OK where is this??

Another Canadian scene for you to identify. The white thing in the picture is not part of Canada but is very close to Canada. The girl is sitting on part of Canada. Where is she?

Apollo 11

I am interrupting our geography quiz to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of mans first landing on the moon. The little arrow at the enter of the picture shows the landing stage of that mission. This is the largest piece left behind when the astronauts left the moon. It cannot be photographed from earth as it is too far away. This picture was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which was launched on June 18, 2009.
Now if we could just solve some real serious problems????

OK, where is this?

I am going to post 13 pictures from each province and territory and you have to guess where the picture was taken.
Here is the first picture. Send me an email if you know what province or territory this is in.

bfearn@gmail.com

Getting bigger all the time.

Here we see the mechanical parts to a large windmill being installed into the top of a windmill tower. See the size of the man next to the mechanical parts? These parts include the flange where the three windmill blades are attached. The brake to stop the blades if they need to service the machine or if the winds get too high and the gearbox and the generator which makes the electricity. Groups of windmills or wind turbines are called wind farms and they can produce enough power for millions of people.

Wow, is that small!!

In my last post I talked about some of the largest living things. Well it turns out that the small world is just as fascinating. To measure very small things scientists don't use centimeters they use Nanometers. A Nanometer is one billionth of a meter or to make that more understandable a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide. The smallest thing that you can see with an optical microscope is 500 times smaller than this or 200 nanometers. Are you getting this Cash??
So to 'see' things that are even smaller scientist use an Electron microscope and have taken many pictures of really neat stuff. The pictures of a flies foot was taken by an electron microscope. But scientists wanted to take pictures of even smaller things so they invented the Atomic Force Microscope. Look at the picture of the little pyramid and if you look closely you can see a small rod at the top of the pyramid. That is a carbon nanotube and it would take 50,000 of them to equal the width of a human hair. This moves across a surface and the movement 'takes' a picture that is smaller than any other microscope.

The largest living thing, ever??

It is not easy to say which is the largest living thing but several living things are very large. The Aspen tree, shown in the picture, may be the largest because it starts with one tree and spreads via a root structure that produces genetically identical trees. So this forest is really one tree that looks like many trees. The largest single tree is believed to be a tree called 'General Sherman'. It is 84 meters tall and 11 meters thick at the base. The largest known animal is the Blue Whale at 34 meters long weighing 210 tons. This is also larger than any know dinosaur. The largest land animal today is the African Bush Elephant and like the Blue whale this one was shot when it weighed 12 tons. The largest land animal to have ever lived is thought to be the Argentinosaurus but a complete skeleton has never been found. However it is unlikely that any dinosaur ever weighed more than 100 tons so the Blue whale is still the biggest animal ever.

Worlds largest pumpkin!!

Jo Jutras from Rhode Island in the USA has been growing huge pumpkins for some time. This is his 2008 record holder at 1,876 lbs. For some reason giant pumpkins are often grown in Rhode Island. The largest pumpkin pie is 2,020 lbs and was made in Ohio but not from one pumpkin.
If you wanted to carve this pumpkin into a lantern it would be big enough for Cash and Noah to play inside.

Tornadoes

A tornado is a remarkable weather event that we do not usually get in British Columbia. It is a violent column of spinning air that is in contact with the ground and usually a cloud. Some are large and last for hours and some are small and last for just a few seconds. When they happen over water they are called waterspouts.
They are not nearly as large as hurricanes but they have caused serious destruction of buildings and up to 700 deaths. America has about 1,200 tornadoes per year but most of them are not fatal storms.

1908 Siberian meteor strike

This picture was taken in 1927, 19 years after a meteor flew over this area at an estimated altitude of 3 to 6 miles. It caused a shock wave that produced thousands of times the energy in the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The explosion knocked down an estimated 80 million trees and would have destroyed a large city if it had happened over a city.
Today various scientific instruments scan the skies to see if any meteors are going to hit Earth. Several movies have been made about how this would happen. It has not happened for a long time but it is expect to in the future.

Alternative energy sets a new record.

Alternative or 'green' energy set a new record in America for the year ending April 2009. 'Green' energy produced 13% of American electricity. That includes hydro at 8.73%; non-hydro renewables (wind, solar, biomass & geothermal) made up 4.24%, another new record. What is interesting is that coal was down 13.9%, natural gas down 1.5% and overall production down 5%. so the clean power is gaining and the dirty power is declining fastest.
In Canada 'green' energy is sill not a major source of power. Any good that comes from 'green' power generation is more than canceled out by the bad power that the Harper government is promoting via tar sands oil. When global warming is such a big issue Canada's per capita carbon output remains more than twice as high as some of these poor backward countries. Germany, Denmark, the UK, Japan and Belgium and three times as high as these 3rd world countries, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden and Switzerland. Countries which are quite livable such as Paraguay, Samoa, Tonga, India and Fiji produce less than 1/20th of what we produce. Way to go Canada!!

