you are here

This will be a first for me: pointing to a Cool Space Picture. But this one is neater than most.

Here. Click on the photo to enlarge it and get the full effect.

That blue half-sphere near the top: that's Earth. With its Moon next to it.

That bigger full sphere near the bottom: that's Jupiter. Accompanied by some of its moons.

Earth. Jupiter. In the same frame.

Taken from Mars. Of course.

Down in the comments is a schematic showing how the planets were in the same frame, why they're lighted as they are, and why Jupiter appears not that much larger than Earth.

via madrobins

earthquake story

Many have been adding their memories of Loma Prieta which was 20 years ago this afternoon. So here is mine.

I was at my part-time job at the public library in Monterey, 90 miles from home. There was no panic, but we knew what to do when a big one hits. When we emerged from under our desks, the power was out and many books had fallen from the shelves. So we locked up and went home. I was due to leave for the week anyway. Walking outside, I felt an aftershock, the only earthquake I've ever felt while outside.

On the drive home, I listened to the news station. Uncertain reports of bridge collapses filled the air. The epicenter was reported to be close to my usual route home of US 101. (It later emerged to be somewhat further north.) Should I take the mountain road instead? Hmm, probably not: with a quake this big, exact closeness to the epicenter won't make that much difference. (A wise decision: the mountain road was blocked.) When I crossed the fault line and found that none of the giant sandstone boulders overlooking the road had fallen on it, and everything was still neatly lined up in the window of the nearby antique shop, I relaxed. It was a big one, but not a world-destroyer.

In Gilroy the power was still on, so I was able to refuel the car, without which I would have had to stop in Morgan Hill. I tried here again for one of several times to call home: no open lines. Proceeding slowly in the dark - by luck I had exited the freeway and missed the one damaged spot - I got home about 8:30, an hour and a half later than normal.

B. had been eating leftover Ditto banquet food. A makeshift bookcase had fallen over. A few things were broken, the cats ran and hid, no serious damage. Power was out. In the morning we took a walk around the quiet but intact neighborhood.

I spent the next two days helping to reshelve books at my other part-time library job. By the time I was due back at Monterey next Monday everything was normal.

We keep instinctively braced here in California. We're on the edge, but considering the lack of hurricanes, tornadoes, deep freezes, searing heats, and volcanoes featured elsewhere in the U.S. - not to mention the fact that the Midwest and East have been known to have rare major earthquakes for which they're less prepared than we - I don't think we're worse off than anywhere else.

The lesson of Loma Prieta is this. The magnitude was 7.1 and 63 people were killed, most of them in the one freeway collapse in Oakland. One year earlier, a quake of the same magnitude hit Armenia, and 25,000 people were killed. The difference in casualties may be accounted for with two words: Soviet construction.

Earthquakes by themselves kill few. What kills people is buildings collapsing or shedding bricks. Build reinforced buildings, and know what to do when the shake comes - protect your head from anything that might fall on it, and your body from collapsible zones - and you're as well prepared for an earthquake, if not the aftermath, as anybody.