Area

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

“

—	Carl Sagan (via thescienceofreality)

scientificillustration:

Ornithorhynchus anatinus - the platypus by BioDivLibrary on Flickr.

Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London..
London :Academic Press, [etc.],1833-1965..
biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37028049

jtotheizzoe:

explore-blog:

NASA’s Curiosity Rover lands safely on Mars. Here’s what it took and how it happened.

This was a moment to remember: Pure jubilation, a reminder of what it looks like to reach out and grab the future!

What was your reaction like?

muirgilsdream:

Bufo calamita.

jtotheizzoe:

Is this what people mean when they say “Many moons ago . . ?”

This is a really interesting thought experiment. And like most interesting thoughtsperiments (a word I just invented), we have to make a whole mess of rules right off the bat.

We’re going to limit ourselves to one new moon, for a grand total of two, count ‘em, two moons.

Did the new moon show up recently? Or was it there before life formed? We’ll look at both scenarios.

We’ll assume that the new moon is about the size of our current moon.

One thing to remember about our current moon is that it’s pretty big. Sure, not as big as Jupiter’s moons, but relative to Earth? Huge. It’s 1/81th of the Earth’s mass, which is a big ratio for a moon. This means that our moon exerts a ton of gravitational force on Earth, and vice versa.

If we had a second moon show up, things would change in a hurry. Our tides would go haywire and cause massive storms, volcanoes and earthquakes to pop up from the added forces put on the Earth’s crust . Unfortunately for most things alive on Earth at the time, this would mean chaos, death and possible extinction. That includes us, but maybe not the bacteria or cockroaches. The second moon would also cause chaos on our first moon, causing similar geologic changes, although not as severe since Moon #1 is a lot more dormant on the inside.

If the second moon happened to show up before life on Earth began, then it would be a different story. We’re nearly 100% certain that life as we know it started as pretty basic single-celled organisms. And since they, and all life, would have evolved on an Earth with two moons, everything would adapt to that environment instead of the Earth we know today. That means that fish would respond to different tides, if they became fish at all, nocturnal animals would have more moonlight to hunt by, and almost nothing could live within a few hundred feet of shore … unless they liked to swim in tides hundreds of feet high!!

I honestly can’t find it in my pea-brain to decipher if the time to orbit the Sun would be different (anyone know the answer?), but our days and months would change. Eventually, after thousands of millions of years, the pull of two moons would force the Earth to stop rotating due to the friction of gravity on the tides. Of course, this will happen with one moon, too. We just have to wait longer.

So if life on Earth evolved to survive with two moons, we’d do what we do in the two-moon world we were doing it in. If it showed up tomorrow? Well, nice to know ya.

By the way, there’s a whole book about this. You know, if you need more :)

EDIT: Check out Jim Brown’s additional tidbits in the comment section below this post. Thanks for the extra info!

cavetocanvas:

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, 1761

jtotheizzoe:

infinity-imagined:

A phytoplankton bloom of coccolithophores in the Black Sea.

The Black Sea … not so black, eh?

Those coccolithophores are a key bart of regulating Earth’s climate. Like many phytoplankton, they absorb carbon dioxide from the air via the water. Only, unlike a plant, they don’t use all that carbon dioxide to make sugars. Then these little guys turn it into limestone, in intricate little “microshell” shapes, and deposit it on the bottom of the ocean or sea when they die.

Like microscopic seashells, this calcium carbonate builds up over eons and becomes what we call chalk! Prehistoric deposits of coccolithophores actually created the Cliffs of Dover, and likely line most of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Robert Krulwich from Radiolab had a wonderful post about that recently.

Here’s what their skeletons look like (via Wikipedia):

jtotheizzoe:

abluegirl:

Living Color: Toxic nudibranchs—soft, seagoing slugs—produce a brilliant defense.

They’re like Pokémon, but super-deadly.

I mean, if you didn’t know these were real, you’d be all “Yeah right!” Endless forms, most beautiful … indeed :)

fuckyeahdinoart:

Bonitasaura by ~Gonzalezaurus

lindahall:

A selection of engravings from Animalium quadrupedum by 17th century engraver Adriaen Collaert from Antwerp.