Post by Salem6 on Apr 9, 2004 10:33:58 GMT
5 reasons why the planet is going to hell.
By Bruce Sterling
Exploratory all-terrain vehicles are capering around Mars, yet our own planet remains bafflingly alien. We're Mother Earth's children and we think we know her well, but whenever some unexpected phenomenon rouses our curiosity, we uncover disturbing aspects of her secret life. Lately, the rush of peculiar discoveries has been downright embarrassing. Let's consider some of Mom's eccentricities - and their implications.
Global dimming: The sunlight reaching Earth's surface is getting feebler. Assuming there's nothing wrong with the sun, some unknown atmospheric factor is steadily darkening the planet.
Evidence: In 1985, Atsumu Ohmura, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, checked sunlight records in Switzerland and discovered that solar radiation had declined a startling 10 percent in 30 years. Subsequent studies found the same effect in Ireland, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and at both poles, but scientists remained in denial. A 2001 metastudy confirmed Ohmura's findings.
Implications: This is an entirely unexpected phenomenon, even more off the wall than global warming. Who put out the lights? How will we eat?
Unpredictable day length: Eighteenth-century astronomers suspected that Earth's daily rotation on its axis was slowing, and the advent of the quartz clock in the 1930s proved them right. But new evidence indicates the planet's spin has been speeding up since 1999. Nobody knows why.
Evidence: Atomic clock readings taken by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, prove that the slowing trend has inexplicably reversed.
Implications: Days of unpredictably varying length can affect communications, air traffic control, financial markets, telescopes, and any data interchange that requires absolute synchrony. Technicians dealt with the rotational slowdown by adding "leap seconds," but if we can't count on Mother's timing, we've got software problems.
Interplanetary chaos: We're used to the strange idea that a giant asteroid killed off the dinosaurs. Newer findings suggest that the solar system might be chaotically unstable, and that this instability could have beckoned the monster monolith out of deep space.
Evidence: Sifting through ocean sediment, UCLA astrobiologist Bruce Runnegar found signs of climate changes corresponding to subtle perturbations in Earth's orbit. He modeled the wobble and found that it had created a substantial kink in the orbits of the inner planets 65 million years ago. The gravitational disruption at that time, he concluded, was powerful enough to pull chunks of rock out of the asteroid belt and send them hurtling toward Earth.
Implications: It's not enough that Earth gets clobbered every once in a while by stray rocks; the whole solar system is inherently off-kilter.
Killer supernovas: A rotten supernova may have once fried Earth's atmosphere, destroying ozone, killing sea life, and blasting the planet with cosmic rays.
Evidence: In 2002, Jesus Maiz-Apellaniz, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, found that a supernova-spewing cluster of stars was closer to Earth a few million years ago. Core samples dating to that era contain a rare iron isotope, likely debris from a stellar explosion. Massive extinctions of plankton at that time have yet to be explained.
Implications: If Mom settled in a bad galactic neighborhood, there's not much we can do about it.
Planetary insolvency: How would insurance companies pay for the devastation if an extinction-level asteroid were to collide with Earth? They wouldn't. They'd go broke. Worse yet, storms, floods, fires, and earthquakes could do the job first.
Evidence: A 2002 report issued by reinsurance behemoth Munich Re Group notes that insurance payouts for natural disasters are rising as climate change kicks in and more people in disaster-prone areas buy policies. If the trend continues, by 2050 payments will exceed the combined current GNP of every nation on the planet, no asteroid required.
Implications: In a brief 50 years, Mother Earth will be disrupting human enterprises faster than we can rebuild them. Earth will be bankrupt and no longer a viable commercial concern. What will life be like then? Well, nobody knows.
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Email Bruce Sterling at bruces@well.com.
By Bruce Sterling
Exploratory all-terrain vehicles are capering around Mars, yet our own planet remains bafflingly alien. We're Mother Earth's children and we think we know her well, but whenever some unexpected phenomenon rouses our curiosity, we uncover disturbing aspects of her secret life. Lately, the rush of peculiar discoveries has been downright embarrassing. Let's consider some of Mom's eccentricities - and their implications.
Global dimming: The sunlight reaching Earth's surface is getting feebler. Assuming there's nothing wrong with the sun, some unknown atmospheric factor is steadily darkening the planet.
Evidence: In 1985, Atsumu Ohmura, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, checked sunlight records in Switzerland and discovered that solar radiation had declined a startling 10 percent in 30 years. Subsequent studies found the same effect in Ireland, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and at both poles, but scientists remained in denial. A 2001 metastudy confirmed Ohmura's findings.
Implications: This is an entirely unexpected phenomenon, even more off the wall than global warming. Who put out the lights? How will we eat?
Unpredictable day length: Eighteenth-century astronomers suspected that Earth's daily rotation on its axis was slowing, and the advent of the quartz clock in the 1930s proved them right. But new evidence indicates the planet's spin has been speeding up since 1999. Nobody knows why.
Evidence: Atomic clock readings taken by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, prove that the slowing trend has inexplicably reversed.
Implications: Days of unpredictably varying length can affect communications, air traffic control, financial markets, telescopes, and any data interchange that requires absolute synchrony. Technicians dealt with the rotational slowdown by adding "leap seconds," but if we can't count on Mother's timing, we've got software problems.
Interplanetary chaos: We're used to the strange idea that a giant asteroid killed off the dinosaurs. Newer findings suggest that the solar system might be chaotically unstable, and that this instability could have beckoned the monster monolith out of deep space.
Evidence: Sifting through ocean sediment, UCLA astrobiologist Bruce Runnegar found signs of climate changes corresponding to subtle perturbations in Earth's orbit. He modeled the wobble and found that it had created a substantial kink in the orbits of the inner planets 65 million years ago. The gravitational disruption at that time, he concluded, was powerful enough to pull chunks of rock out of the asteroid belt and send them hurtling toward Earth.
Implications: It's not enough that Earth gets clobbered every once in a while by stray rocks; the whole solar system is inherently off-kilter.
Killer supernovas: A rotten supernova may have once fried Earth's atmosphere, destroying ozone, killing sea life, and blasting the planet with cosmic rays.
Evidence: In 2002, Jesus Maiz-Apellaniz, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, found that a supernova-spewing cluster of stars was closer to Earth a few million years ago. Core samples dating to that era contain a rare iron isotope, likely debris from a stellar explosion. Massive extinctions of plankton at that time have yet to be explained.
Implications: If Mom settled in a bad galactic neighborhood, there's not much we can do about it.
Planetary insolvency: How would insurance companies pay for the devastation if an extinction-level asteroid were to collide with Earth? They wouldn't. They'd go broke. Worse yet, storms, floods, fires, and earthquakes could do the job first.
Evidence: A 2002 report issued by reinsurance behemoth Munich Re Group notes that insurance payouts for natural disasters are rising as climate change kicks in and more people in disaster-prone areas buy policies. If the trend continues, by 2050 payments will exceed the combined current GNP of every nation on the planet, no asteroid required.
Implications: In a brief 50 years, Mother Earth will be disrupting human enterprises faster than we can rebuild them. Earth will be bankrupt and no longer a viable commercial concern. What will life be like then? Well, nobody knows.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Bruce Sterling at bruces@well.com.