Massive Underground Ocean Exists Beneath Earth's Crust

Summary: The first terrestrial discovery of Ringwoodite confirms the presence of massive amounts of water 400 to 700 kilometers beneath Earth's surface. Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone. Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists haven't been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths.

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.

The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet's deep mantle. [The World's Biggest Oceans and Seas]

Water covers 70 percent of Earth's surface and one of its many functions is to act like a lubricant for the movement of continental plates.

The crust thickness averages about 18 miles (30 kilometers) under the continents, but is only about 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the oceans. It is light and brittle and can break. In fact it's fractured into more than a dozen major plates and several minor ones. It is where most earthquakes originate. The Earth’s radius is about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers). The main layers of its interior are in descending order: crust, mantle and core. The mantle is more flexible – it flows instead of fractures. It extends down to about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below the surface. The core consists of a solid inner core and a fluid outer core. The fluid contains iron, which, as it moves, generates the Earth’s magnetic field. The crust and upper mantle form the lithosphere, which is broken up into several plates that float on top of the hot molten mantle below. SOURCE: LiveScience

Down To The Earth's Core

Down to the Earth's Core takes viewers from the sidewalk to the center of the planet in one epic unbroken shot. Using spectacular computer generated imagery; the camera smashes through almost 9 000 kilos of solid rock to explore the hidden world beneath our feet. 

Experience an earthquake inside the San Andreas Fault, blast out of a volcano, encounter bizarre cave-dwelling creatures and enter caves full of giant crystals -- all inside planet Earth. 

As the camera lowers into Earth's bosom, the planet's extraordinary story, is laid bare layer by layer, showing how prehistoric forests became modern-day fuel, witnessing the dinosaur's cataclysmic death, and watching as stalactites form and gold grows before our eyes. 

Deeper, beyond the reach of any mine, any drill, we find wonders beyond imagination: towering molten metal tornadoes, forests of solid iron crystals, until we reach the strangest, least understood place on the planet -- the core. To infinity and beyond, this is Earth like never before.

All The Water On Earth

If you could pull all the water in the ocean, the atmosphere, and on top of or beneath the surface of Earth into a ball, it would measure only about 950 (1,500km) miles across. 

By comparison, the moon is 2,160 (3,475km) in diameter. Of this, only about 3 percent is freshwater, and of that only about two-thirds is in a form or a location that is easily accessible to humans. 

(Animation by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Fabulous image representing “all the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc.”, on a single sphere.

In the same scale, at right, “all the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density.”

It’s by Adam Nieman / Science Photo Library (US). Some have doubted the accuracy of the graphic, but Dan Phiffer (check the link above) also updated his post with more info verifying that the representation is correct.

Via: "Forgetomori"

A Martian Dream

The Mars we all know and love/hate (NASA)

Here's WhatTthe Red Planet Would Look Like With Earth-Like Oceans and Life

What if instead of dust and rocks, our planetary neighbor Mars were a bit more lush? What if it had oceans, an Earth-like atmosphere, and green life coating its land? These are the questions Kevin Gill, a software engineer living in New Hampshire, sought to answer with his project, A Living Mars.

Gill modeled the Mars terrain in an open-source learning program of his own creation, jDem846, and then set a sea level beneath which everything appeared flat and blue. Then, he brought that model into GIMP, where he painted features into the land based on NASA's Blue Marble: Next Generation imagery. He decided -- not all too scientifically, he admits -- which places seemed like they would be verdant, and which would be deserts. 

"For example," he explains, "I didn't see much green taking hold within the area of Olympus Mons and the surrounding volcanoes, both due to the volcanic activity and the proximity to the equator (thus a more tropical climate). For these desert-like areas I mostly used textures taken from the Sahara in Africa and some of Australia. Likewise, as the terrain gets higher or lower in latitude I added darker flora along with tundra and glacial ice. These northern and southern areas textures are largely taken from around northern Russia. Tropical and subtropical greens were based on the rainforests of South America and Africa."

Lastly, he brought the image back into jDem846 where he rendered it as a sphere and added clouds and tweaked the lighting. "This wasn't intended as an exhaustive scientific scenario," he writes, "as I'm sure (and expect) some of my assumptions will prove incorrect. I'm hoping at least to trigger the imagination, so please enjoy!"

Gill made two different projections. The first was of Mars' eastern hemisphere:

The second, playing with a slightly different palette, was of Mars's western hemisphere. You can see Olympus Mons on the horizon, and the Valles Marineris canyons near the image's center.

Looks like home, maybe a bit, just with a foreign geography. But more than that, what the images convey is a sense of Earth's uniqueness -- a reminder that as far as we have searched, we've yet to see anything that looks even vaguely like our planet, the only place we know of where life has taken hold.

Via: "The Atlantic"

Dakuwaqa's Garden

Underwater Footage From Fiji & Tonga 

 Posted by "CavalierZee"



Underwater footage shot whilst scuba diving in the Fiji islands and Tonga. Featuring colorful coral reefs, huge schools of tropical fish, sharks, humpback whales, underwater caves, scuba divers and much more marine life from the south Pacific. 


