Beautiful but deadly

When there is a forest fire we tend to forget about the animals but sometimes they cannot escape the flames. Here the deer have gone into a river and they should be OK. Forest fires today are worse than ever due to logging and fire prevention which has allowed forest to accumulate more material to burn.

Before and after!

These pictures show the coast line of Texas before and after hurricane Ike. This storm was almost as big as the state of Texas and caused $22 billion dollars in damage but relatively few deaths. 108 years before a hurricane arrived in Galveston Texas without warning and killed over 3,000 people.
We don't get storms like this in western Canada but with global warming these storm will become stronger and move further north.

Los Angles and the way it is.

Los Angeles in 1939 just before the smog and freeways. LA had the largest rapid transit network in the country but it was scrapped when General Motors got the city to change to buses and cars.


Today Los Angeles often looks more like the second picture. The car is still #1 and the government has done very little to make LA a more livable city. What was once a lovely collection of orchards, small towns, clean air and quiet living has largely been replaced by pavement, dirty air and noise.

Just like a storm you see from aircraft

If you run into a storm like this with a ship you can't get out of the way because ships are too slow but if you run into a storm with an aircraft you can usually fly around it. This looks just like the storm we ran into off the coast of Panama but all we encountered was heavy rain.

Wave, lighthouse and man

This is a lighthouse off the coast of England in a storm. See the man in the doorway of the lighthouse? If he is 6 feet tall the wave is about 10 times taller than him or about 60 feet. The biggest wave on record occurred in Lituya Bay on the southern coast of Alaska in 1958. An earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale hit the area and shook loose an estimated 40 million cubic yards of dirt and glacier from a mountainside at the head of the bay. When the debris hit the water, a massive 1,720-foot wave was created and washed over the headland. They know the height of the wave because the trees up to 1,720 feet were washed away on a mountain side.

Landslide from space.

This is a picture of the landslide that I posted here on June 8th. Have a look at that post to compare the space view and the terrestrial view. This landslide covered an iron mine and some houses. 64 people have not been found and will probably never be found because the rocks and slide are just too big.

To the Moon, almost.

This is a rocket that just took off and it is going to circle the moon. The equipment onboard will try to determine if there is water on the south pole of the moon as well as other things that will help us understand out solar system better. This is the first rocket to orbit the moon in many years

Volcano explosion

This is a very unusual photograph of a explosion in a Russian volcano. It is in the Kuril Islands north east of Japan. The explosion caused a break in the clouds allowing the astronauts aboard the Space Station to take the photograph on June 12, 2009.. You can see the explosion going up and also a flow of super heated ash and mud going down the side of the mountain. This is called a pyroclastic flow and can be deadly if you are close to it. This volcano has caused flights from Vancouver to the far east to be canceled due to ash in the atmosphere.

Camera tips for Cash and other camera bugs!

#1, try to get your subjects to smile.

#2, pictures are not always what they seem. This is actually a doll house kitchen 6 inches across.

#3, try to look the right way when taking pictures, and

#4, explanation provided.

San Francisco wrecked 103 years ago!

San Francisco was hit with a big earthquake at 5:12 am April 18, 1906. In some places the earth moved sideways 20 feet in 4 seconds. This is just over 3 miles per hour but heavy things like buildings cannot move that fast without damage. If you were outside you would be OK but an estimate 3000 people were killed in San Francisco and several hundred in other other towns. Look at the second picture. It was taken high above the city but there were no airplanes or balloons in San Francisco at that time. How was this picture taken? This earthquake was about 8 on the earthquake scale so it was big. Vancouver has had earthquakes this big in the past so we should be prepared. How do they know how big earthquakes were in the past?

Cleaning up!!

Since the beginning of time people have thrown their garbage in the oceans and rivers. It is now estimated that there is more garbage in the oceans than fish. These pictures show funny looking boats in London England that go around and scoop up garbage. This is an important job that we could do in BC. If you go to the beach you will see lots of logs. These are not natural but just wood that people have carelessly thrown away. Not only has this waste wood significantly changed our 30,000 kms of coastline but it is a huge waste of wood, energy and resources. Nothing is currently being done to clean this up.

Largest wing ever!

This is a picture of a flying boat that was made by Howard Hughes as a troop transport during World War II. It was supposed to carry 750 soldiers. The wing was 320 feet long and no other airplane has a wing that big. The 747 wing is 220 feet long but the 747 aircraft is more than twice as heavy as this flying boat. This airplane can be seen today in a museum in Oregon.

Dirtist river ever!!

This is the 200-mile long Citarum River in Indonesia. As you can see people have their houses right on the edge of the river and they throw so much garbage in the river that you can no longer see the water. There are also hundreds of factories along the river and they also dump their junk in the river. All this is crazy but people sometimes do crazy things.

Strange rocks in Turkey

These rocks were once ash from a volcano and after getting compressed it turns into rock called tuffs. The wind can also shape these rocks but this takes a very long time. The rocks you see are millions of years old

Biggest dam in the world.

At the bottom of this picture you can see the Three Gorges dam in China. This is the largest dam in the world and the reservoir behind the dam is 600 kms long. There are many environmental and cultural problems with this dam but it also makes a lot of power and prevents flooding which has always been a problem for people on this river. It is hard to get a picture of this dam from space because the clouds and smog usually obscure the view.

Earthquake in China

This shows some rescue workers after a landslide buried a iron ore plant in China a few days ago. The landslide was caused by a earthquake. Earthquakes are caused when the earth surface moves too quickly and this shakes things so much that buildings and sometimes sides of mountains fall down.

Giant robots in the future??

This is a new design for a giant robot that will work in forests to cut down trees or fight forest fires. It is not be a good idea as we are already cutting down too many trees but it shows you how some people are thinking about the future.

The blue Sun

Here is a picture of the sun taken with a different wave length that makes the Sun look blue. You can see that the surface of the sun is not smooth and that huge loops of fire are shooting up into space. The temperature here is about 2,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit which is hot enough to keep the Sun burning with continuous nuclear energy. Using nuclear fusion means that the Sun will not burn out for millions of years to come.

Human lights from space.

Here is a picture of the earth showing the lights that people turn on when it is dark. Can you see where you live? This picture has been changed to remove clouds which often cover much of the earth. Can you find Japan and where are some of the darkest places? What would this picture look like 100 years ago if it could be taken?