A thing I learned today: The chlorine in your swimming pool traces its origin to the birth of our planet … and there’s a lot of it missing. Carl Zimmer reports on new research that has measured our Earth’s chlorine content in full. Early Earth was swimming in the stuff, a caustic atmosphere of sour death that would have made life as we know it impossible. But something happened to a great deal of that chlorine, and current levels don’t match the other planets in our neighborhood. It’s just … gone. Did impacts with meteorites vaporize enough of our oceans that that missing chlorine could escape? Whatever the reason, be thankful that it’s gone. If not, our oceans would be like the Dead Sea, they wouldn’t hold oxygen, and rain would be a rarity. And an afternoon at the pool would be quite different on that Earth, wouldn’t it?  Read the full story at New York Times.
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A thing I learned today: The chlorine in your swimming pool traces its origin to the birth of our planet … and there’s a lot of it missing.

Carl Zimmer reports on new research that has measured our Earth’s chlorine content in full. Early Earth was swimming in the stuff, a caustic atmosphere of sour death that would have made life as we know it impossible. But something happened to a great deal of that chlorine, and current levels don’t match the other planets in our neighborhood. It’s just … gone.

Did impacts with meteorites vaporize enough of our oceans that that missing chlorine could escape? Whatever the reason, be thankful that it’s gone. If not, our oceans would be like the Dead Sea, they wouldn’t hold oxygen, and rain would be a rarity.

And an afternoon at the pool would be quite different on that Earth, wouldn’t it? 

Read the full story at New York Times.

Source: The New York Times

via artandsciencejournal: Mineral Microscopy Stephanie Bateman-Graham does mineral microscopy, or as she prefers to call it “using a low-powered digital toy microscope to take pictures of beautiful minerals”. In these works Bateman-Graham discovers the parts of nature that are weirdly similar to recognizable art styles — from Van Gogh impressionism to the fractured lines of Picasso. I’ve included her descriptions of the three works above: Ecosystem (Moss Agate):  Do you see a mixed population of microbes living together in a complete ecosystem? Actually it’s a microscope view of the mineral Stringy Moss Agate from Lake Bonneville. The material is translucent which gives a watery feel to the image, but it is entirely solid crystal. Heart of Stony Glass (Opalite): Microscope view of the Australian mineral Rosella Opalite. The light bounces around this veined and fractured crystalline material to reveal a heart and vascular system inside the stone. The amazing brushstrokes and textures in this image are all natural. Fire Mountain (Lace Agate): A mountain burns in this microscope view of the mineral Laguna Lace Agate from Mexico. Also known as Crazy Lace Agate. To see more of Bateman-Graham’s works, click here.  - Lee Jones This art really rocks.  I love how both zooming out (see here) and zooming in on Earth can turn it into some of the finest abstract art we have. Neat huh?
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via artandsciencejournal: Mineral Microscopy Stephanie Bateman-Graham does mineral microscopy, or as she prefers to call it “using a low-powered digital toy microscope to take pictures of beautiful minerals”. In these works Bateman-Graham discovers the parts of nature that are weirdly similar to recognizable art styles — from Van Gogh impressionism to the fractured lines of Picasso. I’ve included her descriptions of the three works above: Ecosystem (Moss Agate):  Do you see a mixed population of microbes living together in a complete ecosystem? Actually it’s a microscope view of the mineral Stringy Moss Agate from Lake Bonneville. The material is translucent which gives a watery feel to the image, but it is entirely solid crystal. Heart of Stony Glass (Opalite): Microscope view of the Australian mineral Rosella Opalite. The light bounces around this veined and fractured crystalline material to reveal a heart and vascular system inside the stone. The amazing brushstrokes and textures in this image are all natural. Fire Mountain (Lace Agate): A mountain burns in this microscope view of the mineral Laguna Lace Agate from Mexico. Also known as Crazy Lace Agate. To see more of Bateman-Graham’s works, click here.  - Lee Jones This art really rocks.  I love how both zooming out (see here) and zooming in on Earth can turn it into some of the finest abstract art we have. Neat huh?
Zoom Info
via artandsciencejournal: Mineral Microscopy Stephanie Bateman-Graham does mineral microscopy, or as she prefers to call it “using a low-powered digital toy microscope to take pictures of beautiful minerals”. In these works Bateman-Graham discovers the parts of nature that are weirdly similar to recognizable art styles — from Van Gogh impressionism to the fractured lines of Picasso. I’ve included her descriptions of the three works above: Ecosystem (Moss Agate):  Do you see a mixed population of microbes living together in a complete ecosystem? Actually it’s a microscope view of the mineral Stringy Moss Agate from Lake Bonneville. The material is translucent which gives a watery feel to the image, but it is entirely solid crystal. Heart of Stony Glass (Opalite): Microscope view of the Australian mineral Rosella Opalite. The light bounces around this veined and fractured crystalline material to reveal a heart and vascular system inside the stone. The amazing brushstrokes and textures in this image are all natural. Fire Mountain (Lace Agate): A mountain burns in this microscope view of the mineral Laguna Lace Agate from Mexico. Also known as Crazy Lace Agate. To see more of Bateman-Graham’s works, click here.  - Lee Jones This art really rocks.  I love how both zooming out (see here) and zooming in on Earth can turn it into some of the finest abstract art we have. Neat huh?
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via artandsciencejournal:

