Tag Archives: map

Map of all nuclear test sites – 2000 tests in all

Between 1945 and 2008 more than 2000 nuclear test detonations were conducted.

Amazing. More than 2000 nuclear weapons have been detonated on Earth!

This map (click through for the map) shows the locations of all the test sites. Click on each icon to read more about the site and how many tests were conducted there.

The four test sites related to Africa and South Africa interested me.

Seems like South Africa collaborated with Israel in testing a nuclear weapon in 1979 south-east of our coast.
The Americans conducted secret test detonations just 1800km from Cape Town in 1958 as part of Operation Argus
The French conducted 14 nuclear tests in Algeria during the early 60’s

African nuclear test sites

Global flights visualisation

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This is a pretty cool video visualizing global commercial flights over a 24 hour period. It’s pretty amazing to see just how much air travel there is. And how much of it is between the States and Europe.

Click through to see the actual video. Yellow dots are individual flights.

Visualization of commercial flights around the world. Yellow dots are individual flights

Map showing Armstrong and Aldrin’s activity on the moon

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Here is a cool map showing the astronaut activity on the first lunar landing back in 1969 (yes it really happened – don’t be a daft conspiracy theorist). Produced by NASA it basically shows the activity of the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on that first landing.

The map has been superimposed on a soccer/football pitch to give an idea of scale – these guys didn’t walk very far.

A chunk of ice the size of a small country has broken off the Antarctic

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There is quite a lot of news at the moment about a large piece (a little smaller than Swaziland) of ice shelf that recently broke off Antarctica. You can read about it here: National Geographic, Wired, BBC.

Ice shelves are made of ice already floating on the ocean so this incident won’t raise sea levels, but these shelves are holding back glaciers which will raise see levels. As the floating ice shelves break away there is nothing to hold back the land based glaciers which run faster and do raise sea levels.

These ice shelves are notoriously sensitive to warming (another one broke off during a brief warming period around 1920) so they do act as good early indicators of global warming happening – apparently “average Antarctic temperatures have risen 3 degrees (Celsius) over the past 50 years!”

If you are interested there is an busy debate going on in the comments section of the Wired article. Even if you aren’t that interested, I think you should be worried.
Ice melting in the Antarctic

Before and after satellite photos of our impact on the environment

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This is an interesting gallery before and after satellite photos of mankind’s impact on the environment. They come from a new book called Fragile Earth and are pretty interesting. It can be quite sobering to see what a real impact we are having on our environments

This one shows a rainforest ecosystem around the Iguacu falls in South America getting nailed. Feb 1973 to May 2003

This is Lake Chad in Africa disappearing between 1972 and 1987 – largely due to irrigation projects. Things have actually gotten worse since the second photo was taken… I have blogged on this one before.

Finally, this is jungle in Bolivia getting turned into a major agricultural area.

Symonds drops a streaker

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Today Australia lost another cricket final when they were beaten by India. That’s pretty pleasing, but what I really enjoyed was a moment when a streaker running past Andrew Symonds was dropped by a deadly shoulder charge.

The force of Symonds’ shoulder sent the man to the ground and security and police swarmed before taking him from the field.

The Aussie cricketers are often extremely annoying but this incident has given me an excuse to like a great player like Symonds. Here is a report from Cricinfo.

Update: I saw this series showing the incident which I liked. The second image is awesome – the guy is flying!