The coral reefs of the south Pacific are alive with a huge variety of tropical fish and marine critters. A great way to explore them is to scuba dive with the Nai'a liveaboard based in Fiji. I was working as the Nai'a's video pro when I shot this footage. See http://www.naia.com.fj/ 

The underwater footage was shot in high definition HDV 1080i 60i with my Sony HVR-Z1P HDV camera in a Light & Motion Bluefin HD housing. The footage was converted to 720p for YouTube using my high quality method:
http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-video/Vegas-YouTube-Vimeo.htm

The music is "In the Meadows" by Stephen Richard Thomas Brown, whose wonderful work you can find here:
http://www.myspace.com/stephenrichardthomasbrown
http://stephenrichardthomasbrown.bandcamp.com/
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=276599

View the names of all the dive sites and names of all the tropical fish and other marine life by turning on closed captions with the CC button. Here is the full shot list of species and dive sites. You can find more complete information at http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-videos/Fiji-and-Tonga/scuba-diving.htm :

0:04 - "E6", Bligh Water, Fiji
0:06 - Reticulated Dascyllus at "Maytag"
0:09 - "Mushrooms", Namena Marine Reserve
0:11 - "Coral Corner"
0:13 - "Maytag"
0:15 - "Coral Corner"
0:17 - "Mellow Yellow"
0:20 - "E6"
0:22 - Chironephthya corals at "Mount Mutiny"
0:24 - Cave at "Lion's Den" near Wakaya Island
0:28 - Chironephthya corals at "The Whole Shebang"
0:31 - "The Whole Shebang"
0:33 - "Mellow Yellow"
0:35 - "E6"
0:37 - "Kansas" at North Save-a-Tack
0:39 - Lyretail anthias at "Howard's Diner"
0:43 - "Maytag"
0:45 - Banded sea krait at "Jim's Alley" near Gau Island
0:52 - Pacific sailfin tang
0:54 - Button polyps at "Humann Nature"
0:56 - Urn ascidians at "Becky's" near Makogai Island
0:59 - Pom pom Xenia
1:03 - Barberi clownfish
1:05 - Barberi clownfish at "Cat's Meow"
1:07 - Barberi clownfish
1:11 - Pink anemonefish
1:13 - Blueband gobies
1:16 - Firefish at Lua Lafalafa Reef, Tonga
1:18 - Orbicular batfish
1:20 - Teira batfish over the "Nasi Yalodina" wreck
1:22 - Elongate surgeonfish
1:24 - Blackfin barracuda
1:27 - Bigeye trevallies at "Grand Central Station"
1:29 - Schooling bannerfish at "School House"
1:31 - Pacific double-saddle butterflyfish
1:33 - Blue and gold fusiliers over yellow scroll coral at Nigali Passage
1:35 - Barcheek trevally at "Tetons"
1:37 - Golden damsel & bluestreak cleaner wrasse
1:40 - Blue and gold fusilier and bluestreak cleaner wrasse
1:42 - Sunburst anthias at "Palako's Patch"
1:44 - Speckled damsel spawning at Uoleva Point
1:46 - Arc-eye hawkfish at "Anthias Avenue"
1:38 - Longsnout flathead at Luangahu Reef
1:51 - Ribbon eel at "Tetons"
1:53 - Giant moray
1:55 - Juvenile rockmover wrasse at "Two Thumbs Up"
1:57 - Firefish
2:00 - Red lionfish
2:02 - Whitetip reef shark under "Kansas"
2:04 - Grey reef shark
2:10 - Sinularia corals
2:12 - Blue-spotted puffer
2:15 - Blackspotted puffer at Ha'afeva Island, Tonga
2:17 - Blue-green Chromis
2:21 - Red lionfish
2:23 - Zebra lionfish at Luangahu Reef
2:28 - Coral grouper at "Becky's"
2:30 - Dwarf hawkfish
2:32 - Scorpionfish
2:34 - Randall's prawn-goby
2:36 - Signalfin goby
2:39 - Gorgeous prawn goby & snapping shrimp
2:41 - Weedy pygmy seahorse
2:43 - Ornate ghost pipefish
2:47 - Ornate ghost pipefish eggs in brooding pouch
2:50 - Christmas tree worm
2:53 - Manta ray at Vatu Vai
2:58 - Hawksbill turtle
3:03 - Humpback whale mother and calf at Ha'apai, Tonga
3:10 - Malabar grouper
3:15 - Honeycomb coral
3:19 - "Lion's Den"
3:21 - "Mushrooms"
3:23 - "Coral Corner"
3:25 - "Mushrooms"
3:28 - Whitemargin unicornfish
3:30 - Dendronephthya soft coral
3:32 - Bigeye barracuda
3:35 - "Gomo"
3:39 - "Nasi Yalodina" wreck
3:41 - "E6"
3:43 - Lance blenny
3:45 - Triplespot blenny
3:48 - Valentini puffer
3:50 - Parrotfish at Nukupule
3:52 - Bluespotted ribbontail ray
3:54 - Blotched fantail ray at Ha'afeva Island
3:56 - Orange mantis shrimp
3:59 - Sexy shrimp
4:01 - Day octopus
4:04 - Fuchsia flatworms mating
4:07 - Bullock's Hypselodoris
4:09 - Spanish dancer
4:14 - Spanish dancer at Ha'afeva Island
4:18 - Brown booby at Vatu-i-ra

Dakuwaqa is a shark-god from Fijian mythology. Learn about him athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEHydvbCeVg