atlas(t)

geography seasons

a little boring, but useful.

types of mutation

i'm trying to discover the history of the discovery of mutation for my novel.

In the novel, which takes place at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century, the characters are on Mars without adequate protection from radiation, so they're all dying of radiation sickness and don't know it. (It's complicated.)

When did people start understanding genetic mutation?

In the course of researchy googling, I came across this diagram to the left. I have no idea what it means, but it looks cool.

I wonder, do we have a mechanistic view of the universe because our science makes it seem that way, or do we have a mechanistic view of the universe because our most obvious metaphors for physical processes are machines, and then we draw diagrams that make stuff look like machines?

I don't believe that chromosomes look like this, no matter what you say. LA LA LA LA I'm not listening!

distribution of space debris

via the fabulous/ist io9, this animation from the European Space Agency of the distribution of space debris in orbit around the Earfs between 1957 and 2000.

At closing speeds reaching 50 thousand km per hour, even the smallest bits of space debris can cause serious harm to spacecraft; larger ones cause catastrophe. Near-Earth missions, like the International Space Station, now carry ever-more sophisticated shielding. Not only is space debris a hot topic, it is also a fascinating — and growing — field of space science.

The animation shows the little dots of light representing satellite grabbage increasing and swarming around the Earth like flies. It's creepy.

Just 'cause you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

dark matter 3-D map

the above video is about a 3-D map created last year by an international team of scientists who, using photos taken by the Hubble thingy thing, mapped the dark matter we can see (or rather, not see) in a small square of space, by looking at the way the starlight bends around it.

Yeah, I never really understood how we could tell that the starlight bends. But the map is purty and cool.

schiaparelli and mars maps

annalee newitz recently contributed an awesome post to io9 comparing 19th century maps of Mars to current science, which she got from an even awesomer (if possible) post on BibliOdyssey. Annalee compares the historical maps to more recent satellite photos from the 1990's. Peacay of BibliOdyssey show a buncha Schiaparelli maps, and a Percival Lowell map, and talks about the (to me, now) well-known history of the canals and the Martians.

What impresses me about this Schiaparelli map (Schiaparelli was the eye-talian who called the structures above depicted "canali," which simply means "channels" in Italian but was misunderstood as "canals" in English, thereby setting off the intelligent-life-on-Mars craze) is how wacko-Max-Ernst-modernist-sci-fi-y they look. Is this the source of a particular aesthetic? Or as Peacay put it:

Schiaparelli's (in)famous 'canali' turned out to be a kind of optical illusion caused by interactions between light, dust clouds that form in the martian atmosphere, the orbital location and background interference from the planet's surface itself. If a sketch is made of something that wasn't really there but you believed it to be there at the time, can you call the result abstract art I wonder? I guess so.

maglev train

Via Scott Westerfeld I came upon this video about a Japanese maglev train in testing phase. This is one of those emerging transportation technologies that gets my undies into a bunch. Nothing more to say here.

we paved paradise

i'm poking my head back in here for a moment (I'm still mostly over at atlas(t): The Galleon Trade Edition) to point out a terrific article in Salon by Katherine Mieskowski about the environmental effects of parking. It's called "We Paved Paradise."

In Tippecanoe County, Ind., there are 250,000 more parking spaces than registered cars and trucks. That means that if every driver left home at the same time and parked at the local mini-marts, grocery stores, churches and schools, there would still be a quarter of a million empty spaces.

... "Parking appears free because its cost is widely dispersed in slightly higher prices for everything else," explains Shoup. "Because we buy and use cars without thinking about the cost of parking, we congest traffic, waste fuel, and pollute the air more than we would if we each paid for our own parking. Everyone parks free at everyone else's expense, and we all enjoy our free parking, but our cars are choking our cities.

... The environmental impacts of all this parking go way beyond paving paradise. The impervious surfaces of parking lots accumulate pollutants ... from all kinds of diffuse sources, such as industry smokestacks, automobiles and even home gas water heaters.

"If they were naturally settling on a tree or grass, they would wash off those and into the soil, and the soil would hold them in place, so they wouldn't get into the local stream, lake or river," ... But when the same substances settle on parking lots, rain washes them into streams, lakes and rivers. Engel calculates that the Tippecanoe land used for parking creates 1,000 times the heavy-metal runoff that it would if used for agriculture. Because the surface of the lots doesn't absorb water, it also creates 25 times the water runoff that agricultural land would, which can increase erosion in local waterways.

Parking lots also contribute to the "urban heat island effect." The steel, concrete and blacktops of buildings, roads and parking lots absorb solar heat during the day, making urban areas typically 2 to 5 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. ... The urban heat island effect can be so dramatic that it changes the weather. One Indianapolis study found that thunderstorms that reach the city often split in two, going around it, and merging again into one storm after the urban area. "The urban heat island is not simply a temperature issue. It could affect our water availability," says Niyogi.

Check it out.

taxonomy song

wow. Taxonomy sorts out all life on Earth, in the present day, in the future, and all through the past. ... Classes will take us up one further rung. Mammals for example, all suckle their young ... except when they use formula ...

It's a great idea, but maybe a songwriter should have written it.

steven johnson on the ghost map

a book I really need to read:

"... and he evenutally created this map, which is where the title of the book comes from, that showed, in a sense, all the deaths in this neighborhood radiating out from this single point on the map ... and so at this moment of great terror and death and destruction, a new clarity emerges ..."

what we are

point:

counterpoint: