#2 - Some other World Facts

World Facts

        

• The colorful night light display in the sky near Arctic Circle are called Northern lights and near Antarctic Circle are called Southern Lights. These are caused by intense solar wind activity on the sun. the sun sheds electrically charged particles to the Earth which then penetrate into the Earth’s magnetic field. They enter into upper atmosphere and bombard its gases which produced visible energy as arcs and streaks of colored light.
• El Nino and La Nina: the variations in the temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (warming and cooling known as El Niño and La Niña respectively) and in air surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific are coupled: the warm oceanic phase, El Niño, accompanies high air surface pressure in the western Pacific, while the cold phase, La Niña, accompanies low air surface pressure in the western Pacific. The extremes of this climate pattern's oscillations, El Niño and La Niña, cause extreme weather (such as floods and droughts) in different parts of the world.
• Each year the Amazon sends 20% of the Earth’s available fresh water into the Atlantic
• Panch Pokhri: it is highest named lake in the world found at 17,758feet on Mount Everest.

• Geography Milestones
• CA 200 B.C. : Eratosthenes of Cyrene’s Geographica
• CA A.D. 23 : Strabo’s 17- volume Geography
• CA A.D. 160 : Ptolemy’s Guide to Geography
• 1570: first collection of world maps, Orteliu’s Theater of the world
• 1625: first geography text book, Carpenter’s Geography Delineated Forth in Two Books
• Standard map projections are Conical, Cylindrical and Azimuthal Projections. Claudius Ptolemy was the first Scholar to describe a conical map projection in II century in Egypt.
• World Maps:
• The Van der Grinten projection was used for its political maps from 1922-1980s.
• The Winkel Tripel projection, adopted in 1998by National Geographic society (USA) is mostly chosen for general reference.
• The Robinson projection was favored from 1988-98 for textbooks teachings.
• The Mercator projection is very old and still majorly used.
• History of Mapping:
• In CIRCA 6000 B.C., earliest known map was created in Iraq.
• 1500 BC-1000AD, Polynesians navigate Pacific Ocean
• 1136 AD: map of China in grid system found engraved on stone
• 1420-1460: the navigator of Portugal Prince Henry advances navigation science
• 1540-1552: Munster maps continents
• 1569: Gerardus Mercator introduces world projection
• 1570: Abraham Ortelius(1527-98) makes portable atlas
• Babylonia and Egypt brings the earliest surviving maps. The latter rendered mythical lands and routes to afterlife and the former’s cartography was more practical.
• The French were the first to conduct official national land survey and produced 182 map sheets by 1787. The british adopted the same technique to produce the great Trigonometrical Survey of India in late 19th century.
• Theodolite is a basic surveying instrument used to measure horizontal and verticals angles, consisting of mounted, swiveling telescope with a level.
• Tellurometer is a device that measures the round trip travel of reflected microwaves to calculate distance.
• Astrolabe - it is originated in 6th century as a tool to tell time and observe the heavens. It was first used by Muslims to determine prayer times and the direction of Mecca. Medieval astrolabes were used to calculate the position of the sun and stars w.r.t the horizon and the meridian.
• Aerial photography - Wilbur Wright took the first aerial photograph from an airplane in 1909. It was widely used in World War II.
• Photogrammetry is the technique that uses terrestrial and aerial photographs for mapmaking and surveying.
• Sonar - it is the majorly used method to map the depth of the oceans. It uses the principle of eco. From the deepest ocean bottoms, sound waves take less than 15 seconds to return to the surface.
• LANDSAT – it is a series of unmanned scientific satellites equipped with cameras that is launched by USA in 1972. It has capability to rephotograph an area after every 18 days. Recently, Landsat 8 was launched in 2011.
• The GPS (Global Positioning System)
• Originally developed by military use, it is a space-age version of triangulation.
• It has 3 components: satellite orbiting around Earth, master control stations around the world, and receivers installed in all locations.
• When a GPS user on Earth calls for location information, signals pass from orbiting satellites to that of user’s receiver.
• At Equator, degree of latitude is equal to 68.708 miles and degree of longitude equals 69.171 miles.
• Greek astronomer Hipparchus invented formal system of latitude and longitude, divided Earth circle into 360 degrees, each degree having 60minutes and each minute having 60 seconds.
• An International Time zone system was established in 1884 that divided the globe into 24 zones with meridian at 15˚ intervals. The Prime Meridian was set at Greenwich in London at 0˚ longitude, with an international date line at 180˚, halfway around the word from Greenwich.
• Leap Years - the plan of adding a day after every 4 years was devised by Egyptians, as Earth takes approximately 365 and ¼ days to orbit around sun so an extra day accumulates after every 4 years. Romans created February 29 as standard leap day in 46 BC. It didn’t perfectly correct the problem as Earth orbits in 11min 14sec less than 365 and ¼ days. Thus, a correction was established in 1582 that added a leap year only to century years divisible by 400. Thus, 2000 was leap year buy 2100,2200 and 2300 will not.
• Geomagnetic poles are the points where the axis of the magnetic field intersects with Earth’s surface. Magnetic poles are indicated by compass needles that line up with Earth’s magnetic field. The location of the poles also changes as Earth experience wobbling on its spin.
