Did You Know? Version 3.0

Version 3.0 of this great infographic video by Karl Fisch (modified by Scott McLeod).  If you like this one, you can still see the prior versions 1.0 and 2.0.

Humans!

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Here's a fun one for Friday.  Humans!  by Reza Rasoli.  Reminds me of The Matrix when Mr. Smith calls the humans a virus on the world.

Humans! is a 60 second global awareness PSA sensationalizing the excessive, all-consuming nature of the human being. This cute and naive Earth stands no chance against such an insatiable parasite. Witness its utter demise in a fun and sickening kind of way.

Thanks Hannu for the link!

TimeSpace - World

From The Washington Post, TimeSpace-World is an experiment in a visual way to see news stories from around the world.  You can specify the time period during a day that you want to see with the slider, and then click the stories to zoom into the map.  You can also enter search terms to view a smaller set of relevant stories.

TimeSpace is an interactive map that allows you to navigate articles, photos, video and commentary from around the globe. Discover news hot-spots where coverage is clustered. Use the timeline to illustrate peaks in coverage, and customize your news searches to a particular day or specific hour. (Many Washington Post stories appear at midnight; others are published throughout the day as news happens). Click the ? In the upper right for help.

 Link found from Mitul69 on Twitter

Space Debris video

Sticking with the Space Debris theme, the ESA (European Space Agency) has this hi-res video on their website showing how crowded Earth orbit has become from 1968-2000.  Same issue as the image yesterday, that the objects are not to scale.  At this scale you would expect constant collisions, but at actual scale you wouldn't be able to see any objects at all.

In this animation, catalogued space debris are shown accumulating around Earth in 4-year increments, including payloads, rocket bodies, and fragments. While the debris objects are not shown to scale, the representation of their density is accurate.

Space Debris image

Great image from MSNBC PhotoBlog that tries to demonstrate how much space junk we have put into orbit around Earth.  I think the downside of this image is that the satellites aren't to scale.  If they were all this large, they would be running into each other all the time.

If you have Windows, you can see this high-res version with Microsoft HDView, but it doesn't work on a Mac.  I was able to see it with Parallels running on my MacBook.

A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. A communications satellite belonging to US company Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite on February 12, 2009.  (ESA via AFP - Getty Images/)

Thanks Karen for sending in the link!

Mapped Up - Visual News ScreenSaver

From lifehacker.com, MappedUp is a visual RSS Reader/ScreenSaver that displays the location of news stories on a pixel map of the world.  MappedUp is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X.

"The Graph" - The Future of Solar Power

Known as "The Graph" in scientific circles, this chart projects the future of solar power.  It was highlighted in a Fast Company article in December 2008.

The Graph was created by a scientific organization that counsels the German government, but it has since become a prized piece of propaganda, embedded in glossy brochures and PowerPoint presentations by solar companies from California to gray-skied Saxony. At the left-hand, present-tense end of the scale, solar power is a microscopic pencil line of gold against the thick, dark bands of oil and natural gas and coal, an accurate representation of the 0.04% of the world's electricity produced by solar power as of 2006. The band grows slowly thicker for 20 years or so, and then around 2040 a dramatic inversion occurs. The mountain-peak lines indicating the various fossil fuels all fall steeply away, leaving a widening maw of golden light as solar power expands to fill the space. By 2060, solar power is the largest single band, and by 2100 it is by far the majority share.

ARRRRR! Where are the Pirates?!?

I had to post this one.  TorrentFreak.com revealed that The Pirate Bay has quietly released a Google powered map site that shows the locations of the bit-torrent clients.  Of course they carefully maintain the anonymity of their users.

You can click on the icon over a particular country to see their statistics.  From everything I hear, I would have thought the U.S. to have more pirates...ARRRRR!

Thanks Alwyn!

The Ultimate Mammal Family Tree

This is very cool.  Going back 166 million years to see each of the branches where we share common mammalian ancestors.  The PDF is available for download, and is very detailed.  You need to zoom a long way to even see that there is text naming each of the known mammals in existence today.  It's a radial family tree that also represents a timeline as you move outwards from the center.  Here we are:

 

 

ABC TV in Australia did a short video on the family tree hosted by Dr. Paul Willis, and he literally walks around the infographic describing different parts.  Well done, and seemed very reminiscent of Carl Sagan in some of his shows.  The video credits Robin Beck, a Mammalian Systematist as the University of NSW, of creating the family tree.  Here's the link to the ABC page where you can watch the video, or you can click on the image below.

Thanks for the link Alwyn!  Great find!

Modern Day Pirates

Pirates infographic from the Russian News and Information Agency.  These are real pirates at sea (not online pirates stealing software, music and movies).  433 victims and 292 kidnappings in 2007! (EDITED: there were only 5 deaths, not 433)

Article 100 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) requires that all states fight against piracy.  The annual damage from piracy to the global economy is around 15 billion Euros ($12 Billion).

This one and many other infographics are available online at the Russian News and Information Agency's infographics page.