Stopped at a rest area outside Flagstaff and the oil stains on the concrete looked like a whole galaxy

3 comments

3 Comments

Ask if those oil stains had been there long enough for the gravel and debris to settle into the galaxy shapes themselves. Wondering if the pattern holds up better after a few rainstorms wash away the lighter dirt. Or does it just get smeared into a blobgy mess that looks more like a failed science experiment than the Milky Way.

robert2752mo ago

Yeah, I read an article once about how our brains are wired to find patterns, especially faces and shapes, in random stuff. It's called pareidolia. So seeing a galaxy in oil stains is a perfect example of that. The article said it's a leftover from when spotting a predator in the bushes kept you alive. Now it just makes us see Jesus on toast or landscapes in the bathroom tiles. It's kind of cool that our minds do that automatically. Makes a boring rest stop a lot more interesting.

harris.brooke2mo ago

Totally agree about the leftover predator spotting thing. I always end up seeing faces in my floorboards because of it.