Mineral Microscopy

Stephanie Bateman-Graham does mineral microscopy, or as she prefers to call it “using a low-powered digital toy microscope to take pictures of beautiful minerals”. In these works Bateman-Graham discovers the parts of nature that are weirdly similar to recognizable art styles — from Van Gogh impressionism to the fractured lines of Picasso. I’ve included her descriptions of the three works above:

Ecosystem (Moss Agate):  Do you see a mixed population of microbes living together in a complete ecosystem? Actually it’s a microscope view of the mineral Stringy Moss Agate from Lake Bonneville. The material is translucent which gives a watery feel to the image, but it is entirely solid crystal.

Heart of Stony Glass (Opalite): Microscope view of the Australian mineral Rosella Opalite. The light bounces around this veined and fractured crystalline material to reveal a heart and vascular system inside the stone. The amazing brushstrokes and textures in this image are all natural.

Fire Mountain (Lace Agate): A mountain burns in this microscope view of the mineral Laguna Lace Agate from Mexico. Also known as Crazy Lace Agate.

To see more of Bateman-Graham’s works, click here. 

- Lee Jones

This art really rocks. 

I love how both zooming out (see here) and zooming in on Earth can turn it into some of the finest abstract art we have. Neat huh?

Prehistoric Pit of Doom Fossil digs of places like caves usually hold about a 10:1 ratio of herbivores to carnivores. This is because they were often used as safe havens to store and eat kills. But this Spanish cave seems to have been a true pit of despair for prehistoric carnivores, with far more fossils of hunters than would normally be found. After falling in or walking down, the sabertooths, hyenas and others couldn’t escape, and their bones were buried by thousands of years worth of mudslides. No one knows exactly what drew them in, but one thing’s for sure: They never left. Read more at io9. Images from the original article in PLOS One.
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Prehistoric Pit of Doom Fossil digs of places like caves usually hold about a 10:1 ratio of herbivores to carnivores. This is because they were often used as safe havens to store and eat kills. But this Spanish cave seems to have been a true pit of despair for prehistoric carnivores, with far more fossils of hunters than would normally be found. After falling in or walking down, the sabertooths, hyenas and others couldn’t escape, and their bones were buried by thousands of years worth of mudslides. No one knows exactly what drew them in, but one thing’s for sure: They never left. Read more at io9. Images from the original article in PLOS One.
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Prehistoric Pit of Doom

Fossil digs of places like caves usually hold about a 10:1 ratio of herbivores to carnivores. This is because they were often used as safe havens to store and eat kills. But this Spanish cave seems to have been a true pit of despair for prehistoric carnivores, with far more fossils of hunters than would normally be found. After falling in or walking down, the sabertooths, hyenas and others couldn’t escape, and their bones were buried by thousands of years worth of mudslides.

