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Posts Tagged ‘earth’

The True Size of Africa

26 Oct

Africa is the world’s second-largest continent (Asia is #1), but gauging the actual size of something that seems so far away can be difficult. Fortunately, Greg Ousuri has created this incredible visual aid to help put the mind-boggling size of the land mass into perspective.  It is fascinating to see that the U.S., all of Europe, China and Japan still don’t fill up the entire surface area of the continent. Personally, I was shocked to see that Madagascar is around the same size as the entire U.K.

It would be interesting to see a few different models that contain other countries, such as Russia, Canada and Mexico.

 
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How it feels to be crushed at the center of the Earth [Earth Science]

14 Oct
At the center of our planet, heat and pressure are so tremendous that even the structure of iron is transformed. Now, using lasers and diamonds, researchers have reproduced those conditions in the lab. And discovered something they'd always suspected. More »
 
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MESSENGER Looks Back at the Earth and Moon

19 Aug

Earth and Moon from 183 Million kilometers. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

A new image to add to the family photo album! The MESSENGER spacecraft is working its way to enter orbit around Mercury in March of 2011, and while wending its way, took this image of the Earth and Moon, visible in the lower left. When the image was taken in May 2010, MESSENGER was 183 million kilometers (114 million miles) away from Earth. For context, the average separation between the Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). It’s a thought provoking image (every one of us is in that image!), just like other Earth-Moon photos — Fraser put together a gallery of Earth-Moon images from other worlds, and this one will have to be added. But this image was taken not just for the aesthetics.
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Read the rest of MESSENGER Looks Back at the Earth and Moon (101 words)

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Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar

29 Jul
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

 
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