Imagination

Halcyon curates the most significant imagination-related content from carefully selected sources. Please contact us if you'd like our help with imagination-related challenges.

Imagine our universe as only one of an infinite number of possible universes - be they "Quilted", "Brane" or, most strangely of all, "Ultimate". Brian Green tackled this almost mystical idea head-on in The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Greene discussed his ideas further during a March 2011 edition of Start the Week.

Imagine too flying through the universe. This animated flight through the universe shows close to 400,000 galaxies, and was derived at John Hopkins University from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Another video meanwhile takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang.

A History of the World was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, involving schools, museums and audiences across the UK. One can listen to and download all the episodes of the radio series A History of the World in 100 objects.

One hundred 15-minute programmes, each focusing on an object from the British Museum’s collection told a history of two million years of humanity through the objects we have made, starting with the earliest object in the museum’s collection.

My personal highlights included the following:

1. Mummy of Hornedjitef (-260BC, Egypt): status, legacy, journey beyond death (see image).

2. Olduval Chopping Tool (-2m, Tanzania): adaptable, can skin and butcher animals

Reading Fathers, Sons and Motorcycles stirred memories of having read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the first time, many, many years ago.

Imagine anyone being able to travel virtually anywhere...such as along the Trans Siberian Railway.  No substitute for the original, certainly, but perhaps a relatively green way nonetheless of democratising curiosity.