Thirst created this illustration for Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Global Thinkers issue. Astrophysicist Roberto Trotta, one of the Thinkers, wrote a seminal book The Edge of the Sky, which explains the history of the universe using only 1,000 common words — making the complexity of cosmology accessible to anyone.

This illustration visualizes Trotta's work, turning his words into a dimensional galaxy, with words becoming taller the more frequently they are used. Our discovery was in celebration of the top three words used: all, there, was.