14 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 The Zodiacal Light

The zodiacal light is caused by sunlight reflecting from meteoric dust that orbits the sun in the plane of the solar system, remnants of the vast nebula of dust and gas out of which the solar system was born more than four billion years ago. Like the planets, this diffuse stream of particles reflects light, although faintly and rarely seen. Moonless nights of winter are the best time to see the zodiacal light. and nowhere better than here, on the Tropic of Cancer, where the plane of the solar...
Folksonomies: wonder astronomy
Folksonomies: wonder astronomy
  1  notes

Chet Raymo describes seeing the light of our planetary disk of our solar system intersecting the light of the milky way galaxy.

28 FEB 2011 by ideonexus

 Evolution by Langdon Smith

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish   In the Paleozoic time, And side by side on the ebbing tide   We sprawled through the ooze and slime, Or skittered with many a caudal flip   Through the depths of the Cambrian fen, My heart was rife with the joy of life,   For I loved you even then. Mindless we lived and mindless we loved   And mindless at last we died; And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift   We slumbered side by side. The world turned on in the lathe of time,   The...
Folksonomies: evolution poetry
Folksonomies: evolution poetry
  1  notes

A wonderful, inspiring poem about a love that lasts across a multitude of lifetimes and species as they evolve over time.