Legal Notice

Information according to Section 5 of the German Digital Services Act (DDG).

Service Provider

Sandro Vogel
Klingsorstr. 66
12167 Berlin
Germany

Contact

Email: sandrovogel@pm.me

Responsible for Editorial Content

Responsible for editorial content according to Section 18(2) of the German Interstate Media Treaty (MStV):

Sandro Vogel
Klingsorstr. 66
12167 Berlin
Germany

Dispute Resolution

We are not willing or obliged to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

Project and Data Sources

TELLUSMACHINE is an artistic, educational visualization. Live, compiled, and modeled data are labeled in the interface. The project is not an official warning, forecasting, navigation, aviation, spaceflight, climate, legal, medical, or safety system.

Land, coast, and country boundary geometry: Natural Earth public domain map data, compiled through world-atlas.
Cities: GeoNames cities5000, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Subsea network layer and “The Nervous System” meditation: mapped submarine communications lines and cable landing stations are derived from OpenStreetMap data. © OpenStreetMap contributors. The source database and this modified coordinate subset are licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. The dated derivative database used by the visualization is available as GeoJSON. Coverage is incomplete and route geometry is simplified; it must not be used for navigation, marine operations, excavation, or locating infrastructure. Animated signals are procedural artwork, not measurements of traffic, capacity, latency, routing, or network health.
“Compute Campuses” layer and “The Cloud Has a Ground” meditation: adapted from Epoch AI, “AI Data Centers”, retrieved July 17, 2026. Epoch AI states that its data is free to use, distribute, and reproduce provided the source and authors are credited under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Credit: Epoch AI, “AI Data Centers.” Published online at epoch.ai. The adapted numeric snapshot is available as JSON. Capacity figures and many locations are estimates; coverage is selective and strongest for major AI data centers. Values are not live metering. TELLUSMACHINE does not infer that a campus is connected to any particular displayed cable or landing station.
“AI Scale” layer and “The Curve” meditation: adapted from Epoch AI, “Data on AI Models”, retrieved July 17, 2026. Epoch AI states that its data is free to use, distribute, and reproduce provided the source and authors are credited under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Credit: Epoch AI, “Data on AI Models.” Published online at epoch.ai. The adapted numeric snapshot is available as JSON. The source dataset is non-exhaustive and many training-compute values are estimates. Confidence categories are preserved. Placement around the globe is procedural and does not represent model origin, deployment location, data flow, or live activity.
“Open Knowledge” layer and “The Chorus” meditation: aggregate institutional-affiliation counts from OpenAlex, operated by OurResearch, retrieved July 17, 2026 and dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. Recommended citation: Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R. (2022). “OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts.” arXiv:2205.01833. The aggregate snapshot and exact API queries are available as JSON. It covers works whose primary algorithmically assigned OpenAlex topic is in subfield 1702, Artificial Intelligence. Coverage and classification are imperfect; a work with multiple affiliations may count at more than one institution. Counts do not measure research quality, people, intelligence, or live activity.
“Exchange Points” layer and “The Handshake” meditation: located Internet-exchange records compiled from Wikidata Query Service structured data, retrieved July 24, 2026. Source: Wikidata contributors. License: CC0 1.0. The dated snapshot, retained Wikidata item IDs, methodology, limitations, and exact SPARQL query are available as JSON. A direct coordinate is used when present; otherwise a headquarters coordinate may be used. Coverage is incomplete. Points and pulses do not measure or infer traffic, bandwidth, latency, routing, topology, capacity, service quality, or operational status. Display beside mapped cables does not assert a connection.
“Launch Sites” layer and “The Doorways” meditation: launch-site and spaceport records with direct coordinates compiled from Wikidata structured data, retrieved July 24, 2026. Source: Wikidata contributors. License: CC0 1.0. The same downloadable snapshot contains the exact SPARQL query and retained item IDs. Wikidata coverage and classification are incomplete and may include historical sites; absence of an end date is not treated as proof of current operation. Animated ascent streaks are procedural artwork, not launches, trajectories, schedules, activity, capacity, safety information, or airspace restrictions.
Population column layer and meditation: derived from the compiled GeoNames cities5000 city positions and population-scaled brightness already used for city lights.
Ocean current layer and meditation: generalized model paths based on named surface-current geography described by NOAA educational material; the shimmering particle ribbons are artistic interpolation around those sparse model paths, not measured flow fields.
Tectonic activity layer: plate-boundary proxy points derived from the existing plate geometry and labeled as model data. This is not a volcano-location dataset and does not claim Smithsonian GVP provenance.
Deep-time meditation: sparse mid-ocean ridge proxy derived from existing oceanic plate-boundary points plus compiled factual craton coordinates from geological literature; labeled as sparse model data.
Sea ice: NSIDC Sea Ice Index, G02135 Version 4, September monthly extent data. Data citation: Fetterer, F., Knowles, K., Meier, W. N., Savoie, M., Windnagel, A. K. & Stafford, T. (2025). Sea Ice Index. (G02135, Version 4). Boulder, Colorado USA. National Snow and Ice Data Center. https://doi.org/10.7265/a98x-0f50. Subset used: Northern Hemisphere September extent polygon and extent rows compiled for the visualization.
Seismic feed: USGS earthquake feeds. USGS-authored data are treated as U.S. public domain data with USGS acknowledged as source.
Solar wind and geomagnetic data: NOAA / National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center. NOAA/NWS public web data are used with source acknowledgment and without implying endorsement or official status; CORS-limited browser access is handled through a narrow same-origin Vercel API route.
Earth rotation compiled/live attempt: IERS finals data, requested through a narrow same-origin Vercel API route when live access is available.
“The Visitors” meditation and “Incoming” readout: factual close-approach records from the public NASA/JPL Small-Body Database Close-Approach Data API. The live query requests up to 36 nominal Earth approaches within one lunar distance during the next 30 days through a narrow same-origin Vercel API route. The API is publicly accessible without an account or reuse-specific key; source credit is provided in accordance with NASA’s science-data licensing guidance. Dates, nominal distances, and relative velocities come from the API. Animated paths and spatial directions are procedural artwork, radial distance is non-linearly compressed, and the display is not an impact probability, warning, tracking, orbit-determination, or spaceflight system. NASA/JPL, Caltech, and related names are source attributions only and do not imply endorsement; no NASA or JPL logo is used.
Nuclear test meditation: visual sequence after Isao Hashimoto; no Hashimoto media is copied. Compiled tabular data are from the TidyTuesday nuclear explosions dataset, described there as SIPRI/OKGS-derived and distributed under CC0. DPRK rows after 1998 are approximate estimate rows appended by the build and labeled as compiled data, not a separate live or official feed.
Magnetic pole meditation: statistical reconstruction/model data, labeled as such in the interface.
Impact structure meditation: statistical reconstruction/model data, labeled as such in the interface.
CO2 readout and veil: Mauna Loa / Keeling-curve style fitted model values, labeled in the interface as model data rather than a live NOAA GML feed.
Lightning layer: procedural climatology model, labeled as model data and not a live lightning strike feed.
Orbital shell and reentries: catalog-statistical model values, labeled as model data and not a live satellite catalog.
South Atlantic anomaly: approximate IGRF-inspired model, labeled as approximation/model data.
Carbon and ocean heat flux readouts: GCB/OHC-rate model values used as contextual indicators, not official accounting records.
NASA FIRMS active-fire data is not used in the current public build; fire imagery is deferred until a build-time API key and dated compiled snapshot are added.

