This is the third issue of a series on this blog highlighting earth stories from The Observer newspaper. Each of these stories offers an interesting perspective on Earth Sciences and were so good I felt the need to serialise them!
I first developed the Gaia hypothesis in 1965, when I was designing instruments at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) in California. Nasa asked me to be an experimenter on their lunar and planetary missions because they needed the kind of instruments I made to analyse the surface and atmosphere of the planets.
I started talking with the biologists at Nasa about a mission they were planning to send to Mars. We argued about the best way of detecting the existence of life on the planet. It occurred to me that rather than scooping up some soil and growing the organisms you might find in it, you could simply analyse the composition of the planet's atmosphere. If there was no life, the gases in the atmosphere would have reached equilibrium. If life did exist, it would be using the atmosphere to get its raw materials and dump its waste products, just like we do - and that would show up in chemical analysis.
These thoughts led me to look more closely at our own planet, and when I did, it became more and more extraordinary to me that we have reactive gases such as methane and oxygen co-existing. How could they unless something was regulating the whole process?
Then an astronomer asked me if I knew that the Sun has warmed up by about 30% since life began. So why, if it was warm enough when it started, haven't we completely fried since? And if it is warm enough now, why wasn't it frozen solid back then? It suddenly dawned on me: if life can regulate the atmosphere, it can regulate the climate. That gave birth to the Gaia hypothesis: that the biosphere regulates the atmosphere and surface of the Earth so as to keep it habitable.
As the Sun got hotter, Earth's climate stayed balanced.
Biologists vigorously attacked the hypothesis because they thought it was anti-Darwinian and a new form of creationism. But gradually evidence came in from the Earth that there were indeed systems regulating climate and chemistry, both in the ocean and on the land. It took until 2001 for scientists to come out and say it, but they wouldn't use the word Gaia: they called it Earth Systems Science. The Earth has lived a remarkably long time, between a quarter and a third of the age of the universe, which is longer than many suns have lived. It has withstood all kinds of perturbations and disturbances, and what we're doing to it now is relatively mild by comparison.
The earth looks after itself, and if we upset it, it self-regulates - and it looks like it's doing so by trying to eliminate us.
If we don't begin to understand the Earth we live on, we're going to make an awful mess in trying to cure the problem that faces us in the coming century. There is not a lot we can do now to stop it heating up - it's probably too late. The way things look, anything up to 80% of the present population will no longer be with us by the end of the century. So we've got to prepare for some pretty huge changes.
Understanding what will happen, where it's going to be good to live and what to do - this is going to take up all our energy. It's important not to aim for pointless things such as sustainable development. There are just too many people, more than the Earth can carry.
I could be wrong. Natural events or some very clever idea could change things. There's talk of putting an aerosol in the stratosphere that would reflect unlight and cool the Earth. That's not a bad idea, but it's just like going on a dialysis machine when your kidneys fail. It can buy you some time. And if the alternative is death, who wouldn't take it? I don't think we'll disappear entirely. Our danger is being reduced to a Stone Age of warlords and all the rest, like when Roman civilisation broke up. Our job is to carry on the message of civilisation until things stabilise.
We are part of Gaia. There have always been organisms that come along and change the whole scene and they have always brought as many disadvantages with them as advantages. But the system finally settles out and makes use of the benefits. I think the same is true of us. We've done an immense amount of damage to the planet, but it would be appalling from Gaia's point of view to lose us. We are also a great benefit. It's a matter of reaching an equilibrium.
Dr James Lovelock is the author of the groundbreaking "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth" published in 1979 and the recent follow-up "The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back - And How We Can Still Save Humanity".
I always enjoy looking at a small animation within an article to help explain the point being made. Scientific articles are particularly good at this (see Wikipedia: Parallax GIF but you also see similar work across a wide variety of news and sport reporting. Sometimes, the use of animation can make an article come alive and add much more meaning (especially with space constraints!) than a text-only article. See BBC: Large Hadron Collider (CMS) for a great example).
