Wednesday, December 04, 2013

The Finding Jesus Map


Have you found Jesus? Then you are not the only one. People around the world are finding Jesus in the most unlikely places; in food, on trees and in household items.

The Jesus Face Database is mapping sightings people have made of Jesus in objects around the globe. The map even includes the face of Jesus found on Google Maps in a field in Hungary.


Jesus is not the only holy figure to appear on Google Maps. God himself has made a brief appearance above the Walensee in Switzerland on Google Maps Street View.


Psycologists have a word for the phenomenon of finding familiar objects in random patterns. They call it 'Pareidolia'. Onformative has even created a computer program, called GoogleFaces, that scans Google Maps satellite imagery looking for patterns that humans might believe are human faces.


GoogleFaces scans through one satellite image after another on Google Maps, sequentially along the latitude and longitude of the globe. After scanning around the world it then switches to the next zoom level and starts all over again.

As it scans each satellite imagery the GoogleFaces face detection algorithm records the latitude and longitude of any 'faces' it finds. The onformative website has a few examples of the faces already found on Google Maps, including the one above, found in the satellite imagery of Russia.

No comments: