Justin Trupiano - "T-Minus ," "Necrology: PSR B0329+54," and "Necrology: PSR B1822-09"

The Earth is currently undergoing a brief epoch in which water is liquid on its surface. This places the Earth in what’s referred to as the 'habitable zone'. As the sun loses mass and slowly expands, the oceans will begin to evaporate and a runaway greenhouse effect will return the Earth to a lifeless state. As the Earth leaves the Sun's habitable zone, other planets may enter into it, creating new islands of potential life. In T-Minus, this timer counts down, in seconds, toward an estimate for the remaining habitable lifetime of Earth. This estimate is based on the cycles of the sun and does not factor in human activity, which can only subtract from an already finite time.

In the Necrology series, artist Justin Trupiano uses data from pulsars to render these intricate images. Almost every element that makes up the human body is traceable to cores of massive stars whose life ended in a violent supernova – spreading those elements across the galaxy.

PSR B0329+54 and PSR B1822-09 represent radio transmissions captured from rapidly spinning supernova remnants known as ‘pulsars’. The data from these transmissions has been separated by rotational period, and converted into 3D renderings; each horizontal section represents a single rotation of the pulsar, each image represents one minute worth of rotations for that specific star. These particular pulsars rotate or ‘pulse’ at 84 and 78 times per minute, respectively; within a similar range of the average human heart rate.