theweekmagazine:

Has mankind outgrown Earth?

A new report from the World Wildlife Fund says we’re gobbling up the planet’s resources at such an alarming rate that by 2030, even a second Earth wouldn’t be enough to sustain us

Which resources are we depleting?
Renewables like fish, water, timber, and food are being used up much faster than previously thought. According to experts, mankind’s “ecological footprint” is now over 50 percent higher than it was in 2008, meaning it takes 1.5 years for Earth to regenerate the natural resources we use up annually. 

Why is our ecological footprint growing?
The world’s population, which according to the U.N. surpassed 7 billion last October, is getting too big, and the average individual is using more than he or she needs. “The excessive demands that we are putting on the planet will inevitably lead to acute water shortages, a chronic food crisis, and rising prices for energy, metals, and minerals,” says Robert Walker at the Huffington Post.

Keep reading

expose-the-light:

Happy Equinox

Hundreds of pictures of Earth, each taken at about 6AM , showing the terminator - the day/night line - over the course of one year (2010sep-2011sep).
Taken by METEOSAT-9 Earth-observing satellite.
Watch the Video here
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

formmm:

How many satellites orbiting Earth, by Michael Paukner

ikenbot:

Asteroids Battered Young Earth Longer Than Thought

A giant ancient barrage of asteroids striking Earth may have lasted much longer than previously thought, with some collisions perhaps even rivaling those that created the largest craters on the moon, researchers say.

Scientists think untold numbers of asteroids and comets pummeled Earth, the moon and the inner planets during an era known as the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. Investigators continue to debate the precise nature of this epoch in terms of what happened and how long it lasted.

To learn more about the Late Heavy Bombardment, scientists would like to analyze the most obvious evidence cosmic impacts leave behind, their craters. However, while such craters are preserved well in the vacuum of the moon environment, they disappear quickly on Earth due to erosion and tectonic activity.

Instead, researchers analyzed other evidence of asteroid impacts — millimeter- to centimeter-thick layers of rock droplets known as spherules.

quantumaniac:

Earth Will One Day See a Second Sun

Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star located in the Orion constellation, about 640 light-years away from Earth - is preparing to explode via a supernova. When it does, the Earth will have a front-row seat; in fact, the explosion will be so bright that Earth will seem to briefly have two suns in the sky. 

Betelgeuse is one of the brightest and largest stars in our immediate galactic neighborhood - if you dropped it in our Solar System, it would extend all the way out to Jupiter, leaving Earth completely engulfed. In stellar terms, it’s predicted to explode in the very near future. Of course, the conversion from stellar to human terms is pretty extreme, as Betelgeuse is predicted to explode anytime in the next million years.

But still, whether the explosion occurs in 2011 or 1002011 (give or take 640 years for the light to reach Earth), it’s going to make for one of the most unforgettable light shows in our planet’s history. For a few weeks, the supernova will be so bright that there will appear to be two stars in the sky, and night will be indistinguishable from day for much of that time. So don’t count on getting a lot of sleep when Betelgeuse explodes, because the only sensible thing for the world to do will be to throw a weeks-long global supernova party.

Physicist Brad Carter explains what Earth (and hopefully humanity) can look forward to:

“This is the final hurrah for the star. It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up - we’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

Although there’ll be no missing the explosion, Carter points out that the vast majority of material shot out from the supernova will pass by Earth completely unnoticed:

“When a star goes bang, the first we will observe of it is a rain of tiny particles called neutrinos. They will flood through the Earth and bizarrely enough, even though the supernova we see visually will light up the night sky, 99 per cent of the energy in the supernova is released in these particles that will come through our bodies and through the Earth with absolutely no harm whatsoever.”

In any event, the Betelgeuse explosion will likely be the most dramatic supernova Earth ever witnesses - well, unless our Sun eventually explodes and destroys our planet, which would probably leave Betelgeuse the runner-up.