30 Incredible Abstract Satellite Images of Earth "From 400 miles away, the earth transforms into abstract art. The global landscape is impressionist, cubist and pointillist." Nice NASA images from 2000, downloadable as wallpaper.
posted on Jul 9, 2008 - View this thread

Yale Environment 360 is an online environment magazine from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. It has a lot of great material, like "Biodiversity in the Balance" by Carl Zimmer and "Carbon’s Burden on the World’s Oceans" by Carl Safina and Marah J. Hardt. [Via Zimmer's blog The Loom]
posted on Jun 18, 2008 - View this thread

Gary Snyder, sublime and seminal poet of ecological awareness and activism [YouTube link], Zen appreciation of "ordinary mind" and American speech, shamanistic intimacy with the natural world, and surviving member of the Beat Generation (West Coast posse) at age 78, has won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly poetry prize. "Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself," said Poetry magazine editor Christian Wiman. "His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation.” Previous recipients of the Lilly prize include Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, and W.S. Merwin. [Previously mentioned here.]
posted on May 7, 2008 - View this thread

Cities at Night, an Orbital Tour Around the World was made when astronauts added stabilizers to the cameras on the orbital space station, allowing them to get sharp, crisp nighttime images.
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

potentially habitable planets and vindication for Pluto?
posted on Feb 18, 2008 - View this thread

The most widely-distributed photograph in history may be The Blue Marble, a shot taken in 1972 by an unknown crewmember on Apollo 17. In 2002, NASA released a new Blue Marble photograph, familiar to desktops everywhere, using a composite of many photographs. In 2005, Blue Marble: The Next Generation offered even better views and some spectacular animations of the seasons from space. In the same spirit, the Discovery Channel just launched Earth Live, which lets you see the dynamics of weather and climate through a well done interface.
posted on Feb 11, 2008 - View this thread

The space shuttle does a back flip while the earth races by underneath.
posted on Feb 10, 2008 - View this thread

Who Speaks for Earth? "After decades of searching, scientists have found no trace of extraterrestrial intelligence. Now, some of them hope to make contact by broadcasting messages to the stars. Are we prepared for an answer?"
posted on Jan 1, 2008 - View this thread

The Meaning of Life. "We create life, we search for it, we manipulate and revere it. Is it possible that we haven't yet defined the term (PDF)?" [Via The Loom.]
posted on Sep 6, 2007 - View this thread

We've seen that one picture of earth at night. And we all know what Google Earth is. But someone has put the two together. Be sure to check out the map overlays, including the dusk map.
posted on Aug 30, 2007 - View this thread

Not content to merely index all things terrestrial, Google Earth now lets you set your sights on the sky.
posted on Aug 22, 2007 - View this thread

Because everyone loves a good superlative, the Google Earth Community's "Huge and Unique" page lists the world's tallest, deepest, longest, widest & general all-around most of everything there is. With pictures! Found via.
posted on Aug 10, 2007 - View this thread

A Pale Blue Dot - An Unauthorized view. Some time before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan recorded a partial audio version of his 1994 book "Pale Blue Dot". Often described as the "sequel" to Cosmos, the audio version of Pale Blue Dot is, at this moment, regrettably out of print. This video is "episode one" of an unauthorized attempt at producing a series of videos based on Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" audio book combined with a soundtrack and appropriate video and still images intended to recall the feel of the classic documentary series "Ascent of Man" and "Cosmos"
posted on Jul 9, 2007 - View this thread

Earthlings (1 hr 35 min Google video) is "a feature length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete disrespect for these so-called 'non-human providers.'" Also in three parts on YouTube.
posted on Jun 24, 2007 - View this thread

An Earth Without People. An interesting (and I am sure it will be debatable) article in the current issue of Scientific American. Personally, I have always liked Douglas Coupland's version too
posted on Jun 20, 2007 - View this thread

A slideshow & timeline of life on earth - A timeline of human migration.
posted on Jun 4, 2007 - View this thread

Earth Guide: An interactive exploration of our planet. Also in Japanese. [via]
posted on May 17, 2007 - View this thread

