Planetariums in Flatland

Planetariums in Flatland

hello, i am a square in flatland ...   youve heard of flatland havent you?  ours is a 2 dimensional world, you who live in 3 dimensions, in space, i think dont appreciate our limitations.   since the description of our 2 dimensional world written over 100 years ago by Edwin Abbott Abbott (Abbott squared, get it?), we got quite a bit of publicity for awhile, but thats died down now..     we famousy got visited by a sphere from space, your 3 dimensional world, but all we could see were circles growing larger and smaller here in flatland.   most people think our 2 dimensional world was just a satire on hiearchical life in Victorian times, but no, we have other business too.   since this is a planetarium podcast, you might be interested in how we build planetariums here in two dimensions

we spent many years trying to depict stars ourselves, but since we all look like lines in 2 dimensional space, all we could do to make stars is arrange volunteers into constellatons viewed almost on end.  this didnt work too well though, because we only looked close to stars from just off center in the audience - the further you got from the center line of sight, the more our 'stars' looked like short lines.   that just ruined it for most here in flatland.   also, since here in flatland it rains from the north (thats one of our laws of nature, like our gravity, which pulls us south), rain tended to wash away our stars.   we couldnt have a roof over their heads much less a dome - nobody could see short lines in front of a larger ilne in back if you see what i mean.  

so we lived for the longest time with very limited planetarium capacity until FINALLY we came up with a solution.  our scientifsts were able to punch a hole into a one dimensional universe called pointland.   the inhabitants THERE were lustrous ponts, and they made great stars!   now our planetariums are something to see!   until it rains.....