This is my favorite XKCD strip ever, and that is saying something:
Wow. Why do I feel so sad?
Somehow, the idea of the bee image embedded in the orchid reminds me of this story, in which I raised the following question:
This makes me wonder…are there other past events that we might get a second shot at observing? If a well-placed dust cloud can bring back an event from nearly half a millennium ago, what other options might exist for retrieving visual information on events long since past?
In a similar vein, Stephen commented:
It makes me wonder if there isn’t a record of everything echoed somewhere if we just knew where to look.
Well, maybe not everything. But it’s encouraging that we can get a glimpse of a bee that, presumably, no human being ever got to see. So much of the past is lost to us.
But not all of it.