African drought

This shows central Africa plant growth in June 2009 compared to other June's. Green means more plant growth and therefore more rain. Brown means less plant growth and in this case a drought. The vast area of brown south of the Sahara desert is called the Shael and is normally a fertile area that supports millions of people. In June 2009 the rainfall was one third of the rain in June 1997 and 60% less than the long term average. As a result Kenya entered a state of emergency as 10 million people did not have enough to eat. Cities throughout Kenya had to ration water and the Masinga hydroelectric dam was shut down after water levels in the reservoir fell too much to make electrical power. The next chance for rain is in September of October as that is the next rainy season.

Kerala, a unique and successful state in India

Kerala is unique in that it has a society that works and it was done through equality. It is about 30,000 square kilometers and has a population about the same as California's. That make it about the same size as Vancouver Island with a population as big as Canada's. Its per capita annual income is less than $300 BUT its infant mortality rate is low, its literacy rate is amongst the highest on Earth and its birthrate is below America's and dropping. Kerala's citizens live nearly as long as Americans or Europeans. They are guaranteed affordable healthcare and daycare. Public education is free through college. There are Fair share food stores within walking distance in every village and town and they make sure that no one goes hungry. At the heart of Kerala’s success is citizen activism.
This is what a poor country can do with an average income of $300 per year. Many countries do not come close with an income 10 times as high. Equality and working together is the key.

Most successful human powered airplane!

The Gossamer Albatross was designed by Paul MacCready who is a well known aeronautical engineer. It was flown by a very fit bicycle rider Byran Allan. In June 1979 it was flown across the English Channel. This was a distance of 36 kms flown in just under 3 hours at an altitude of 2 meters.
Dr. MacCready went on to make a solar powered airplane that was similar to this one. It eventually flew a flight of 262 kms using solar panels that produced the same power as used by two hairdryers.

Mars rover

This is the machine that the American successfully landed on Mars. It is called Spirit and has been operating for 5 years. It can take pictures and search for water and other interesting things that humans want to know about. This machine has provided us with lots of information about Mars but it looks like there is no life on Mars. Spirit has had a number of problems which have to be fixed from Earth. This is very tricky. Spirit is currently [July 2009] stuck in some soft sand and the engineers are trying to figure out how to get it unstuck. Mars can be from 55 to 400 million kilometers from earth depending on the orbits of the two planets.

Driest place on earth

The Atacama desert in Chile is considered the driest place on earth. Rainfall here is virtually non-existent. Some parts of this desert have not known rain for 400 years. The 'wet' parts get .004 inches per year. The extream dryness is caused by the high Andes mountains to the east and the cold Pacific currents to the west and winds from the east which create a permanent rain shadow.

Tornadoes

The tornado is a violent column of rotating air that is moving between 70 and 200 kilometer per hour. Some winds as high as 450 kph have been recorded. They come in many sizes from less than 100 meters across to 2 kilometers across and some stay on the ground for less than a minute while others can stay on the ground and travel for 100 kms.

In April 1974, southern and mid-western US suffered its worst tornado episode. Over a 24-hour period, 148 swept through the region. Thirteen states from Alabama to Virginia were affected. After 16 hours, 330 people were dead and 5,484 were injured in a damage path covering more than 2,500 miles. Tornadoes form during thunder storms when warm, humid air collides with colder air to form a swirling vortex.

This pictures shows a big tornado just getting started.

Rain

Rain is essential for life but we are doing many things to make rain less reliable. In addition to cutting down billions of trees and paving millions of acres of land we are affecting the atmosphere with pollution and carbon. We have also created acid rain by dumping our garbage into the air and this damages life in the oceans and lakes.

About 1.8 inches (4.6cm) of rain fell in a minute at Basse Terre in Guadeloupe on 26 November 1970 and 53 inches fell over a 12-hour period at Belouve on La Reunion island in the Indian Ocean. The highest average annual rainfall - some 450 inches - is at Mt Waialeale in Hawaii. The highest recorded annual rainfall was 1,042 inches (nearly 87 feet) at Cherrapunji, India. It also recorded the highest rainfall in a calender month - 366 inches, or 30ft 6in. Bombay last month recorded the highest rainfall in a single day in India - 37.1 inches.

When rain falls this much and many trees have been cut down flooding is caused and this can wreck whole cities.

Electric trolly 1912.

