
The author Christopher Gerisch (“adventure new Zealand”, “Troy is everywhere”) offers in his rich, detailed, sometimes abstract, documentation, all kinds of recaps in the story, and introduces a variety of spaces where measurements take place – for example, on a 320-Meter-high tower in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest. He also shows how sought after and expensive such sensitive data are allowed to be sold to the airport planners, road builders and land surveying offices, and greed in the case of military strategists Wake. As to the popular districts, impassable mountain regions and desert canyons is now measured everything.
dpa
