There is a spot in the Sahara Desert that looks like the surface of the moon, and for good reason.  It appears that at least twenty meteorites struck this part of Africa millions of years ago.  One crater is 60 kilometers in diameter, and another is 42 kilometers wide.  The combined areas of all these impacts is probably greater than the impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Considering that the impact features are relatively black compared to the desert sand, it is remarkable that the craters have not been recorded in the Earth Impact Database of the Planetary and Space Science Centre, University of New Brunswick.  The largest of the circular areas is 60-kilometers wide with its center at Latitude: 18.820749, Longitude: 8.75553. The Northwest edge of the area is very distinct and located at Latitude: 19.072668, Longitude 8.602214. The Southwest edge of the area is at Latitude: 18.652018, Longitude: 8.980622.  I have submitted the coordinates to Dr. David Rajmon to try to confirm whether these features are indeed impact structures.

Learn more about the Agadez craters

The Earth’s weather patterns are changing.  Floods in Pakistan have destroyed many villages and killed thousands of people.  A heat wave in Russia has started forest fires, burned grain fields and filled the air in Moscow with smoke that has doubled the death rate from heart and lung ailments.  These extreme meteorological conditions are examples of events that provide further evidence that global warming is a real threat in our lifetime.

Moscow in the Western part Russia typically has summer temperatures that average 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but this summer has been very hot and very dry with temperatures as high as 100 degrees.  More than 500 forest fires have filled the air with smoke and ignited underground peat-bog fires.  The smoke has filled many buildings, and the State Historical Museum on Red Square was forced to close because it couldn’t stop its smoke detectors from going off.  The cloak of smoke turned the picturesque spires of St. Basil’s Cathedral into gray outlines.  The pedestrians that had to be outdoors had their faces hidden by surgical masks and water-soaked bandanas.

The heat and smoke in Moscow have nearly doubled the mortality rate in recent days.  The health minister, Andrei Seltsovsky, said that the daily death toll had risen from an average of between 360 and 380 to around 700. Ambulance calls were up by about 25% because of increases in heart and lung ailments and strokes.  Many residents are leaving the Moscow area temporarily to escape the polluted air.

In 2009, Russia was the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, but this year’s severe drought has destroyed at least 20 percent of the harvest and the fires have burned many fields.  Global commodity prices for wheat have been climbing since June as a result.  Fearing domestic deficits, Russia has imposed a ban on wheat exports and this has pushed prices even higher.

While Russia is suffering droughts and sweltering record temperatures, Pakistan has been deluged by torrential rains that brought death and destruction to many villages.  Millions of Pakistanis are affected by the worst floods to hit the country in decades, and the heavy rains make it very difficult to deliver supplies to communities in the Swat Valley that have been isolated by the high waters. According to UN estimates, as many as four million Pakistanis face food shortages after floods destroyed up to 570,000 hectares of crops in central Punjab province alone.  The prices for fruits and vegetables were reportedly soaring throughout Pakistan.

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth’s oceans and surface air.  Most of the temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century has been caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide which results from burning of fossil fuels.  As warming continues, the tawing of the permafrost in the northern latitudes will release methane which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  The warmer temperatures will evaporate more ocean water and create more violent storms and more unpredictable weather patterns.

Learn more about Earth’s Mass Extinctions

Late May and Early June is the season for mulberries in the United States.  Mulberry trees thrive in warm temperate and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.  Mulberries are widely distributed because the berries are a favorite food of the birds who scatter the seeds in their droppings.

A mulberry tree is not very distinctive, but if it is close to a sidewalk, the sidewalk will be covered with berries that fall from the tree.  The immature berries are white or light green, and they turn red and then dark purple as they ripen.  The berries can be harvested individually from the low-hanging branches, but it is easier to put a sheet under a branch of a tree and then shake the branch.  Some of the berries will bruise and the sheet will be stained with purple spots, but this is the best way to gather enough berries to make a pie or some preserves.  Wine can also be made from the berries.  Mulberries are rich in anthocyanins which are colorful pigments with beneficial health effects that may include the prevention of cancer.

There are many varieties of mulberry trees.  Silkworms will only eat the leaves of the white mulberry tree (Morus alba).  Silk production, or sericulture, has been practiced in China for at least 5,000 years.  Domesticated silkworms are entirely dependent on humans and no longer occur naturally in the wild. Domesticated silkworm moths cannot fly. They have been bred selectively for improving the quality of the cocoon and silk production.