The above examples use simple animation (such as GIF images) as well as more versatile tools (such as Flash). Flash has really been adopted by the internet community and gone are the days when you'd reach a limited audience with its use. I've done some work with Flash before, but mostly for design (websites, adverts etc). There are plenty of examples out there where Flash is used in useful and dynamic ways. See Geowise - InstantAtlas, Flash Earth and the majority of modern video sites (iPlayer Labs are a great way to see what's on its way too!).
So I decided it would be interesting to explore the middle ground. Instead of using animation to explain experiments, I wanted to use it to document them. Obviously this has been done before, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see how easy it can be and how useful the result is.
As I was sat on the bus in central Edinburgh, I saw a busy pedestrian crossing. It struck me that those who knew the crossing well would move across early (knowing when the green man would come), whilst those who didn't (or those who were more cautious) would wait. Also, those who didn't know the crossing and also lacked considerable caution would just risk it whenever, often needing to turn back.
The pedestrian crossing in question - Hannover Street, Edinburgh.
I thought this would be much better mapped from above, to see if the patterns could show us anything. If this task was repeated, some scientific analysis could be performed - possibly answering the following questions:
- What percentage of people wait for the green man?
- Does the number of people waiting affect the caution shown by the people in general?
- What percentage of pedestrians are locals who know the traffic light system?
OK - so before I go any further, I'd best point out I'm not intending to answer these questions - but I thought I'd create a system that possible could. So I set up a Flash animation of the crossing using Koolmoves Flash software. Take a look at the result below (it should repeat every 30 seconds or so):
As you can see, I made a graph of the pattern that updates with the (simplified) animation. The pedestrian lights are shown at the top and a timer ticks along at the bottom. It took about an hour to set up, but with new data could easily be repeated in 10 minutes or so and possibly combined to show an average pattern across many scenarios. It's just an idea - but Flash is pretty versatile - with a little work it could be hooked up to a database and continually refreshed showing current data. So next time you need help in describing an experiment, why not give it a go?
This article started life whilst looking at the Wikipedia page for the International Space Station (ISS). The 'thought train' (i.e. following various wiki links!) went something like this: ISS > Golf Ball Launched from Space > Origami Airplane Launch > Kessler Syndrome > Graveyard Orbit. It therefore makes sense (in some warped way) to tackle these subjects in 'thought-order':
The International Space Station (ISS) With cooperation from 16 countries, the ISS is an ongoing research operation - effectively replacing the Russian Mir Space Station and combining (and replacing) plans from many countries to operate their own Space Station in the future: Russia's Mir 2, the USA's Freedom, the European Columbus Laboratory and the Japanese Kibo laboratory. For a bit more information, here's a quote from Wikipedia - there are also more references at the end of each section:
Golf Ball Launched from Space In 2006, as part of the EVA 1 mission (Expedition 14) Mikhail Tyurin hit a 3g golf ball (a normal ball weighs 48g) from the exterior of the Pirs airlock on the ISS. Despite the shot being a substantial slice to the right, the ball entered near-Earth orbit (NEO) and travelled for much longer than the 3 days NASA predicted. This stunt was performed 35 years after the first golf shot on the Moon and was sponsored by a Canadian golf company, E21. The map below shows the progress of the ball - "the longest drive in history" and the company website suggests it is still transmitting, although this may be out of date. Click the picture to enlarge:
This operation has been criticised by some due to its purely commercial nature. There are very high costs associated with bringing equipment up into space (golf club and ball) and therefore some have cast doubts over the true purpose of the ISS - as its founding role is one of research, not commercial venture.
Origami Airplane Launch Now it's time for the upcoming part of the story...Japanese scientists are planning to launch a number of paper aeroplanes from the ISS, pencilled in for early 2009. Around 30 planes are to be launched and any that make it down to Earth will have travelled some 400km along the way, surviving Mach 7 speeds and heating to up to 446F!