• Van Allen Belts – discovered by Explorer 1 satellite and named after American Physicist James Van Allen, these are two doughnut-shaped magnetic rings around Earth that contain charged particles trapped from solar winds.
• The weight of the Antarctic ice cap deforms the shape of the Earth.
• The Tropic of Cancer runs through – Guangzhou (China), Bhopal (India), Muscat (Oman), Mazatlan (Mexico) and Little Exuma (Bahamas).
• The Tropic of Capricorn runs through – Longreach (Australia), Rehoboth (Namibia), Toliara (Madagascar), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Tubuai (French Polynesia).
• About one third of the world’s people live in latitudes between Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The seasons are caused by the Earth’s tilt when it orbits around the sun.
• Ibn Battuta (1304-69) earned the epithet Traveler of Islam. He travelled 75,000 miles which is 3 times the distance covered by Marco Polo across Asia, Africa and Europe.
• Neutron star is a body of densely packed neutrons that are formed after the explosion of a supernova. A neutron star, ten miles in diameter could have more mass than three stars comparable in size to our sun.
• Stars are born in an enormous cloud of interstellar dust and hydrogen gas called a Nebula. Nebulae are the building blocks of stars, galaxies and planets. Stars range in size from a white dwarf to an O star. Sun is a G star.
• The circumpolar stars circle at a point above the North Pole near Pole star and above South Pole near the star Sigma Octantis. International Astronomical Union officially recognized 88 constellations in 1928.
• Light from Milky Way takes 25,000 years to reach Earth. Milky Way Galaxy:
  • It is a spiral shaped galaxy
  • Total mass: 400 billion solar masses including dark matter (1 solar mass= 1.99* 1030 kg)
  • 100 billion total no. of stars
  • Distance of nucleus from sun : 26,000 light years
• Galaxies are of three different shapes: elliptical, spiral and irregular.
• Black Hole is formed when a large dying star collapses. It emits no light and has extremely strong gravitational pull. Its presence is detectable by radio astronomy equipment. Nothing passing within a certain distance of Black Hole can escape, not even light. The largest Black Hole recorded weighs as much as 18 billion suns and is orbited by another black hole.
• There are three types of Black Hole:
• Stellar Mass: formed from collapsed cores of giant stars and has a mass a few times greater than our Sun. e.g. Cygnus X-1
• Intermediate Mass: it is thousands of times bigger than Earth’s Sun. e.g. G1, M74
• Supermassive: largest type of galaxy and billion times larger than Sun. e.g. Milky Way Sagittarius A
• International Astronomical Union (IAU) lined up 8 planets to our solar system in 2006. Pluto has been added to the ‘Dwarf Planets’ with Ceres and Eris. Pluto and Eris are found beyond Neptune in the Kuiper belt. Pluto is now regarded as one of a group of orbiting bodies and not as a solitary planet.
• The Kuiper Belt is a smorgasbord of galactic debris and planetary leftovers that extends from orbit of Neptune to hundreds of millions of miles beyond Pluto.
• Sun is a 3rd generation star. It is 74% hydrogen and 25% helium. It accounts for 99% of the total matter in our solar system.
• Jantar Mantar – it is the world’s largest stone observatory built in 1727-34 by King Jai Sawai Singh II. It has 14 equipments to predict astronomical events and includes 90 feet tall, world’s largest sundial in the euipment.
• Yuri Gagarin(1934-68) was the first human to travel in space. He completed a single orbit in a one-man capsule Vostok I. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics launched Sputnik, world’s first communication satellite in 1957.
• 1961 – first men in space, 1963- first woman in space, 1972 – Apollo 17 (last moon mission)
• In 2008, Phoenix mission found ice on Mars, thus supported possibility of water supporting life.
• The deepest hole ever dug lies in Russia’s Peninsula near Norway that is drilled by geologists since 1970 to study Earth’s crust. It’s now over 40,000 feet deep.
• Tambora’, one of the deadliest volcanoes erupted in 1815 in Indonesia, killed 92,000 people. Dust after Tambora’s eruption lowered temperatures worldwide. ‘1816’ is considered as a ‘Year without summer’.
• The average rate of motion across the California’s San Andreas Fault is the same rate at which fingernails grow. The worst tsunami in history occurred after a 9.0 earthquake off the northwest coast of Sumatra in Indonesia on 26th December, 2004.
• Atoll – an atoll starts with an undersea volcanic eruption in the warm tropics, which builds a mid ocean island. Then coral begins to build an encircling reef around the island below the water surface.
• Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley.
• Layers of the atmosphere
• Thermosphere from 50 miles up to 360 miles. This layer seems cold to humans although X-rays from sun causes rise in temperature upto 3100˚F. The reason is dispersion of molecules in this layer.
• Mesosphere: extends from 30 to 50miles above Earth surface and has temperature around -200˚F.
• Stratosphere: extends from 6 to 30 miles. Ozone layer is present here that absorbs sun’s rays and mostly jets travel in this layer.
• Troposphere: from ground level of the Earth to 6 miles above. It is the warmest layer and location of cloud formation and weather origination.
• Types of Global winds are Polar easterlies, Westerlies, Northeast tradewinds, Southeast tradewinds. World famous winds:
• Sirocco winds: hot spring winds that blow from African Sahara to the Southern European coastline.
• El Norte: cold and strong wind that causes a rapid temperature drop across Texas and Gulf of Mexico.
• Le Mistral: violent wind that last 3 months in French Mediterranean.
  
• The Doldrums: these are the band of nearly still air along the equator, where northerly and southerly trade winds meet.
• The Buran: strong northeasterly wind in Siberia and Central Asia that creates wind blizzards.