09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Center of the Earth
Of all regions of the earth none invites speculation more than that which lies beneath our feet, and in none is speculation more dangerous; yet, apart from speculation, it is little that we can say regarding the constitution of the interior of the earth. We know, with sufficient accuracy for most purposes, its size and shape: we know that its mean density is about 5½ times that of water, that the density must increase towards the centre, and that the temperature must be high, but beyond thes... 1 
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notesInvites speculation and is the realm of mathematics, not observation.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Stability of the Earth
Thus the system of the world only oscillates around a mean state from which it never departs except by a very small quantity. By virtue of its constitution and the law of gravity, it enjoys a stability that can be destroyed only by foreign causes, and we are certain that their action is undetectable from the time of the most ancient observations until our own day. This stability in the system of the world, which assures its duration, is one of the most notable among all phenomena, in that it ... 1 notes
notesIts sphere is regular, its orbit stable, it is a perfect place for sheltering nature in the Universe.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
How Ballooning Changed Our Perspective of the Earth
Ballooning produced a new, and wholly unexpected, vision of the earth. It had been imagined that it would reveal the secrets of the heavens above, but in fact it showed the secrets of the world beneath. The early aeronauts suddenly saw the earth as a giant organism, mysteriously patterned and unfolding, like a living creature. For the first time the impact of man on nature was clearly revealed: the ever-expanding relationship of towns to countryside, roads to rivers, cultivated fields to fore... 1 notes
notesThe same way the "Earthrise" photo changed our perspective, ballooning revealed the Earth to be a dynamic, interconnected organism.
11 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Atoms Within Our Bodies Still Release the Energy of an An...
Explosions are seldom one hundred per cent efficient. When a star ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and plutonium together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, is distributed around and scattered in space just as is the dust cloud from a hydrogen bomb test. Perhaps the strangest fact of all about our planet is that it consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb. Even today, aeons later, there is still enou...
1 High amounts of uranium in the Earth's core suggest our sun was in the vicinity of a supernova event, and the atoms within our bodies, if measured with a Geiger counter, can be found to still be releasing the energy from that event.
11 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Life as "Improbable Distribution of Molecules"
At the end of the last century Boltzman made an elegant redefinition of entropy as a measure of the probability of a molecular distribution. It may seem at first obscure, but it leads directly to what we seek. It implies that the probably life or one of its products, and if we find such a distribution to be global in extent then perhaps we are seeing something of Gaia, the largest living creature on Earth.
But what, you may ask, is an improbable distribution of molecules? There are many poss... 1 notes
notesOur search for life means looking for distributions of molecules that are unlikely, be they atmospheric proportions or solid constructions.
