Solargraphy is extremely long exposure photography. I was wondering if cameras could be set up on say, on satellites, and at different elevations around the planet, to take combined, long term photographs of the entire planet, portions of nature, and, more importantly, human populations.

If we had a photograph showing human activity over the course of say 10 years, it would probably be blurred beyond recognition, but what if we used high resolution, or even a 10-year video being sped up to a speed of minutes, would we be able to retrieve data from the different patterns of motions?

I was wondering if things like this might be able to provide statistical data about everything, provided we have technology capable of picking up enough detail, which could then be used to make predictions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-exposure_photography#Solargraphy

There are already time-lapse movies of happenings on earth, used for a variety of investigations.

some are really very worrying indeed

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bHufxbxc8