The official Google Earth plugin is one free download that makes all sorts of cool stuff possible in your browser. There's
a full screen version of the program (complete with underwater views and 3D buildings) which can be searched by entering queries at the end of the URL. There's
a framed version with support for layers, historical imagery, day/night cycles, and the Google Sky starmap.
Less useful but more fun are Google's collection of "experiments" demonstrating the possibilities of the Earth API, including
a "Geo Whiz" geography quiz,
an antipode locater,
a 3D first-person view of San Francisco,
a virtual route-follower, and
MONSTER MILKTRUCK!, a crazy fun driving simulator that lets you careen a virtual milk truck through the Googleplex campus, ricochet off the Himalayas, or explore any other place you care to name.
Lots more can be found in the
Google Earth Gallery -- highlights include
a look at mountaintop removal mining,
a real-time flight tracker,
a guide to trails and outdoor recreation,
a 360 panorama catalog,
geotagged Panoramio photos,
and the comprehensive crowdsourced
Google Earth Community Layer.
And while it's too large to view online, don't miss loading
the Metafilter user location map into a desktop version of Google Earth!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 9, 2011 -
15 comments
The Polar Discovery team has documented science in action from pole to pole during the historic 2007-2009 International Polar Year, and
covered five scientific expeditions. The science projects explored a range of topics from climate change and glaciers, to Earth’s geology, biology, ocean chemistry, circulation, and technology at the icy ends of the earth. Through
photo essays and
other multimedia, they explain how scientists collected data and what they discovered about the rapidly changing polar regions. From the awesome folks at
WHOI.
posted by netbros
on Nov 9, 2009 -
4 comments
The amazing story of the
coelacanth is one of the wonders of the living world that inspires marine biologists such myself. Coelacanths, part of the offshoot lineage of fishes known as "lobed finned ", are very different from typical "ray finned" fishes that you usually think of. Their bizarre
lobed fins are thought to be an intermediate step between fish fins and amphibian legs. Scientists had known that these weird fish existed because of fossils for over a century, but we believed that they went extinct 65 million years ago... until a South African fisherman caught one in 1938.
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Sep 7, 2009 -
49 comments
Most people have heard about how rising CO2 levels are resulting in a
changing global climate. Fewer have heard about the other consequence of rising CO2 levels- when the CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, it disassociates into carbonic acid. This alters the pH of our world's oceans, and it's called "
Ocean Acidification". This changing ocean chemistry has many important and devastating consequences.
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Sep 5, 2009 -
21 comments
By popular demand, your new resident marine biology nerd has compiled some cool information about the Giant Pacific Octopus.The Giant Pacific Octopus (
Octopus dofleini) is one of the strangest animals in the sea- and one of the smartest. Though it is commonly believed that vertebrates are always "smarter" than invertebrates, these guys defy that convention.
As this video shows, they are able to easily open jars and retrieve food from inside. They are also, as the "Giant" implies,
enormous- the biggest one on record was 30 feet across (
according to National Geographic)
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Jul 6, 2009 -
140 comments
To the Lost City. Researchers at the University of Washington discovered an undersea hydrothermal vent field that promises new information about the origins of life. A
monthlong research trip in 2003, documented online, yielded results that have just now been published in
Science (subscribers only, sorry). The UW's Lost City site has much of interest, including an
online journal from the excursion; pictures and video are also available
here and
here.
posted by jeffmshaw
on Mar 18, 2005 -
1 comment