Have you played with Google Earth recently? You can track flights live and in 3-D, or watch an animation of global cloud cover over the last 10 days, or simply make Google Earth prettier using NASA images. Google Earth isn't limited to the current, you can also enable historical maps from the 1700s, and view an animation that will show you what will happen in the future to New York and San Francisco if the sea levels rise. Google Earth can also shed light on previous MeFi discussions, from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (and, indeed many other ship wrecks) to the discussion over America's top 150 buildings, now in all of their 3-D glory.
posted on May 10, 2007 - View this thread

Knowing that Sputnick went up in 1957, when would you guess the first photo from space was taken? If your answer is "more than 10 years earlier", you'd be right. (Previously 1 and 2)
posted on May 4, 2007 - View this thread

The Children of Húrin is the first complete book by J.R.R. Tolkien in three decades, co-written by his son Christopher. His grandson Adam Tolkein explains how it came about. The Washington Post gives a great review.
posted on Apr 20, 2007 - View this thread

A Moment on Earth: hundreds of pictures of different places on earth, all taken at exactly the same time (Flash Based). On August 5th, 2004 at 12:00 Noon GMT, 60 filmmakers in over 40 countries and on all 7 continents captured a single "moment" on earth. The results were used to build a composite image of Iraq and the Pacific Ocean. By hovering over the composite image, the individual frames of the mosiac can be viewed along with details about the individual pictures.
posted on Apr 18, 2007 - View this thread

How to blow up the Earth (with a coffee can), and why we should, along with some discussion of how it is done in fiction. Blowing up the moon (and how the US nearly did in 1958, with the help of Carl Sagan), and lots of reasons why, including one in song [YouTube]. How to blow up a star. How we might accidentally blow up the universe in November. [prev. discussion of Earth destruction]
posted on Feb 22, 2007 - View this thread

When I grow up I want to be an environmental engineer. I want to work on projects that can provide potable water for people. I want to clean the polluted Mother Ganga [Ganges] who provides life giving water from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. Or the Nile, both blue and white, spilling fertility from her bunds on a regular cycle. I want to design products that use the least amount of energy and fuel, from recycled materials and are biodegradable. I want to seek alternative sources of energy, such as using biofuel to power cellphones. I want to design with maximum constraints. Call her mother earth, gaia, demeter, ceres or inanna, our planet is on the brink of no return. Or is it all just a matter of perspective?
posted on Feb 9, 2007 - View this thread

How's the weather? Is it polluted? Do you have plenty of rainforests? Send someone a Geography Information Postcard and tell them about where you live by filling out infographics. (via)
posted on Jan 31, 2007 - View this thread

The Natural Arch and Bridge Society has many, many interesting pictures and lots of info.
posted on Dec 17, 2006 - View this thread

Voyager's Golden Record This is life on earth 1977 as it will appear when Voyager 1 meets life (ETA 40.000 years from now)... and finds a turntable. Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2-a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Hello, ET!
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

Mattingly Global, by Mary Mattingly, and Greetings From the Salton Sea, by Kim Stringfellow -- two web projects featured in the International Center of Photography's Ecotopia exhibit.
posted on Nov 16, 2006 - View this thread

Transit of Mercury again. here Transit of Mercury again. Today -- and not for another seven years or so -- Mercury passes between the Earth and the Sun, shwoing up a speck-like black circle. But don't look. Starting times, real-time visual, ways to see it and another caution are here. rotoman
posted on Nov 7, 2006 - View this thread

Archaeological treasures found on Google Earth. In 25 years on the ground, "I've found a handful of archaeological sites. I found more in the first five, six, seven hours [on Google Earth] than I've found in years of traditional field surveys and aerial archaeology,"
posted on Oct 17, 2006 - View this thread

Imagine Earth Without People A great, non-hysterical article about what Earth would be like if we all, one day, vanished.
posted on Oct 12, 2006 - View this thread

Miniature earth is a flash movie of the results of the 'State of the Village' report by Donella Meadows in the 1990's.
posted on Oct 8, 2006 - View this thread