Silk moths lay their eggs on the mulberry leaves, and the worms hatch after fourteen days.  The worms feed on the leaves continuously, and they molt as they grow.  After molting four times, the larvae enclose themselves in a cocoon of raw silk produced by their salivary glands.  Silk is basically a protein consisting of the amino acids glycine (60%), alanine (20%), and serine (20%).   Inside the cocoon, a silkworm transforms into a pupa that emerges as a moth in about three weeks.  The moths reproduce and die within five days, but in this time the female manages to lay from 200 to 500 eggs to continue the life cycle.

Silk is harvested by dipping cocoons in boiling water to kill the pupa and help unravel the thread.  Each cocoon contains a single silk thread that is about 300 to 900 meters long.  Silk from China was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans.  The silk road toward the west was opened by the Chinese in the 2nd century AD.  Large caravans carried huge quantities of beautiful textiles to the coasts of the Mediterranean.  Although silk has been displaced from many applications by synthetic fabrics, more than 80,000 metric tons of silk are produced yearly, principally by China and India.

Hiking in the mountains is a good way to get exercise and enjoy nature.  I recently went on a weekend vacation to Little Switzerland, North Carolina, and from there I traveled south toward Mount Mitchell National Park, and then north toward the city of Blowing Rock.

Little Switzerland is located on the Blue Ridge Parkway which is very colorful in the autumn when the leaves change colors.  The mountainous terrain provides majestic landscapes and great opportunities for photography, hiking and other outdoor activities.  The picture above was taken at dusk from the backyard of the Little Switzerland Inn where I stayed.  The blue color of the mountains turned to orange in the morning of the next day.  It was fortunate that the drizzle of the previous day cleared up and the sky was perfectly blue for the next two days.

When I got to Mount Mitchell, which is only 25 miles away from Little Switzerland, the trees and the ground were covered with snow from a storm that had blown through the day before.  The difference in altitude is responsible for a large temperature difference between the valleys and the tops of the mountains.  Mount Mitchell is the highest peak in the east coast, and the view from the top is wonderful in all directions.

The next day, I drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway toward Blowing Rock, North Carolina.  Blowing Rock is a community whose population booms in the summertime as Floridians overwhelmed by hot weather flock to seek relief in the cool mountain air.  Blowing Rock has many lodges, restaurants, cultural functions, and outdoor activities.  It is a favorite vacation destination that makes it possible to be close to nature and also many city amenities.

See Pictures of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina

In the spring, I planted seeds for radishes, broccoli, tomatoes and turnips in the pots of the penthouse.

Some garden vegetables and herbs sprouted from seeds that dropped from the plants that I had last year.  When I harvest lettuce, I only take the side leaves and let the center stem grow.  Eventually, the lettuce develops blooms like dandelions and, if I leave it alone, I get a pot full of lettuce the next year.  When I harvest dill, I always allow some of the yellow flowers to develop into seeds, and it comes back year-after-year.  The sunflowers that sprouted from dropped seeds had to be thinned out because there were just too many for my small pots.

I already had a nice crop of radishes this year, but the broccoli does not want to bloom.  I saw some small florets, but they were too small to pick and they opened into tiny blue flowers.  I have been eating some of the broccoli leaves.  They are thick and chewy like cabbage.  The turnips really surprised me.  They grew very fast, and I chopped the greens and diced the roots to make vegetable soup.

Yesterday, when I walked by the balcony, I saw a rainbow that was so close that it seemed to be growing out of one my planters.  I did not try to reach for it because it is a 20-story drop to the ground.

Wild blueberries can be found around lakes in acid soil.  The good thing about wild blueberries is that they are free, but you are competing with animals like birds, bears and deer.  Don’t go into the woods alone.  Go with someone else so that you can watch out for each other.  Picking berries in a farm is a lot easier.  In a couple of hours, you can collect many pounds of blueberries.  The cost of picking your own berries is usually less than half of what you would pay at a store.

Wear appropriate clothing because you may get some blueberry stains.  Wear comfortable shoes, and before you go out on the field, spray your pant legs, socks and shoes with insect repellent.  This simple precaution will keep ticks from crawling up your legs.  A hat with a large brim will protect you from the sun.  And don’t forget to take a basket or a bucket with a handle to hold the berries that you collect.  You will probably step on some blueberries in the field.  Clean your shoes when you get back home before stepping on any light-colored rugs.

The best blueberries are plump with a light gray-blue color.  Berries that look red are not completely ripe, but they have a nice tart taste.  Do not pick green blueberries; leave them on the bush so that they can ripen later.  Blueberries tend to grow in clumps.  There are two ways of harvesting them.  You can hold the bucket under the bunch with one hand, while you release the ripe ones into the bucket with the other hand.  But if your bucket is already too heavy to do this, you can leave the bucket on the ground, cup both hands under the bunch of blueberries, and with the tips of your fingers release the ripe ones into your hands.

