fuck yeah cartography!

branchandblaze:

Emma McNally, Cartographic Polyrhythms (2), Graphite/carbon on paper

rainbowcube:

Orbits of the Planets by Michæl Paukner on Flickr.

Orbits of the Planets

A scale model of the orbits of the planets in our solar system. The inner planets’ orbits and sun are to the same scale. They would fit in the smallest orbit of the outer planets. The sun’s light takes over 4 hours to reach neptune at a mean distance of 4,504,300,000 kilometers.

Here you can learn more about our solar system: science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system

© Copyright 2009 Michael Paukner. All Rights Reserved.

eventuallyanyway:

Ever wondered how your email can cross the vastness of the ocean and be delivered almost instantly, anywhere in the world? It’s all down to a network of fibre-optic cables that link up the continents and transmit terabits of data every second.

Thanks to TeleGeography, a US telecommunications research firm, you can now view these submarine cables on an interactive map and get a sense of the physical infrastructure that keeps the internet going.

The map shows 188 active and planned submarine cables, along with their landing points. Clicking a cable gives you more information, such as its name, its length, who owns it and where it meets land. Clicking a landing point will also tell you which cables terminate at that location.

The map is only a stylised representation, so the real cables and landing points may lie in slightly different locations. That should protect cables from thieves, who have caused communications outages in south-east Asia, but it won’t help ships avoid breaking cables by dropping anchor.

migeo:

Part of the geologic map from the structural geology seminar’s field area. Zc- Catoctin Formation, Cw- Weverton Formation, Ch- Harpers Formation. The orange line is the contact of interest for our study. (via Chuck Bailey)

migeo:

Geological map of Iceland, showing volcanic systems and bedrock formations. Source: Landmælingar Íslands. (via Iceland Volcano and Earthquake blog)

ulaulaman:

Geological map of Malapa pits 1 and 2, showing the distribution of the principal rock facies as on 18 November 2010, including freshly exposed flowstone 2, and the sample locations for U-Pb and palaeomagnetic analysis.

Image from the report Australopithecus sediba at 1.977 Ma and Implications for the Origins of the Genus Homo by Robyn Pickering, Paul H. G. M. Dirks, Zubair Jinnah, Darryl J. de Ruiter, Steven E. Churchill, Andy I. R. Herries, Jon D. Woodhead, John C. Hellstrom, Lee R. Berger

Newly exposed cave sediments at the Malapa site include a flowstone layer capping the sedimentary unit containing the Australopithecus sediba fossils. Uranium-lead dating of the flowstone, combined with paleomagnetic and stratigraphic analysis of the flowstone and underlying sediments, provides a tightly constrained date of 1.977 ± 0.002 million years ago (Ma) for these fossils. This refined dating suggests that Au. sediba from Malapa predates the earliest uncontested evidence for Homo in Africa.

migeo:

The earthquake’s epicenter was about 60 km (~40 miles) northwest of Richmond, Virginia and occurred in the central Virginia seismic zone- an area of modest (or so we thought), but persistent seismic activity in the Piedmont. This region is laced with ancient faults that formed 200 to 300 million years ago when Virginia was at the frontline in an ugly collision between tectonic plates. I study these fault zones. Today’s temblor makes it clear that these faults are 1) not inactive and 2) have the potential to produce significant and damaging earthquakes. We have much to learn about the stresses that cause faults to slip this far from modern tectonic plate boundaries (in this case at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge some 3,000 km from central Virginia) and the hazards that these old, but restless, faults pose. It’s why we do research at William & Mary. (via Chuck Bailey)

migeo:

A 3-D view of the surface rupture of the April 4, 2010, El Mayor–Cucapah Earthquake (red line) reveals a new fault line connecting the Gulf of California with the Elsinore fault, which is likely to become the main fault at the boundary between the Pacific and the North America plates. Credit: Caltech’s Tectonics Observatory. (via Caltech)