24 Hours of Air Traffic

Everyone at some point has used either Mapquest or Google Maps to locate something, and seen onscreen that little orange or red dot superimposed on a map above some place or other. The FAA does the exact same thing with airplanes. It knows and tracks where every airplane is in US airspace, and the data can be displayed just like that little dot in Google Maps. Except the FAA isn't tracking one airplane. It's tracking THOUSANDS of planes. Oh yeah - unlike buildings, the airplanes are moving. Put it all together, and you get a really cool animation.

Watch the video here, I know it gets a little slow after 30 seconds, but it picks up again and gets even cooler after the first minute. Explinations are included in the video, as the blog I'm linking to doesn't say all that much.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2007/11/24_hours_of_air_traffic_never_1.html