the sun
esiegel | October 24, 2012"The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees" -They Might Be Giants
It's so ingrained in us that the Sun is a nuclear furnace powered by hydrogen atoms fusing into heavier elements that it's difficult to remember that, just 100 years ago, we didn't even know what the Sun was made out of!
Image credit: Landscape Photography by Barney Delaney.
The conventional wisdom at the time, believe it or not, was that the Sun was made out of pretty much the same elements that the Earth is! Although that…
milhayser | May 25, 2012
According to UN Water, "Each of us needs to drink 2 to 4 litres of water every day. But it takes 2000 to 5000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food." If that seems like a lot, it is. But it's funny how much depends on your perspective. A graphic from the USGS shows what it would look like if all the water on Earth were gathered into one drop. On A Few Things Ill-Considered, Coby Beck discusses the even smaller drop that represents all fresh water. Coby writes, "A full 74.5% of that much smaller ball is locked away in ice caps and glaciers and 24.7% is groundwater (much of that…
grrlscientist | April 22, 2008tags: The Sun, Mary Oliver, poetry, National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day, every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me).
The image was kindly provided by my friend, Dave Rintoul, who snapped that picture when we were visiting the Platte River in Nebraska, watching the migrating sandhill cranes.
Sunset over a slough on the Platte River, Nebraska.
Image: Dave Rintoul, March 2008 [larger view].
Today's poem was one I chose for Earth Day, especially for these ending lines;
or…