Science & nature

Excerpt from Philip Greenspun's blog
If one is not a professional ecologist and one has grown up in North America it is tough to appreciate at a gut level that humans are able to have any significant effect on the Earth. Our planet seems like an infinitely huge and forbidding wilderness punctuated by the occasional human settlement. According to Understanding Earth (a very interesting book but a new edition is coming out within a year or so), our planet's mass is 5.976x10^27 grams, i.e., much heavier even than the biggest S.U.V. Yet we humans have managed to speed up the Earth's rotation enough to shorten each day by 10 microseconds by impounding water behind dams in rich countries, which tend be at high latitudes. The dams pull water away from the the equator, where it was spinning with a high linear velocity. By conservation of angular momentum the Earth is forced to spin a little bit faster when the mass of water is pulled inwards, just as ice skaters spin faster when they pull their arms in.

Florida inventor believes he can suck the power out of hurricanes [verp]

The kilogram is getting lighter [jhi]

Earth and moon as viewed from Mars

Toward a molecular architecture of personality (paper abstract)

Sunset, as seen from space

RAND suggests killer asteroids should be kept secret

Magnetic North Pole moving from Canada to Siberia [/.]

Lost city found off Indian coast

Mt. Kilimanjaro is melting [rre]

The Smithsonian insect zoo is named "Orkin Hall"? [rre]

Nuclear blast mapper [jhi]

Java Powers of 10

Man outraces horse