The planes will have no tracking equipment but will instead use the age-old method of a written note asking for the planes to be returned if found. It may be a fair while before anything is heard from this mission, but prototypes have been tested to survive the predicted conditions and even had a test-flight from a New York skyscraper:
Unlike the golf ball stunt, this mission does have a grounding in research, as the quote below explains:
Kessler Syndrome Virtually all space missions, satellites and space-based research causes an increase in low-orbit space debris. Early NASA missions always ended with a trip to a graveyard orbit (see below) but new research suggests that over time, even these "buried" objects will be broken up and pieces of debris will find their way into occupied orbits. Kessler Syndrome is simply the assertion that one day the amount of debris in useful orbits will be too great to overcome:
Although not of immediate concern, it is a problem that is worth considering - especially with the large amount of commercial satellites in operation (where future safety is more likely to be sacrificed for cost saving). Still, I think the main concern is of pieces of broken machinery, rather than stray golf balls and paper aeroplanes - but watch out for tool bags:
As mentioned earlier in the article, the logic behind putting a space vehicle into a graveyard orbit seems to be false, as these objects are now predicted to break up over the years and cause as many problems as if left in their original orbit. And just to show how much damage an impact with space debris can cause, the picture below shows the 'energy flash' from a hypervelocity space debris impact:
It's easy to think that all spacecraft should be brought back to Earth after their useful life (like most contemporary NASA missions) but there are many issues to contend with here also. Not only do you have to consider the complexity of such an operation (atmospheric re-entry, carrying sufficient fuel, recovery, predicting orbit etc) but also the relative difficult compared to launching to a graveyard orbit. In order to reach a graveyard orbit, a spacecraft will need to be accelerated to around 11 m/s, whereas to gain re-entry, the velocity needed would be around 1500 m/s.
So, there we have it - a nice roundup of the surrounding issues to space launches of all kinds. Not only does this article show how increasing space debris can cause major issues to future space travel (even if put into 'safe' orbits) but it highlights the debate between the (research) function of space launches and their purely commercial counterparts.
Well it's been a while getting here, but here is the 100th post on the Beats! Design Blog. I was tempted to do a review or 'best of' the last 99 posts, but in the end I decided just to be nice and simple. Somehow, I feel this image sums things up pretty well [click to enlarge]:
I've seen this cartoon posted on a few other sites, but there never seems to be a source - or each site pretends it's there own work (naughty!). I think I've now tracked down the original post now, so take a look at their site: Wellington Grey - This Modern Life
This blog has been up and running for over a year now and there's plenty more to come. In the next few months, watch out for the conclusion of Earth Stories series, some more Beatslinks and hopefully a few more examples of customised online mapping - I'll get working on it!
I was looking up a few things on Wikipedia and came across a huge selection of photos showing atmospheric effects. I'd started looking up parallax as it had been in the pub quiz the night before, but ended up collecting a nice selection of pictures showing phenomena you might not see every day.
To save you from me explaining them all, I'll turn to some more considered sources, just click on the reference to access the original source.
I was inspired by the illumination of York Minster in 2005 (I saw it at the time, but was reminded of it via a photo today!) to trawl the internet for some other examples of buildings being illuminated for art's sake. Unsuprisingly, there are quite a few examples - I've assembled a small collection here. I'll stick a few references at the end, but otherwise just enjoy the show! :)
Some pretty amazing pictures, I'm sure you'll agree - These illumations seem to happen pretty often (especially at Christmas time) so keep your eye open for a similar show near you!
I saw a story on the BBC website yesterday about Google.org creating a map of influenza activity in America based on recent Google search terms alone. The concept is relatively simple - keep track of the prevalance of certain search terms (for example "buy flu rememdies") and track the locations they are coming from to produce a map of current flu patterns across America.
This system wasn't designed to replace any current data (obviously, cases of Flu can be tracked by official health data) but instead could provide an early warning system for health professionals about where the virus is spreading and where its activity is strongest. Using this system, flu activity can be predicted 2 weeks in advance of officially released data.
The idea has been tested against the official data when it is released and the search terms being tracked tweeked to give the best results. As Google say on their "about" page:
"We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems.
Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?"
As you can see above, the data from Google and the official data match pretty well and the system can offer a useful pre-warning. I'd be interested to see how this idea can be taken further - the possibilities seem almost limitless!
The earth looks after itself, and if we upset it, it self-regulates - and it looks like it's doing so by trying to eliminate us. 
