Discovery News: Earth Impacts News

The Long Solstice Twilight

The 2008 summer solstice has come and gone and I felt lucky to spend it in Ireland. There, as in other high latitude places, the summer nights are incredibly short or even non-existent. It reminded me of a debate my brother once had with his wife's brother about the related matter of the length of twilights.

My brother, who lives on the island of Maui, thought the twilights were shorter there than in Southern California. His brother-in-law argued that this was not possible. I believe my bother is correct in this case. It's really a matter of how the Sun appears to approach the horizon at different latitudes. Closer to the equator (like on Maui), the Sun makes a very high arc in the sky and so its path hits the horizon at close to perpendicular. That means the evening twilight is very brief. At higher latitudes the Sun makes a low arc and approaches the horizon at a much lower angle. That means it glides along the horizon longer, taking much longer to set. Therefore the twilights (both evening and morning) are much longer.

The extreme example of this is summer solstice when at some very high latitudes the Sun appears to hover around the horizon and never sets. That's something I've never seen myself, but the brief Irish night and the never ceasing glow around the northern horizon were nice hints of it.

Second Life Not Second Earth

Like almost 14 million other people, I'm an occasional inhabitant of the virtual world called Second Life. My Discovery News colleague Rossella Lorenzi shares my interest in this strange new platform and she has recently opened a new spot in Second Life (SL, for short) called Archeaorama, which highlights some of her recent work.

Although I hope to emulate Rossella, I have to admit some uneasiness with SL. It comes from being trained in geology. You see, SL, is a world without any geology or any other sort of natural history. Yes, there are volcanoes and even glaciers in SL (that's my "avatar" Li Ruml in the picture, hovering a SL volcano). But these are all just slapped on the surface, without any geological history or real relevance. They are kind of absurd, really, in a world without sediments, weather, minerals or even a spherical planet. But there are many such absurdities in SL. Like helicopter rides, roads and sex, for instance. In a world where everyone can fly like Peter Pan and nobody has any neurons, who needs digital asphalt, animated choppers and virtual sex orgies? These all seem like quaint relicts of a physical world. This all begs the question: What, then, is the natural history of SL? Beats me. Just some strange derivative of modern human psychology perhaps? Whatever it is, I get the sense it's still evolving before our eyes. 

One More Earth Circle

This one is one of my favorites Earth circles. I've even spotted it out the window of aircraft. Can you guess what & where it is? (The answer will appear soon in Comments section).
By the way, there is a reason I've been obsessing lately about circular features on Earth. I was recently discussing them with a researcher Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona. He mentioned that he gets a lot of crazy emails from folks who search satellite imagery now available online. They are looking for circles to call their own. Craters, mostly, to explain this, that or the other pet theory or to name after themselves or their beloved departed parakeet.

Most, like the Richat Structure shown in a posting last week, are not necessarily craters at all. It turns out, instead, that  Earth has a variety of ways of drawing circles on herself. Some ways are mundane, like erosion. Others are more violent, like caldera eruptions. All of them seem to tickle the fancy of geometrically inclined brains like those of humans.

Flower Power Kid

Just a quick upload of my son Elijah next to a desert daisy near I-40 south of Joshua Tree Nat'l Park. This is a cell phone picture and a cellphone posting. Old dogs CAN learn new tricks.

Hating Earth

I've run across a strange personality disorder over the years that I can only describe as Earth Hatred. It sounds like this: "The first rocket to Mars or anywhere else -- I'm on it! Get me outta this place!"

I first heard this from a member of the Mars Society when I was covering one of their meetings a few years ago, and have encountered it many times since. While this attitude may not represent the Mars Society, I believe it does represent the attitude of many people who somehow have gotten it into their heads -- perhaps via mega-doses of science fiction -- that our "destiny" is to escape this planet and populate the cosmos. And while I savor good sci fi as much as the next guy (much to my wife's chagrin), I just can't swallow this "destiny" bullpucky. It's even more ridiculous when spouted by folks who claim to be very science and reason-oriented, since it amounts to a religious belief and has no place in science and is not particularly reasonable, IMO.

But what do I know? You see, I have the opposite disorder: Earth Adoration. I just love this planet. Sure, like any geologist, I'd enjoy a field trip to the Moon and Mars. But I actually think it's perfectly possible for humanity to live here for a very long time without destroying the place or escaping into space.  We just have to get down to business and take care of it. Now there's a great and honorable challenge for you. Any takers?
Image courtesy of NASA

Earth: Anytime, Anywhere

An old buddy of mine used to pull this prank when he was a kid. He’d call the local pizza place that advertised they’d deliver “anytime, anywhere.” After confirming that they stood behind their ad, he’d order a pepperoni with olives for the late Jurassic on the west coast of Gondwana. As phone pranks go, it was a bit more Lisa Simpson than Bart: Nerdy in a rock-hammer, hiking boot, geological sort of way. Well, I’m pleased to say that the prank stops here. I can actually deliver where pizzerias cannot (WOOHOO!). That’s right, on this blog we’ll be wandering the Earth from at least five billion years ago through several billion years in the future; from her still mysterious core to the outer reaches of her magnetosphere. And there couldn’t be a better time. In the past few years the importance of Earth sciences has really come home to folks, at least those who are paying attention (the rest, alas, believe Earth is just 6,000-years-old and that Alley Oop is historical fiction). It wasn’t just a fluke, after all, that a bunch of Earth scientists and Al Gore just won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Earth is hot -- pun intended.