Source names and institutional marks are used for attribution only. TELLUSMACHINE is not affiliated with, sponsored by, approved by, or endorsed by Natural Earth, GeoNames, OpenStreetMap, the OpenStreetMap Foundation, Epoch AI, OpenAlex, OurResearch, Wikidata, the Wikimedia Foundation, NSIDC, USGS, NOAA/NWS, IERS, NASA/JPL, Caltech, SIPRI, OKGS, TidyTuesday, NOAA, Smithsonian, or Isao Hashimoto.

Liability for Content

As a service provider, we are responsible for our own content on these pages under the general laws. We are not obliged to monitor transmitted or stored third-party information or to investigate circumstances that indicate illegal activity.

Obligations to remove or block the use of information under general law remain unaffected. Liability is only possible from the time we become aware of a specific legal violation. If we become aware of such violations, we will remove the relevant content promptly.

Liability for Links and External Data

This website may contain links or client-side requests to external third-party websites and public data services. We have no influence over the content, availability, retention, or processing practices of those providers. The respective provider or operator is responsible for their content and services.

Copyright

Content and works created by the site operator are subject to German copyright law. Reproduction, editing, distribution, or any use beyond the limits of copyright law requires prior written consent from the respective author or creator, unless a separate license or legal permission applies.

The OpenStreetMap-derived subsea network database is a separately licensed data component and remains available under ODbL 1.0 as stated above. Its inclusion does not change the license of independently created TELLUSMACHINE code, interface design, text, or procedural animation.

The adapted Epoch AI numeric snapshots remain subject to the Creative Commons Attribution terms stated by Epoch AI and must retain the source credit above when redistributed. The OpenAlex aggregate snapshot and Wikidata infrastructure snapshot are available under CC0 1.0. These data permissions do not change the copyright status of independently created TELLUSMACHINE code, interface design, text, or procedural animation.

Last Updated

July 24, 2026