No one knows exactly what drew them in, but one thing’s for sure: They never left.

Read more at io9. Images from the original article in PLOS One.

How Tall Can Mountains Be?

Another great question that you’ve probably never thought about answered by MinuteEarth.

If mountains were just solid rock on a good footing, then we could have mountains quite a bit taller than what we see on Earth.But because of pesky things like plate tectonics and erosion, we don’t get to have all the nice tall things.

Source: youtube.com

Zhangye Danxia - Geology From a Storybook Long ago, colorful sediments were deposited in western China, layer after layer, century after century. If you were there at the time, you would have seen unremarkable ground, a single hue of dirt no different from a thousand other places on Earth.  But after thousands and thousands of years subject to the forces of pressure and tectonic movement, the total of those layers has been pushed upward, letting us peek at a rainbow-hued slice of Earth’s past perhaps unmatched on this planet. The planet looks more like the cross-section of a jawbreaker candy than layers of rock in these photos, near Zhangye, China. The Zhangye formation, not to be confused with this danxia, a UNESCO heritage site, reminds us how our crust is heaved and hurled throughout the ages, a slow evolution that will continue into the distant future. It’s yet another story of Earth’s past, written in stone, but perhaps with the same pen as a fantasy storybook. Check out more photos from Flickr user Melinda ^..^, and take some time to tour the formation in Google Earth.
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Zhangye Danxia - Geology From a Storybook Long ago, colorful sediments were deposited in western China, layer after layer, century after century. If you were there at the time, you would have seen unremarkable ground, a single hue of dirt no different from a thousand other places on Earth.  But after thousands and thousands of years subject to the forces of pressure and tectonic movement, the total of those layers has been pushed upward, letting us peek at a rainbow-hued slice of Earth’s past perhaps unmatched on this planet. The planet looks more like the cross-section of a jawbreaker candy than layers of rock in these photos, near Zhangye, China. The Zhangye formation, not to be confused with this danxia, a UNESCO heritage site, reminds us how our crust is heaved and hurled throughout the ages, a slow evolution that will continue into the distant future. It’s yet another story of Earth’s past, written in stone, but perhaps with the same pen as a fantasy storybook. Check out more photos from Flickr user Melinda ^..^, and take some time to tour the formation in Google Earth.
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Zhangye Danxia - Geology From a Storybook Long ago, colorful sediments were deposited in western China, layer after layer, century after century. If you were there at the time, you would have seen unremarkable ground, a single hue of dirt no different from a thousand other places on Earth.  But after thousands and thousands of years subject to the forces of pressure and tectonic movement, the total of those layers has been pushed upward, letting us peek at a rainbow-hued slice of Earth’s past perhaps unmatched on this planet. The planet looks more like the cross-section of a jawbreaker candy than layers of rock in these photos, near Zhangye, China. The Zhangye formation, not to be confused with this danxia, a UNESCO heritage site, reminds us how our crust is heaved and hurled throughout the ages, a slow evolution that will continue into the distant future. It’s yet another story of Earth’s past, written in stone, but perhaps with the same pen as a fantasy storybook. Check out more photos from Flickr user Melinda ^..^, and take some time to tour the formation in Google Earth.
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Zhangye Danxia - Geology From a Storybook

Long ago, colorful sediments were deposited in western China, layer after layer, century after century. If you were there at the time, you would have seen unremarkable ground, a single hue of dirt no different from a thousand other places on Earth. 

But after thousands and thousands of years subject to the forces of pressure and tectonic movement, the total of those layers has been pushed upward, letting us peek at a rainbow-hued slice of Earth’s past perhaps unmatched on this planet. The planet looks more like the cross-section of a jawbreaker candy than layers of rock in these photos, near Zhangye, China.

The Zhangye formation, not to be confused with this danxia, a UNESCO heritage site, reminds us how our crust is heaved and hurled throughout the ages, a slow evolution that will continue into the distant future. It’s yet another story of Earth’s past, written in stone, but perhaps with the same pen as a fantasy storybook.

