“They’re limiting the playtesters to type A3 V stars, so the games will all end before the Sun consumes the Earth.”
https://xkcd.com/2061/
(Source: xkcd.com)
ICELAND Þingvellir National Park
Þingvellir itself is the name of two places in southern Iceland. One represents a historical site and the other one a national park. Þingvellir means “assembly field” in Icelandic, which has a direct reference to the historical site. In the medieval times, Icelanders used to resolve disputes and govern themselves here. The oldest recorded parlament in the world, the Alþing, was held here by Norwegian Vikings in 930 A.D. In 1798, the government was dissolved by the Danes. The place wasn’t forgotten as in 1944, the Republic of Iceland declared it’s independence there.
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The migration of the Indian subcontinent
Dust plume over Earth’s youngest sea.
The Red sea, an arm of the Indian Ocean, is the youngest sea on Earth. A spreading ridge started pushing Africa and Arabia apart, and has spread down Africa as the continental rifts. Whether this will end up with a splitting of the entire continent, or the african rift will turn into a failed rift graben (called an aulacogen, consisting of downfaulted blocks with old volcanic rocks and lake sediments within) remains unknown.
With a length of over 2,000 Km, and a width of 355, the sea started to open in the Eocene about 30 million years ago, speeding up in the Oligocene. Hydrothermal vents are currently forming metal sulphide deposits in varied areas of its floor. In this image, taken from the ISS, a dust plume is being carried by winds from Africa towards Asia, bringing eroded sediment to rejoin their once-neighbours on the other side of this narrow budding ocean. The Nile river is visible in the upper left of the image.
Loz
Image credit: NASA
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=81566&src=fb
(Source: facebook.com)
A new Gondwanan reconstruction
Over 150 million years ago, the continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, along with other slices of land such as the Indian subcontinent, were joined together in a single giant landmass known as Gondwana. Since that time, that landmass has progressively been torn apart by the opening of new rift zones and creation of new ocean, as is happening today at the Red Sea rift.
The fit between Africa and South America is so good that it was recognized over a century ago by Alfred Wegener when he first proposed the concept that plates could migrate across the surface of the Earth.
If you’ve ever tried to fit together puzzle pieces shaped like the African and South American coasts, you’ve probably found that they come very close to fitting together, but there are some indentations that just don’t match up well. If they were puzzle pieces the shapes wouldn’t be quite right, there’s just a little more complexity.
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The Avalon Terrane
It’s rather remarkable that right now, a person in Poland is standing on a slice of the same crust as the inhabitants of London and as visitors to Boston’s Fenway Park. This map shows the re-assembled Avalon terrane, with spreading of the Atlantic Ocean removed, and marks modern day political boundaries.
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Alfred Wegener
German-born meteorologist and astronomer, Alfred Wegener, proposed the theory of plate tectonics and ever since its conception in 1915, the applications of this now accepted scientific theory have been tremendous in shaping our modern society. From understanding earthquakes, volcanoes, and tectonic nature to shaping evolutionary processes throughout history, the discovery of tectonic movement made huge waves in the fields of geo-physics, geology and geography.
(Source: facebook.com)
Birth of the Atlantic
This is a gorgeous computer rendering of the opening of the Atlantic Ocean and the breakup of the Supercontinent Pangaea.
(Source: facebook.com)
Great animation showing our best understanding of the last 600 million years of North America’s geologic evolution. Watch how island arcs come in and collide with the continent causing mountain belts to grow, interior seaways appear and disappear as sea levels change, glaciers flash in and out of existence, and we have a runin with Africa.
