Laguna, Banten, Indonesia
The New Planetary Habitability Index
Astronomers often estimate the habitability of extrasolar planets and moons based mostly on their temperatures and distance from the nearest star. A team of astrobiologists has now proposed a rubric that includes four groups of variables, each of which is weighted by its importance to sustaining life.
(via)
![tuesday-johnson:
ca. 1865, [daguerreotype of the wreck of the steamer Calypso], Thomas M. Easterly
via the Missouri History Museum](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rvu2SNrX1qa51rdo1_1280.jpg)
Graphic shows entire amount of water on Earth.
If you took all of the water on Earth and (somehow) made it into a sphere, it would be 1,385 kilometers in diameter, with a volume equal to about 1,386 million cubic kilometers.
By comparison, the Earth measures a staggering 12,256 km in diameter, dwarfing the little blue sphere — a “little blue sphere” that contains more than enough water to cover over 70 percent of our planet’s surface, and fill every life form on Earth with H2O molecules. (Those looking for a similar size comparison at home can use a basketball to represent the dry Earth, and a nickel to illustrate the diameter of our water sphere.)
(Source: io9.com)
"As children develop cognitively, they begin to understand that the threat of death lurks behind their early fears of big dogs, monsters, the dark, and so forth. Their basis of security shifts from the parents to large cultural concepts, such as deities, their nation, and cultural ideals. That is, from being good little boys and girls in the eyes of their parents to being good, valued Christians or atheists, Americans or Germans, artists or scientists. The result of this socialization process is fully enculturated adults who sustain psychological security, despite knowing how vulnerable and mortal they are, by maintaining two psychological constructs: our faith in our worldview and our sense of self-worth."
— How The Unrelenting Threat Of Death Shapes Our Behavior
The Atlantic | Hans Villarica (via curiositycounts)
