Graphing the deepest ocean to the highest peak

by Justin Delaney on

The surface of the Earth plummets deeper than 35,000 feet in the Mariana Trench and reaches up to the lofty heights of the Himalaya mountain range. The rest of our planet exists somewhere in between. Every hill, coral reef, dance contest, and disappointing vacation takes place at some point between these two extremes. This amazing graph by NOAA and NASA details some of the more significant earthly markers in height and depth, such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the resting place of the RMS Titanic, and the highest peak – Mt. Everest.

Source OurAmazingPlanet.com, Exploring the wonder and beauty of planet Earth through exclusive news, features and images.

Image via Justin Delaney

Video: STUCK in the Dallas airport

by Elizabeth Seward on

STUCK from Joe Ayala on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever been stuck in any airport overnight, you’ll appreciate this video titled STUCK. When Larry Chen and Joe Ayala found themselves stranded overnight in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport, they decided to have a little bit of fun with their predicament. The two filmed themselves at the airport, making the best of the overnight stay. I was once stuck overnight in the Detroit airport. I wish I’d had the wherewithal to conjure up the fun-having skills these guys had.

If you’ve been stuck in an airport overnight, tell us about it! I want to read your gruesome stories in the comments on this piece.

Photo Gallery- Abandoned Schools

by Chris Owen on

Over the years, with declining student enrollment and big budget cuts, many school districts are closing schools. Sometimes districts lease old buildings out to charter schools, businesses, or nonprofit organizations, but often the buildings simply sit empty and fall into disrepair. One organization has a plan to change that.

GOOD, the integrated media platform for people who want to live well and do good, had an idea. In an effort to “Repurpose” abandoned schools, GOOD readers were asked to imagine a way to repurpose an abandoned school building so that the space once again serves the needs of its community.

Caroline Hadilaksono came up with the idea of a Farm to Table Urban Food Center that creates “an all-in-one ecosystem for food, where members of a community would be able to grow, prepare, distribute, and consume food, all in one place” says Hadilaksono on the GOOD website.
The plan would include an outdoor urban farm; forward-thinking indoor hydroponic farms and vertical gardens; a for-profit cafe, farmer’s market, and produce store; and a nonprofit kitchen for feeding the homeless community. Classroom space would be used to educate the public on cooking, nutrition and agriculture classes.

Our photo gallery of Abandoned Schools around the United States offers a bunch of candidates for what looks to be a great repurposing idea.

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The Secret Lost World of New York’s Finger Lakes

by Paul Brady on

The funny thing about road trips is that you end up spending a lot of time behind the wheel of your car. There’s always another city to get to, asphalt to be consumed, another waypoint to hit. So by the time I pulled into Watkins Glen, a small town in New York’s Finger Lakes region, I was ready to get out and stretch my legs.

Fortunately, the village is home to one of the coolest state parks in New York, hidden in plain sight, right off the main drag.

Traveling the American Road – Watkins Glen State Park


Watkins Glen State Park is home to a “staircase of waterfalls” that cascade down through innumerable layers of shale and sandstone, guarded by towering cliff faces from which heavy drops of condensation fall, splashing on hikers’ heads. It’s a Lost World here, with electric green ferns dangling, water whooshing over ledges and swirling in natural Jacuzzis, mist hanging heavily in the air and amateur naturalists armed with telescoping aluminum walking sticks and floppy, broad-brimmed hats. (Another secret of the park is that the pathway along Glen Creek, while sometimes slippery, is hardly a technical hike.)

The park is a verdant escape, a place for a one-hour break from reality, planted right in the heart of a town best known as a car-racing capital, the home to Watkins Glen International, one of the country’s most storied road tracks. There’s no doubt the park gets crowded on the weekends, but during my Wednesday morning visit? I was happy to have my time outside the car to myself.

Interstellar travel dreams wanted

by Chris Owen on

Have you ever thought or dreamed of what it might be like traveling to distant planets, perhaps in a different solar system? If so, the people that might very well make that happen in the next 100 years or so want your ideas.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA’s Ames Research Center will host the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium in Orlando, Florida from September 30 to October 2. They hope to discuss “the practical and fantastic issues man needs to address to achieve interstellar flight one hundred years from now,” the agencies told PCMag.

That’s where you come in.

“This won’t just be another space technology conference-we’re hoping that ethicists, lawyers, science fiction writers, technologists and others, will participate in the dialog to make sure we’re thinking about all the aspects of interstellar flight,” David Neyland, director of the Tactical Technology Office for DARPA, said in a statement. “This is a great opportunity for people with interesting ideas to be heard, which we believe will spur further thought, dreaming and innovation.”
The conference has been divided into different topics and proposals can relate to those topics or cover a completely new topic. Choose from time-distance solutions; education, social, economic, and legal considerations; philosophical and religious considerations; biology and space medicine; habitats and environmental science; destinations; and communication of the vision.

“The genesis of this study is to foster a rebirth of a sense of wonder among students, academia, industry, researchers and the general population to consider “why not” and to encourage them to tackle whole new classes of research and development related to all the issues surrounding long duration, long distance spaceflight” says DARPA on the symposium website.

Think this is a silly idea? NASA and DARPA remind us that in 1865, author Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon, a story of sending humans to the moon. About 100 years later, that happened.

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Flickr photo by somegeekintn