This trolley system was installed in Hamburg, Germany to help the horses up hills and pull wagons on more level ground. You can just see the pole going from the trolleys up to the wire suspended from the power poles. The hills do not look too steep in these pictures but the second hill is too steep for the bicycle rider seen in the picture so it must be somewhat steep. Also the horses were compelled to pull very heavy loads on the level and any hill was too much for them. In those days horses were truly beasts of burden.
It is also interesting to see the beautiful stone buildings that were build all over Germany over a period of many years. They would have lasted many more years but most of them were destroyed in the disaster called World War II. Today they are all but forgotten.
Today many electric transportation networks have been destroyed and replaced by oil or coal driven machines. If we had green electric power driving our vehicles and trains we could could eliminate a great amount of pollution and global heating gases. Too bad that our political leaders haven't figured this out for 100 years.

Canadians at work.

This gunner is firing from a Canadian Griffon helicopter over Afghanistan. The aircraft appears to be at about 5000 ft altitude which would make it difficult to determine if any person killed by this gunner is deserving of the death penalty. When it was decided to send this aircraft to Afghanistan Canadian defence officials maintained that it would only be used in a defensive and support role. That apparently means pretty much anything.

The guns used on this aircraft have six revolving barrels which enable them to fire about 50 bullets per second, 3000 per minute. So they are designed to shower an area with many shells and hit whatever they may. This gun was designed and made, in part, by General Electric. Those are the guys who "bring good things to life".

Primarily the Harper government has spent over $10,000,000,000.00 on fighting in Afghanistan. I'm pretty sure that none of the people in Afghanistan attacked or even threatened Canada, so this is clearly an offensive war. And I thought the Canadian military existed to defend Canada??

Yesterday one of these helicopters crashed in Afghanistan killing 2 Canadians and one British soldier. Three other Canadians were wounded. Whatever you think of this military effort it is good to see where part of that 10 billion dollars is going.

Never before??

Recently Iraq experienced a dust storm that was worst than anyone could remember. It was made possible in part by a drought that has made many areas more susceptible to dust. When the winds get up to over 17 miles per hour dust storms can start. In this case the winds were stronger than this for more than a week and this meant than many people had trouble breathing and many flights etc. were canceled. The people of Iraq don't need a dust storm after the war that has devastated their country.

Remember you can click on the pictures to make them bigger and in this case that will show you the Iraq/Iran boundaries etc.

Is that big fish following me?

Here we have a shark that is bigger than a kayak. If it decides to tip the kayak over there is not much the kayaker can do.
The danger from a shark attack is exaggerated. There are about 60 attacks around the world each year but less than 10% are fatal. There are 360 types of sharks but only 4 of those are known to attack people. It is the sharks that are in trouble as many millions have been killed by humans.

There are also many stories that tell of dolphins protecting humans from shark attacks. Typically the dolphins form a ring around humans in the water who are injured or endangered until the shark leaves.

Beautiful mountain but....

The Matterhorn is probably the best know mountain in Europe. It is also one of the tallest at 14, 692 feet or 4,478 meters. It was not climbed until 1865 and since that time over 600 people have died trying to climb it. Many have been killed by falling rocks which climbers can do very little to protect themselves from. Most of those killed were young men who were just starting out to live their lives. It is on the border between Switzerland and Italy and the town at the base of the mountain is Zermatt.

The top photo shows the peak of the mountain with 'Banner Clouds' that are called that because they seem to form banners as the wind blows. They are not made from snow but from moisture in the air condensing as the temperature drops on the downwind side of the mountain.

Hangin' On!!

This mountain climber is moving around a difficult bit of rock as he climbs a mountain using the 'free solo climbing' method. This means climbing by yourself using no ropes or protection systems at all. Because these climbers are looking for challenges and because they have no backup safety ropes their mistakes are often fatal.
Research has shown that people who seek these kinds of potentially fatal thrills have brains that work differently than those people who would never try this type of activity.
Climbers like this must be in very good shape and know what they are doing to be successful.

Billions $$ for what??

The straight lines in the sky show the re-entry of an American multiple warhead missile re-entry during a test. These missiles are designed to destroy numerous targets with one missile. Over the years America has spent trillions on weapons such as this without ever asking why such weapons are necessary.
America is in such serious financial shape that prosperous states such as California are giving IOU's to various suppliers because they cannot pay their bills but the military budget continues to increase.
This test was conducted in the South Pacific because America regards this area as their private nuclear and missile testing area.

A long way down

Here is a man building the Empire State Building in 1930. It is still one of the worlds tallest buildings, currently #5 in the Americas. This building is 103 stories tall and was built in just over one year. A record that still stands for such a tall building. This was made possible by the thousands of workers who needed a job during the start of the depression and they were willing to work for poor wages.








Here we have two men repairing an antenna on top of the Empire State Building (ESB). If the workers are careful this work is quite safe because they use safety lines to hold them if they slip. The ESB is 1453 feet tall to the very top which makes it one of the worlds tallest buildings still. When the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11 the ESB became the tallest building in New York city again.