Every discovery on this page is retrieved from a real database, live from your coordinates. The words were written by a human. A few honest footnotes follow.
-
Where your coordinates went
Six public databases · asked from your browser · stored nowhere by this page
Finding what is here means telling someone where here is. Your browser sends your coordinates straight to each database, and each sees your IP address, as every server does. Wikipedia (Wikimedia), OpenStreetMap's Overpass service (overpass-api.de, or, when it is slow or down, the independent mirrors overpass.kumi.systems and overpass.private.coffee), and OBIS receive them at full precision, because their questions (within 500 metres, within 150 metres, at this exact point) need it. GBIF receives them rounded to about a kilometre; the USGS and the Paleobiology Database, to about eleven. Our own server never receives them, and this page stores them nowhere.
-
Historical record
The geosearch API returns Wikipedia articles that have been geocoded within 500 metres of your coordinates. It is the largest encyclopedia humanity has assembled and the most geographically comprehensive textual dataset we have. Some coordinates return extraordinary specificity: a building, a person, an event. Some return a generic suburb. The algorithm tries to find the most interesting thing. It does not always succeed. We did not write the Wikipedia articles. We only retrieved them from the place you are standing.
-
Fossil record
The fossil record is incomplete by definition. What is in the database is what has been found, described, and published. The absence of a fossil at your coordinates does not mean nothing lived there. It means no one has yet found and recorded it. The bounding box we query is about 200 kilometres across. The fossil returned may have been found at some distance from where you are standing.
-
Underground infrastructure
The underground is mapped by volunteers. Cities are well covered. Rural areas less so. If a tunnel or buried waterway runs beneath you and it is not in the result, it may simply not have been mapped yet. The query radius is 150 metres. Overpass API is a public service maintained by volunteers; we fall back to two alternate instances if the primary is slow.
-
Species record
GBIF aggregates nearly three billion species occurrence records from museum collections, research institutions, and citizen scientists in 100 countries. We query a bounding box of roughly 20 kilometres around your coordinates and surface the most interesting recorded species. Common urban species (pigeons, house sparrows, Norway rats) are filtered out. If your coordinates return a pigeon anyway, we decided the silence was better.
-
Seismic record
The USGS maintains a global catalogue of earthquakes above a magnitude threshold, going back decades. We query within 200 kilometres of your coordinates and return the largest recorded event. Most places have one. Many places have had several. The ground is less still than it looks.
-
Marine record
OBIS aggregates tens of millions of marine species observations from research expeditions and monitoring programmes worldwide. We query the ocean at your exact coordinates. This source fires for ocean and coastal points and stays quiet inland, where there is nothing recorded to find. The ocean is not where you might think it is, historically.
-
The fallback
Calculated from your device coordinates
Some coordinates come back quiet across all six databases. The reasons are sometimes geographical, sometimes just the ordinary fact that most of the earth has not been the subject of formal record-keeping. We think the quiet is its own kind of discovery. Sometimes a database is only slow; when one does not answer in time, the page says so rather than calling the place empty. The distances to the equator and poles are arithmetic, 111 kilometres to the degree: close, not exact. The feeling is real.
-
The prose
Hand-written · Template-based, not generative
Every sentence was written by Matt. The code selects among templates based on what the data returns. No language model writes or rewrites anything at runtime. If a condition isn't covered, the prose stays quiet about it. We'd rather say less than say something false.
-
What else was sent
Vercel Web Analytics · Cloudflare Web Analytics · Google Fonts · our host's log
Vercel counts page views and a few moments: a discovery asked for, what kind of thing was found (never where), a share, this panel opened. Cloudflare counts page views and load times. Google Fonts sent the typefaces. Each received your IP address and your browser's name, as every server you contact does. Our host logs every request (IP address, browser, page, where you came from, the time), and we keep a copy of that log to see where readers come from and to count them, one per IP address and browser.
-
Companion volumes
Vol. I asks what the world did while you were reading a tab. Vol. II shows yesterday's sunset above your city. Vol. III finds what was already at your exact coordinates. The connection between the three is intentional. You may have noticed it.