Check out more photos from Flickr user Melinda ^..^, and take some time to tour the formation in Google Earth.

Earth, Why You So Angry? Our planet apparently had to blow off a little steam earlier this year, captured in this volcanic lightning strike during an eruption of Sakurajima volcano in Japan. Lightning strikes Earth about 40 times every second, and scientists don’t know exactly how those strikes work. It’s clear, though, that just like in a thunderstorm, there’s extreme charge differences built up between the ash cloud and the Earth. It’s mysterious, violent and beautiful. (via APOD)
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Earth, Why You So Angry?

Our planet apparently had to blow off a little steam earlier this year, captured in this volcanic lightning strike during an eruption of Sakurajima volcano in Japan. Lightning strikes Earth about 40 times every second, and scientists don’t know exactly how those strikes work. It’s clear, though, that just like in a thunderstorm, there’s extreme charge differences built up between the ash cloud and the Earth.

It’s mysterious, violent and beautiful.

(via APOD)

Source: apod.nasa.gov

Panoramic Eruption Volcanic eruptions, while seemingly rare, are actually quite common. There’s around 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth and about 50 of those will erupt in a given year. But rarely will two erupt close to each other. Even rarer is three erupting in proximity. Four? That’s just nuts! But that’s what is currently happening on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, along the northwest edge of the Ring of Fire. This particular string of of eruptions around Tolbachik resulted in huge rivers of lava pouring from fissures in the Earth, but very little ash and debris released into the sky. This allowed an aerial panorama team to helicopter around the bubbling inferno without dying a fiery death. They put together this amazing interactive volcano panorama that lets you fly above the action from the comfort of your own home, which is much safer than trudging through Siberian ice in order to stand next to exploding magma. Enjoy that (I did), and then check out this photo tour of the year in volcanic activity from The Atlantic.
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Panoramic Eruption Volcanic eruptions, while seemingly rare, are actually quite common. There’s around 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth and about 50 of those will erupt in a given year. But rarely will two erupt close to each other. Even rarer is three erupting in proximity. Four? That’s just nuts! But that’s what is currently happening on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, along the northwest edge of the Ring of Fire. This particular string of of eruptions around Tolbachik resulted in huge rivers of lava pouring from fissures in the Earth, but very little ash and debris released into the sky. This allowed an aerial panorama team to helicopter around the bubbling inferno without dying a fiery death. They put together this amazing interactive volcano panorama that lets you fly above the action from the comfort of your own home, which is much safer than trudging through Siberian ice in order to stand next to exploding magma. Enjoy that (I did), and then check out this photo tour of the year in volcanic activity from The Atlantic.
Zoom Info

Panoramic Eruption

Volcanic eruptions, while seemingly rare, are actually quite common. There’s around 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth and about 50 of those will erupt in a given year. But rarely will two erupt close to each other. Even rarer is three erupting in proximity. Four? That’s just nuts!

But that’s what is currently happening on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, along the northwest edge of the Ring of Fire. This particular string of of eruptions around Tolbachik resulted in huge rivers of lava pouring from fissures in the Earth, but very little ash and debris released into the sky. This allowed an aerial panorama team to helicopter around the bubbling inferno without dying a fiery death.

They put together this amazing interactive volcano panorama that lets you fly above the action from the comfort of your own home, which is much safer than trudging through Siberian ice in order to stand next to exploding magma.

Enjoy that (I did), and then check out this photo tour of the year in volcanic activity from The Atlantic.

Map of the supercontinent Pangaea in the Triassic period, when “first appeared beasties of fur and feather”. The Tethys Ocean looks like it would have had nice beaches to lounge around on, hunting for nautilus shells, sipping Diño Coladas. (by Richard Morden on Redbubble, available as a poster there if you’d like one!)
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Map of the supercontinent Pangaea in the Triassic period, when “first appeared beasties of fur and feather”.

The Tethys Ocean looks like it would have had nice beaches to lounge around on, hunting for nautilus shells, sipping Diño Coladas.

(by Richard Morden on Redbubble, available as a poster there if you’d like one!)

Source: redbubble.com