Posts Tagged ‘earth’
“I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.”*…
Aaron Becker‘s Mapped.Earth is an extraordinary resource…
mapped.earth is maps and geography as a way to see the planet — by Aaron Becker. The Earth rendered as data: winds, currents, terrain, borders, populations, the shapes underneath the numbers. The through-line is wonder plus clarity — here is a way of looking at the world you haven’t seen before, and here is what it means…
The living globe — a real-time 3D Earth: live winds and ocean currents from the latest forecast cycles, active fires, population as terrain, and a Time Machine that scrubs eight decades of climate history.
Map films — short, narrated films built from geographic data: unfamiliar projections, seasonal winds, shipping lanes, the way a country’s people are actually arranged on its land.
Field notes — writing that backs the maps: where the data comes from, why a projection was chosen, what the pattern means.
And now (as illustrated above), the lighthouses of the world: every charted maritime navigational light on the planet, sweeping to its actual reach, on its actual arc, and on its real cycle.
Via Jason Kottke, who recorded this short video sampler:
“Lighthouses of the World,” from @aaronjbecker.bsky.social (via @kottke.org)
* George Bernard Shaw
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As we illuminate, many will recall that this is the anniversary of the outbreak, on this date in 1871, of the Great Chicago Fire, famously blamed on Mrs. Kate O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lamp. (Though in 1997 the Chicago City Council looked into the evidence, both new and old, and passed a resolution exonerating Mrs. O’Leary and her cow.)
What many fewer remember is that on that date 37 separate fires broke out in the Great Lakes region, three were massive: the Great Chicago fire killed 300; the Great Michigan fire, 300-500.
But the Wisconsin Peshtigo fire—history’s deadliest—killed least 1,200– though data gathered from mass graves, both those already exhumed and those still being discovered, suggest that the death toll of the blaze was most likely greater than that of the 1889 Johnstown flood death toll of 2,200 people or more. The fire razed 1.2 million acres– and destroyed the Peshtigo Lighthouse, a key navigational aid in the Great Lakes region.
“The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to”*…
… and, as Bartosz Ciechanowski explains in a stunningly-illustrated essay, so much more. The moon affects our tides, our light, and even the Earth’s rotation– it’s no wonder that our constant companion has so haunted human culture…
… The Moon may be just an unassuming neighbor in the sky, but its presence affects our lives in many subtle ways. When it reflects sunlight off its scarred surface to guide the way in the darkness of night, or as it breathes life into oceans by rhythmically raising tides, or when it cloaks the Sun in a rare and awe-inspiring total solar eclipse, the Moon reminds us of the celestial world right outside of the safe confines of our planet.
Traveling through the cold and empty space by Earth’s side, the Moon is always just there. It may be barren and dull, but, undeterred by its own lifelessness, it never leaves us completely alone.
Perhaps the next time you catch a glimpse of the Moon’s shiny surface beaming in the night sky, you’ll see it a little differently – not as a mundane fixture of the heavens, but as a fellow companion that gently affects our own existence…
Absolutely fascinating– and beautiful: “Moon,” from @bciechanowski.bsky.social. Via @TheBrowser.
This is (R)D‘s second visit with Ciechanowski, who earlier helped us understand “Sound”; for more of his extraordinary work, visit his archive.
More on the moon and here.
* Carl Sandburg
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As we raise our eyes, we might send celestial birthday greetings to William Wilson Morgan; he was born on this date in 1906. As astronomer and astrophysicist, he was professor and astronomy director for the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and managing editor of Astrophysical Journal. He was a leader in stellar and galaxy classification and helped prove the existence of spiral arms in our galaxy.
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.”*…
Ethan Siegel reminds us that the world– the living world– almost did end in ice…
… one event came closer than any other to bringing an end to life on Earth: a catastrophe known as either the Great Oxidation Event or the Great Oxygenation Event. Oxygen, one of the hallmark characteristics of our living Earth, was a tremendous destructive force when it first arrived in any sort of meaningful abundance some ~2 billion years after Earth first took shape. The slow alteration of our atmosphere by the gradual addition of oxygen proved to be fatal to the most common types of organism that were present on Earth at the time. For several hundred million years, the Earth entered a horrific ice age which froze the entire surface: known today as a Snowball Earth scenario. This disaster almost ended life on Earth entirely. Here’s the story of our planet’s near-death, culminating in life’s ultimate survival story…
For roughly 300 million years, the Earth was frozen: “What was it like when oxygen killed almost all life on Earth?” from @StartsWithABang in @bigthink. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice“
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As we contemplate change, we might send chilly birthday greetings to Raoul Pictet; he was born on this date in 1846. Remembered as a pioneer in cryogenics, Pictet was a Swiss chemist who spent much of his career trying to produce very low temperatures (in order to produce ice for refrigeration)– which led him to the creation of liquid oxygen in 1877 (for which he’s credited as co-discoverer, as French scientist Louis-Paul Cailletet, working completely separately, also produced liquid oxygen that year).
“You may delay, but time will not”*…
It turns out that our feeling that things are speeding up has some basis in science…
Earth’s changing spin is threatening to toy with our sense of time, clocks and computerized society in an unprecedented way — but only for a second.
For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster than it used to. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a “negative leap second” — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday.
“This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal,” said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that’s going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time.”
Ice melting at both of Earth’s poles has been counteracting the planet’s burst of speed and is likely to have delayed this global second of reckoning by about three years, Agnew said.
“We are headed toward a negative leap second,” said Dennis McCarthy, retired director of time for the U.S. Naval Observatory who wasn’t part of the study. “It’s a matter of when.”…
The full story: “A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from world clocks,” from @AP.
For (even) more on leap seconds on their history, see “Will We Have a Negative Leap Second?“, by Demetrios Matsakis (also a retired director of time for the U.S. Naval Observatory).
See also: “Climate change is altering Earth’s rotation enough to mess with our clocks” (gift article): “in that one second, the Earth rotated about four football fields”
* Benjamin Franklin
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As we muse on measurement, we might send carefully-observed birthday greetings to Sir Harold Spencer Jones; he was born on this date in 1890. An astronomer (indeed, for 23 years the tenth Astronomer Royal), he specialized in positional astronomy, particularly the motion and orientation of the Earth in space… a focus that helped him contribute to knowledge of the Earth’s rotation and improved timekeeping– efforts that led to Spencer Jones’ election (in 1947) as the first President of the Royal Institute of Navigation (which, In 1951, named its highest award, the Gold Medal, in his honor).
“If you want to understand today you have to search yesterday”*…
… and for your searching pleasure here are all of our yesterdays, in an animation scrolling by at 1.5 million years per second…
Earth is 4.5 billion years old – which is approximately the same amount of time it took us to create this video. We’ve scaled the complete timeline of our Earth’s life into our first animated movie!… Hop on a musical train ride and experience how long a billion years really is. It’s the perfect background for your next party, a great way to take a break from studying, or a fascinating companion while you’re on the go…
From German animation house Kurzgesagt (“in a nutshell”)…
Posters here.
* Pearl Buck
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As we trace our steps, we might recall that it was on this date in 1913 that Gulf Refining Company opened the first “drive-in filling station” in Pittsburgh. It was the first architect-designed station and the first to distribute free road maps; it also offered tube and tire installation, free water and air, and crankcase services.
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