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Some Cool Facts About Water

April 10, 2008 | No comments

In geology class, we just recently covered streams, in which the prof. included some interesting information about the “global hydrologic budget”. While I’ve long been acquainted with the “about 70% of the Earth is covered in water” bit, some of this really surprised me:

  • Oceans and salt lakes account for 97.41% of the Earth’s water.
  • Ice and snow takes up another 1.984%.
  • Groundwater is the small guy at the party, at a mere 0.592%.

So where do lakes and rivers, along with the atmospheric water, rank? Not very high, that’s for sure. Lakes and rivers account for 0.0071% of the water in the Earth’s system; atmospheric water only accounts for 0.001%.

To put things into a little perspective, the prof. presented us with an analogy. Say you take all of the water in the Earth’s system, and shrink it down to 26 gallons. Freshwater – all of the fresh water – would add up to about 0.7 gallons, 2.59% of the 26 gallons. However, readily available freshwater would come in at a miniscule half teaspoon, or 0.003%.

That is still, however, a lot of water. The total amount of water floating around (awful pun!) on Earth totals 1,357,870,000 cubic kilometers. Try wrapping your head around that…

And now, I’m dying for a glass of water. Off to the tap!

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Interstellar drive in 2008? Afraid not.

July 2, 2007 | 6 comments

I started reading The Mote in God’s Eye today, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The actual plot of the book starts off in the year 3016AD, so there’s a Chronology in the front of the book, outlining some of the major points between 1969 and the opening of the book. The first three entries, specifically the third, made me smile:

1969 – Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s Moon.

1990 – Series of treaties between United States and Soviet Union creates the CoDiminium.

2008 – First successful interstellar drive tested. Alderson Drive perfected.

First interstellar drive in 2008? Afraid not, Larry and Jerry. :( We don’t even have hovercraft yet!

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Is space colonization really feasible?

June 17, 2007 | 4 comments

Being a fan of science fiction, I’ve always thought the idea of space colonization – sending off colony ships to inhabit new worlds – was a pretty neat idea. How many science fiction books have I read where the human race has expanded throughout the universe? What’s my favorite television show, Battlestar Galactica, focused on?

I’d honestly never really thought abht the feasibility of space colonization, though. I always assumed that while we’re not close to doing it yet, we’d eventually get to the point where we were capable of doing it. However, this fine essay by Charles Stross, a science fiction writer, has dashed my hopes terribly.

His main point is this: There are quite a few reasons space colonization is a bad idea. For one, we just don’t have the technology to do it. If we had absolutely amazing technology, on par with essentially a magic wand (as Charlie puts it), it would still take us decades to reach the nearest habitable planet. Assuming our kickass technology could then set up shop for us, after we’d poured vast amounts of money and energy into the project, what would we gain from it here on Earth? Not a whole hell of a lot. In fact, the new settlement wouldn’t affect us at all, other than having successfully been a huge money and time sink (not to mention a really long, boring ride through space for one astronaut).

He likened the idea of space colonization to that of colonizing the Arctic, or perhaps the Gobi Desert. Both the Arctic and the Gobi Desert are infinitely closer to us than any habitable planet, and yet we haven’t colonized in either place. Why? Because there’s no point. If we want resources from such areas, we send out a work crew who does their work for a long shift, then go home on leave. We don’t drag our family out onto the northern seas just because there’s an oil patch.

Reading Charlie’s essay was a real eye opener for me, particularly in regards to the sheer distances involved in space colonization (if we were to ever pull it off). If you’re interested in science fiction, science, astronomy – hell, even if you’re not – go read it. It’s worth your time.

It’s a pity we’ve not found a working Stargate. That’d turn his argument upside down. ;)

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Ostriches, squirrels, and crocodiles, oh my!

June 16, 2007 | No comments

While reading my feeds this morning, I ended up coming across 3 different animal-related stories that I thought were worth sharing.

First, I want you to imagine an ostrich. Got it? Alright, now, imagine that it is roughly 16 feet tall, and weighs 1.5 tons. To help you visualize, here’s what you should be aiming for, size-wise:

skeleton2.jpg

That’s the size attributed to the newly found Gigantoraptor erlianensis, which was discovered in a desert in northern China. The new find probably represents the largest feathered animal that’s ever lived. It’s a creature I would not want to run into. Ostriches are supposed to be mean bastards; I don’t want to meet a 16 foot tall one. Here’s the news article about it from National Geographic.

Next up, we have a news story that sounds so strange that you might be tempted to think it fiction. Apparently a squirrel went a bit crazy in the German town of Passau:

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

“After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man’s garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh,” the spokesman said. “Then he killed it with his crutch.”

Heh. It bit a woman, then attacked a construction worker, and then finally assaulted a man before being killed by a crutch. That’s one badass squirrel.

The last animal-related story that caught my attention was about a chap (Dr. Brady Barr) dressing up in a crocodile suit so he could get up close and personal with the beasties. Under the suit, he was inside a cage covered in Kevlar armor:

crocman.jpg

He’s a braver man than me, that’s for sure. I wonder if he would’ve tried a trick like that with the 16 foot tall ostrich dinosaur.

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Access to space: Catastrophic Failure

November 10, 2006 | 7 comments

I just started looking for different space mission types, to try and come up with a title for something new I’m going to be doing here*. The first thing I googled was simply “space mission types”. The top result was this page, from NASA. When I clicked on it, this is what I got:

Catastrophic failure

Click for the full size screenshot. I don’t know why – I certainly wouldn’t find a failed space mission funny – but “access to space: catastrophic failure” struck me as hilarious.

* The new feature that I’m thinking of is similar to the Eager Beaver at Jay’s Headspace and the Sunday Roast at Bright Meadow. They’re basically weekly (usually, anyway) posts with links to interesting stuff around the web, along with commentary for the links. I was kind of doing this with the del.icio.us link posts, but I stopped for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t like having link posts appear every single day (and they usually did, if I had the time to browse the web), and two, I didn’t like the irritating 255 character limit on the description area of links. The 255 character limit is okay when I’m just describing a link for my personal use, but it can be frustrating when I’m wanting to babble on and on about the link. Not to imply that I’m, ahem, verbose or anything.

Now all I need to do is come up with a spiffy science / science fiction-y title for the “feature” (as is quite often on my blog, I’m using the term loosely ;) ). Suggestions are welcome if you’d like to drop one (or many) in the comment bucket.

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