Introduction - You are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - page 4

Maps tell us that North is up and South is down. But from the window
of a spaceship you see that North and South are not fixed realities—as
with lines of latitude and longitude, they're reference points invented by
humans to help us navigate the world. Your frame of reference is no
longer the same when you're orbiting our rotating planet, and the end-
less curve of the Earth is stretching and warping familiar shapes to the
point where they're not recognizable. Where should the North arrow
point: to the Moon? The Sun? Another galaxy altogether? It can be dis-
orienting to see the world from a perspective that's so different from
the two-dimensional drawings we're used to. But resist the impulse to
turn this topic upside down to make it conform to Earthly maps and
you'll see our planet in a new way: as it really is, universally speaking.