Project Nova: on the 9th of September three Cambridge engineering students launched a balloon equipped with a camera and tracking devices. It reached a height of 32km and took 857 photographs during its three hour flight, some showing the curvature of the earth. You can also download a KML file to follow the balloon's flight path in Google Earth.
posted on Sep 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Over half a million photographs of Earth taken from orbit by astronauts, from 1961 through the present. The ability of the astronauts to rapidly identify interesting phenomena allows them to capture events as they occur, like volcanic eruptions, floods, and hurricanes, or take advantage of the angle of the sun to highlight specific features, like the pyramids or Mount Everest.
posted on Sep 21, 2006 - View this thread

Not Another Middle East post. Dream of circling the globe on two wheels? Or three maybe? Don't think you are the first. Because you aren't. No, really, even a Jedi heroin addict has done it.
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

At forty miles (64.4 km) from Pluto to Sun, the Maine Solar System Model is the largest complete three-dimensional scale model of the solar system in the world. What, you didn't know there was more than one? And yes, Pluto is staying put.
posted on Sep 4, 2006 - View this thread

GRACE is fine-tuning our understanding of Earth's gravity. It also shows that Greenland's ice is melting, how the recent Sumatra earthquake changed the earth, and provides information on the world's oceans and climate.
posted on Aug 31, 2006 - View this thread

The World: processed, metered, distorted, littered with icons, or just floating there in front of you. [java, flash, all that jazz]
posted on Jul 17, 2006 - View this thread

The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
posted on Jul 9, 2006 - View this thread

Humans! A lovely little bit of educational animation.
posted on May 19, 2006 - View this thread

Google Releases Sketchup for All. Google has released a free version of SketchUp (video and tutorials), quite possibly the coolest and most intuitive 3D authoring tool. An added bonus of SketchUp is it's integration into Google Earth. Google has also provided a 3D Warehouse for the posting of your models, which can be downloaded into either application (SketchUp for editing, Earth for displaying). Kind of gives you some insight into their plans for using Google Earth as an Automotive (Honda and Volkswagen) GPS service. (Sidenote: how long until this is seen as a threat to national security?)
posted on Apr 27, 2006 - View this thread

When artist Matthew Moore found out part of the family farm was to become a suburban subdivision, he did what any farmer/artist would do, and recreated the subdivision in crops to show what it would look like in the surrounding landscape.
posted on Apr 24, 2006 - View this thread

Artificial images of our real planet : computer-generated Earth views and panoramas, all created using various free tools and resources, including the Blue Marble and USGS datasets, POV-Ray and the Gimp. CGI Mount Saint Helens vs the real thing. For truly artificial landscapes, see also the randomly-generated Landscape of week from the same author.
posted on Mar 27, 2006 - View this thread

"Desktop Earth 2.0 is a wallpaper generator for Windows. It runs whenever you're logged on and updates your wallpaper with an accurate representation of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment." The images are fantastic. Oh, and it's free. (See similar - via digg).
posted on Mar 10, 2006 - View this thread

Seen anyone on Google Earth lately?
posted on Feb 17, 2006 - View this thread

Networks are everywhere. Connectionists think of our brains as neural networks. Some people think networks are changing society. Some people would like to use networks to change society. Others think of the earth as a self-organising network.
posted on Jan 12, 2006 - View this thread

Patriot Act used to arrest environmental activists
"Federal marshals arrested six environmental activists in a series of coordinated raids in four states yesterday, Dec. 8, in apparent response to a string of arsons in Oregon and Washington attributed to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)" ... has the patriot act produced any arrests in the country related to 9-11?
posted on Dec 15, 2005 - View this thread

Global warming -- the upside: the entrepreneurs poised to make millions from new ports and shipping lanes in the formerly ice-bound Arctic circle. A fascinating New York Times article on the international land-grab following the news (reported here, discussed here, whitewashed here, et. al.) that the polar ice caps and Siberian permafrost are melting. Goodbye Gulf Stream, hello Club Med Santa-style -- first SUV to the North Pole wins!
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - View this thread

Hi-res satellite photos of Earth Four pages worth, desktop wallpaper sized.
posted on Sep 22, 2005 - View this thread

National Geographic has a special issue on Africa out this month. There's also their Africa resource site.
posted on Sep 21, 2005 - View this thread

Words of wisdom from a wombat. (flash) From the Foundation for a Global Community. Also, an Extraordinary Moment.
posted on Sep 20, 2005 - View this thread