This camera is going to take pictures of the Arizona desert for a millennium.

In what ways will the globe evolve in the ensuing millennia? None of us will live to find out the answer to that question unless you just so happen to have the keys to immortality or time travel. However, an experimental philosopher in Tuscon, Arizona, has developed to record it all.

Within is a light-sensitive surface that is thinly covered in rose madder oil paint pigment. This pigment will fade with light, though it's unclear if this will happen at the right pace.

Researchers from the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill assisted in the camera, which was placed next to a seat with a view over Tuscon's Star Pass neighborhood. It is suggested that guests sit there and consider the future.

Even with a well-designed camera, there's no assurance that the image it could potentially capture in the future would be seen by anyone.

Keats stated in a statement, "One millennium is a long time and there are so many reasons why this might not work." "It's possible that the camera won't exist in a thousand years. The camera may not last forever due to natural causes and human decisions, whether they be criminal or administrative."

However, Keats has some ideas about what it might reveal if it does manage to survive. Buildings and other things that change more readily will be blurred, while landscape characteristics like hills will probably appear mostly sharply.

The camera shouldn't be opened before the 1,000 goal as well since, as the saying goes, "if we open in the interim, then it diminishes the imagining that we need to be doing."

Keats hopes that by putting the camera in public view, people will be inspired to consider how best to plan for the future while keeping in mind population growth and its impact on the environment.

"Most people have a pretty bleak outlook on what lies ahead," Keats stated. Although it's simple to picture a Tucson that is very different from what it is today, the ability to conceive such a version of the city is not a negative thing. It's a positive thing because, if we can picture that, we can imagine what else might occur as well, which could inspire us to take action to influence the course of events."

More cameras are scheduled to be installed by Keats in the Austrian Alps, Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and Chongqing, China. "This project depends on doing this in many places all over the world," stated the politician. "I hope this leads to a planetary process of reimagining planet Earth for future generations."

The Pangean supercontinent broke up approximately 200 million years ago, forming the continents that are seen today, divided by large oceans. It's simple to assume that these massive landmasses will always exist, yet sooner or later, another supercontinent will probably bless our globe.

Although the exact shape of this supercontinent is still unknown, experts believe that in 200 million years, all of the continents—aside from Antarctica—may unite around the north pole to form a new supercontinent known as "Amasia."

Alternatively, a hypothetical supercontinent known as "Aurica" would form in around 250 million years if all of the continents unite around the equator.

Whichever of these possibilities comes to pass, Earth's climate will be drastically different worldwide. The Earth Institute at Columbia University presented a model of the probable deep-future climate of supercontinents in 2020. During the American Geophysical Union meeting in December 2020, their study was presented online.

The entire globe will experience an Ice Age under the Amasia scenario, in which all of the land is concentrated at the north pole. Because of the way the Earth is now arranged, heat may move from the equator to the poles via winds and ocean currents, but it is more difficult to do so in the absence of land. As a result, the poles would experience year-round freezing temperatures and ice cover.

Moreover, a process known as ice-albedo feedback would cause the planet to become even colder since the growing ice sheets would function much like a mirror, reflecting sunlight out of the sky.

Lead researcher and physicist Dr. Michael Way of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, an affiliate of Columbia University's Earth Institute, stated in a statement that "you get a lot more snowfall" with Amasia.

"You get ice sheets, and you get this very effective ice-albedo feedback, which tends to lower the temperature of the planet," said Dr. Way.

In the Aurica case, the situation would be drastically different. Higher temperatures would result from the land mass gathered closer to the equator absorbing the stronger sunshine there. The lack of polar ice caps, which reflect heat away from Earth's atmosphere, would also have a greater impact. The end product would be a continent with drier inland that might resemble South American beaches.