Earth’s landmasses were not always what they are today. Continents formed as Earth’s crustal plates shifted and collided over long periods of time. This video shows how today’s continents are thought to have evolved over the last 600 million years, and where they’ll end up in the next 100 million years.
A century after the great Antarctic explorers crossed that icy continent, many of their destinations remain inaccessible — at least on foot.
From your desktop, though, you can visit huts built by Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott, even plant a virtual flag on the Ceremonial South Pole.
It’s the next best thing to being there. Learn more here.
Cities across the globe have seen unprecedented growth in recent decades. While revisiting a city after a period of time can reveal some surprising changes, the true extent of the expansion of some urban centers can only be truly appreciated from above. Way above.
The Landsat satellite program is the longest continuous archive of images of Earth from space in existence. Run since 1972 this record of the surface of our planet reveals invaluable insight for scientists and the public alike. A record like this is particularly useful for studying change and understanding the human impact on the landscape.
For example the desert city of Las Vegas has gone through a massive growth spurt.
Learn more here.
Kinda cool:
A confluence is a place where two (or more) bodies of water meet. When two rivers meet and mix, especially rivers with water of different colors, the confluence is quite dramatic.
See pictures of the most interesting meetings of contrasting waters from around the world at Twisted Sifter. Shown here is the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers in China.
A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are (from largest in size to smallest): Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. But are there really seven ?!?!?!?
What if the entire world’s population lived in one giant mega city? That’s probably a really bad idea, but it’s an interesting thought to give us an idea of just how many people are out there. These illustrations show how big this city of the world would be based on the population density of different real cities. If everyone in the world lived in one giant city with the population density of New York, everyone could fit in a land mass the size of Texas.
More here.
The Victoria Falls is a waterfall situated in southern Africa between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The falls are, by some measures, the largest waterfall in the world. The falls are 108 meters high. Here they are on Google maps and this is a nice picture:
Interestingly there is a spot known as the “Devil’s Swimming Pool”. During the months of September and December, people can swim as close as possible to the edge of the falls without falling over. Crazy if you ask me but check it out:
The light beaming from above reveals a tower of calcite on the cave floor that is more than 200 feet tall, smothered by ferns, palms, and other jungle plants. Stalactites hang around the edges of the massive skylight like petrified icicles. Vines dangle hundreds of feet from the surface; swifts are diving and cutting in the brilliant column of sunshine. The tableau could have been created by an artist imagining how the world looked millions of years ago.
See more here.
The moon is thought to have formed about 4.5 billion years ago, from the debris of a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized body. Its pockmarked surface records a lifetime of impacts, the rate of which, researchers agree, has fallen over time.
The first complete topographic map of the moon and its craters has revealed details of billions of years of bombardment by asteroids, and the early history of our solar system. Among other things, the map confirms theories of an onslaught of massive asteroids around 3.9 billion years ago that likely evaporated any water present on Earth at the time.
The accurate map of the moon was also used to confirm that the oldest regions on the moon are the southern near side and the north-central far side. The moon was volcanic for about half of its history, until it cooled to the point where the volcanism shut down around 2 billion years ago. Read more here or here.
