Science Photos from 2009
2009's most incredible science photos, illustrations, and installations, published by National Geographic.
2009's most incredible science photos, illustrations, and installations, published by National Geographic.
I do love National Geographic. If you don't read it each month, you should! The January 2010 edition of National Geographic is loaded with articles that will transport you all over the world. You can learn about a sublime Scottish island, you can learn of the bionic limbs in cochlear implants, and you can learn how the clown fish is imperiled in the wake of the movie "Nemo." I'd like to report on two other articles today. The first one is about the island nation of Singapore, which achieved independence from the British in 1963. How did Singapore become modern-day Singapore, where the per capita income for its 3.7 million citizens is better than that of many Western countries? it's an exceedingly clean city where 90% of households own their own home. Its unemployment rate is only 3%. All of this was the plan long ago. Lee Kuan Yew, who has been officially or unofficially in charge of the country for more than 40 years. He was educated in London, and then came back home to make English the official language of Singapore--he also had a business plan and it paid off well. He is a hardliner in many ways, including cracking down on governmental corruption "until it disappeared." Now that sounds like a good idea. Consider, also, that anyone dropping even a cigarette butt or a candy wrapper in Singapore can be fined $200. If you are caught a second time, you will be sentenced to walk around picking up other people's trash. Now there's another good idea. Why do we tolerate people who dump their trash in public areas in America? Tthe Government of Singapore works very hard to make sure that its own citizens live outstanding moral lives. There is a new casino going up in Singapore, and the casino will roll out the red rug for foreign visitors (so that Singapore will make money off of them), but the casino charges a $70 fee to people from Singapore to discourage them from gambling. The National Geographic indicates that Singapore's population control program is "overly successful." Despite bonuses being offered by the government for having babies, the Singapore birth rate is at less than replacement value. It seems that they are too busy working. "Singapore's have less intercourse than almost any other country on earth" An influx of immigrants keep the population from shrinking, allowing the plant to continue: "giddy financial growth fueling never ending construction and consumerism." -- A separate article called "restless spirits" explores the beliefs many Chinese people have with regard to an afterlife. There is a lot of good information here. I found it interesting that among the valuables (such as a bottle of alcohol or a pack of cigarettes) some Chinese people have included "paper grave money for use in the afterlife, the bills bearing a watermark that said,'The Bank of Heaven Co., Ltd..'" I also learned that many Chinese believe that their their ancestors took on bureaucratic duties. They keep the dead busy in Chinese heaven! Back in the Shang dynasty (more than 1000 years ago), the Chinese sacrificed human victims to placate the ancestors. More than 1,200 sacrificial pits have been found, most of these containing human remains. Some of the inscriptions found in the graves indicate that the Chinese were asking their dead ancestors to make offerings of their own to even higher order powers. This article is full of interesting insights about Chinese police regarding the afterlife. I placed the NG links for the above articles. Beware, though, that the online versions of the articles are abridged versions of the print versions.
How do you photograph an entire redwood tree? It's not easy, but the result can be spectacular, especially when it's done by National Geographic's pros.
Where is the world's biggest active volcano? Under Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. I had no idea. National Geographic's August 2009 issue offers some staggering statistics and eye-popping graphics. The biggest eruption of Yellowstone (2.1 MYA) ejected enough material to bury the entire state of California under 20 feet of debris. And consider this:
The last three super-eruptions have been in Yellowstone itself. The most recent, 640,000 years ago, was a thousand times the size of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, which killed 57 people in Washington. But numbers do not capture the full scope of the mayhem. Scientists calculate that the pillar of ash from the Yellowstone explosion rose some 100,000 feet, leaving a layer of debris across the West all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Pyroclastic flows—dense, lethal fogs of ash, rocks, and gas, superheated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit—rolled across the landscape in towering gray clouds. The clouds filled entire valleys with hundreds of feet of material so hot and heavy that it welded itself like asphalt across the once verdant landscape. And this wasn't even Yellowstone's most violent moment. An eruption 2.1 million years ago was more than twice as strong, leaving a hole in the ground the size of Rhode Island.The big question for most of us is when and when this monster will once again explode. We're not sure:
The odds of a full, caldera-forming eruption—a cataclysm that could kill untold thousands of people and plunge the Earth into a volcanic winter—are anyone's guess; it could happen in our lifetimes, or 100,000 years or more from now, or perhaps never.
The September 2009 issue of National Geographic has a comprehensive series of articles on the state of solar power. Here's the online version of one of the articles. What is the potential of solar power?
"The total power needs of the humans on Earth is approximately 16 terawatts," he said. (A terawatt is a trillion watts.) "In the year 2020 it is expected to grow to 20 terawatts. The sunshine on the solid part of the Earth is 120,000 terawatts. From this perspective, energy from the sun is virtually unlimited."