Blueberries can be frozen without washing, and then they can be rinsed and drained before they are served.  It is also possible to wash the blueberries before freezing them, as long as they are drained well so that the berries freeze individually and do not stick to each other.

Blueberries are low in calories and very nutritious.  One cup of blueberries has 84 calories.  Most of these calories come from about 20 grams of carbohydrates.  One cup of blueberries has about 5% of the daily nutritional requirements of Vitamins B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B5 (pantothenic acid), and B6 (pyridoxine).  In addition, one cup of blueberries has 16% of the RDA for Vitamin C, 6% of Vitamin E, and 24% of Vitamin K.  The blue color in blueberries is due to anthocyanins, and other antioxidant pigments and phytochemicals that may play a role in reducing the risks of some diseases.

There are hundreds of recipes that use blueberries, but the simplest are always the best:

• Add blueberries to your cereal or oatmeal.
• Decorate a fruit salad with blueberries.
• Yogurt and blueberries – Yum!

This is my recipe for a blueberry milkshake with 344 calories:

1-1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 cup blueberries
2 tablespoons whey protein
1 teaspoon flax seed oil

Learn how to lose weight

Clovis spear point

Approximately 15,000 years ago, the Earth started coming out of an ice age.  There were glaciers several miles thick in North America which trapped great volumes of water, and the sea level was 130 meters (426 feet) lower than today.  As the weather warmed, a land bridge opened between Alaska and Siberia in what is now the Bering strait.  This allowed humans to walk from Asia to America and establish new colonies.

At the time, the wildlife in North America was like Africa.  There were huge animals like mammoths, giant sloths, camels, and saber tooth tigers.  The Clovis people, who had spread throughout what is now the United States, hunted these animals with finely-crafted flint spear points and arrow heads.  And then, around 12,900 years ago, all the large animals disappeared from North America, and with them, the Clovis culture.

It was long thought that the Clovis people had annihilated the megafauna, but new studies reveal that the large animals and the Clovis people themselves were destroyed by a comet explosion over south-east Canada, around the great lakes.  The explosion was so bright and so intense that it ignited much of the vegetation of North America.  The forest fires created a layer of black dirt which became mixed with a thin dusting of microscopic diamonds from the comet.[1,2]  The smoke and dust from the impact blocked the light of the sun for many years and the global temperature dropped, creating a rapid return to glacial conditions. Without vegetation, the large herbivores could not survive, and the carnivores were left with nothing to eat.  The catastrophe started what is now called the Younger Dryas cool interval, which was a period of cold weather lasting approximately 1300 years.

 

A band of dark sediment at Murray Spring, Arizona contains evidence for a cosmic impact that started an abrupt period of global cooling and a mass extinction in North America.  Similar deposits have been found in five other widely separated locations:  Bull Creek, Oklahoma, Gainey, Michigan, Topper, South Carolina, as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba, and Chobot, Alberta, in Canada. The highest concentrations of extraterrestrial impact materials occur in the Great Lakes area.

[1] D. J. Kennett, et al., Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer, Science 2 January 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5910, p. 94. DOI: 10.1126/science.1162819 [link]

[2] University of Cincinnati. “Exploding Asteroid Theory Strengthened By New Evidence Located In Ohio, Indiana.” ScienceDaily 3 July 2008. [link]

As soon as the weather got warm, I noticed that two bumblebees staked a claim in my terrace.  One patrols the north side, and the other guards the east side.  If they get into each other’s territory they scuffle, and sometimes they drop to the floor as they attack each other.

The bumblebees just seem to hover back-and-forth along “their” territory in spite of the high winds in the penthouse patio.  They do this all day long.  I don’t know what they eat to have all that energy.  There are no flowers yet.

The bumblebees don’t seem to be interested in people.  When I walk around in the patio, they just keep buzzing in their normal flight patterns.  However, as soon as another bumblebee comes into their visual range, they chase after it.  Sometimes, you will see a bumblebee take off in a hurry chasing after another bee that may be thirty feet away.  Bumblebees really have good eyesight and great reflexes!

Several years ago, before I knew that the bumblebees were harmless if left alone, I doused one with the hose and it fell into a pool of water and drowned.  I felt so guilty.  This animal was not hurting me, and it was not harming my home, but I killed it.  Now, I try to be more respectful of nature.

May 25, 2009 update. I was explaining to a visitor how the bumblebees are so protective of their territory. I told him that I wanted to try an experiment where we would toss a small stone toward each other in the area where the bumblebee was flying.  Sure enough, as soon as the stone was in the air, the bumblebee flew toward it and tried to attack it.  We stopped the game when the bumble bee got too close for our comfort.