Craters of Eternal Darkness What makes night within us may leave stars. — Victor Hugo One of the oldest tropes pertains to the interplay between lightness and darkness. Without one, does the other exist? Certain ruminations liken light and dark to being two sides of the same coin. This comparison makes sense on a cosmic scale, …
DART Today, Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Robert Duval, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, and Morgan Freeman are proud astronauts and scientists. Twenty-four years after the summer that gifted the world with the films Armageddon and Deep Impact, astronomers have finally started the process of catching up with late-20th-century film science. Both movies deal with …
Peak of Eternal Light Today is the first full day of Autumn 2022 in the Northern Hemisphere. The fall equinox means we are currently experiencing nearly identical lengths of night and day. We have “day” and “night” because the planet spins on its axis. Earth rotates once every 24 hours with respect to the sun. …
The Lake Above the Ocean Fire up your virtual traveling machines and come for a visit to the Faroe Islands, where one of the world’s most bodacious lakes resides. In the North Atlantic, the Faroe Islands sit approximately at the center of a triangle composed of Iceland, Scotland, and Norway. 779 islands, of which geographers term …
Underground Sound We have a tendency to focus on the visual appeals of the natural universe, as they translate well to the publishing medium. However, those who venture into the wild portions of our planet realize we savor the universe with all our able senses. Often, sound, smell, feel, and, especially, taste, are relegated to second-class …
Elle Capitan I have been all over the world and have had the fortune of doing things with many special people, some famous, some anonymous. But the biggest little hero I’ve ever known is Lynn Hill. The rest of us are just holding her rope. — John Long As the endeavors of sport climbing and big …
Tennessee Warblers The ranges of certain migratory birds are impressively wondrous. Some passerines – the perching birds – are tiny dynamos. The Tennessee warbler, for example, weighs an average of 10 grams (0.35 ounces). While this diminutive stature might make flight easy, the metabolic rates of birds are astronomically high. Somehow, a creature that weighs a …
Shinrin-yoku The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. — John Muir Many of us inherently sense the benefits of the woods. A few of our patron thinkers – Thoreau and Muir, amongst others – tied their lives to the notion that humans should not be separated from the wilderness. For …
Man of the Hole South America’s Amazon Rainforest is, in many ways, the heart of our planet. The eponymous river drains more water than the next seven-largest waterways, approximately 20% of Earth’s total. The rainforest is the largest and most diverse in the world. Of all the plant and animal species extant, one in 10 lives …
Via Ferrata It’s no great secret around these parts that we are immense orophiles. Many ways exist to love mountains. We can revel in the glory of their jags and fractals or eye-inhale distant snowy caps. We can travel to their bases to crane our necks at their rises or gaze at the trees and …