KEVIN LIEBER: Don't you wish you could
travel to space just like Neil Armstrong or Sally Ride?
Don't worry, Earth has places that kind of
feel more like outer space than space itself.
Don't believe me?
Well, I'm gonna challenge you, space lover.
I'm Kevin from Vsauce2, and today we'll
be finding out which one of these places
actually belongs to Earth.
It's Google Arts and Culture's Odd One Out.
Ready?
Time for liftoff.
Space.
The final frontier.
Space is filled with celestial bodies
home to jaw-dropping landscapes, making
it humanity's most fascinating destination
in the last century.
It's so dark and infinite that it's
hard to even conceive what exists beyond our telescopes.
But, hey, Earth has its remarkable vistas, too,
such as the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia
or Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
But if those destinations weren't
enough to blow your mind, let's play a game.
Here are two pictures of very different destinations.
Can you spot which one is on Earth?
I'll give you five seconds.
5, 4, 3-- look closely--
2, 1.
Time's up.
Did you guess correctly?
The first one is on Mars.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed sand dunes
in the north polar regions of Mars,
showing light coatings of pale orange dust blown partially
across the dark basaltic sand.
Around the edges of the dune, patches of seasonal dry ice
remain.
The second one is here on Earth.
Brazil's Lencois Maranhenses National Park
is home to these perfectly shaped sand dunes
immersed in clear fresh water.
Don't they look strikingly similar to the dunes on Mars?
If you didn't guess right, don't worry.
That was just a warm-up.
The real challenge starts now.
Are you ready to have your brain busted?
Which one of these out-of-this-world pictures
actually exists in this world?
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Do you have an answer?
Look closely.
I've left some hints to help you out.
All right, that's it.
Time's up.
The answer is number four.
Dune 45 is a dune in the Namib Desert in Namibia.
It stands over 170 meters tall and contains sands that
are five million years old.
The most amazing part is researchers
have found similarities between Namib's dune and those on Mars.
So if you visit Namibia, you're getting
pretty close to experiencing the red planet.
OK, now that we have Earth covered,
let's discuss those other awesome pictures
and where they're from.
First, we have an image of the Kimberley formation on Mars,
taken by NASA's Curiosity Rover.
The colors are adjusted so the rocks look almost as they would
if they were on Earth, which helps
geologists interpret the rocks.
Next up, we have an image of Jupiter's atmosphere,
captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft.
The spacecraft was a little more than 12,742 kilometers away
from Jupiter when it captured this mind-bending,
color-enhanced view of the planet's tumultuous atmosphere.
And finally, we have Neil Armstrong's legendary footprint
on the moon, marking humanity's first step on the lunar surface
on July 20, 1969.
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
It's crazy to think that what lies beyond our atmosphere
can be so similar yet so different
from what we have here on Earth.
There's still so, so much that we need to learn.
These photos only show us a glimpse
of just our solar system.
Who knows what space photographs will show us in the future?
Distant solar systems?
Other Earth-like planets?
Maybe even alien life forms?
It's up to us to continue to explore, learn, imagine,
and develop the tools and science to reach the stars.
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