“ To an observer in space, humanity's footprints on the surface of the Earth are large and varied. They include the regular patterns of irrigated cropland, straight lines of roads and railways running across continents, reservoirs on river systems, and the cement rectangles of ports and seawalls along coastlines. But what about humanity's signature footprint - cities? By day, cities viewed from space can blend into the countryside, or appear as gray smudges, depending on the style of development and size of the urban area.”

Cities at night: the view from space

“ Welcome to the Earth as Art Gallery! Here you can view our planet through the beautiful images taken by the Landsat-7 satellite - and most recently, the Terra Satellite's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). This gallery of images uses the visceral avenue of art to convey the thrilling perspective of the Earth that satellites provide to the viewer.”

Our Earth as Art

Scientists measure Earth's history

“ I do think a lot about how inconsequential humans are in the big scheme of things. We have not yet even proved we're a viable species compared to dinosaurs, for example. Dinosaurs were around from 230 million years ago to 66 million years ago. That's a long time. They were very successful. Humans have been around for maybe a million years. It doesn't look like we're going to have that long of a legacy but we'll see.”
Samuel A. Bowring
(professor of geology at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences)

I have been thinking and saying that for years but this is the first time I see it written by somebody else, by a MIT's professor of Geology not some other opinionated dude like me. I also always use dinosaurs as a comparison..

“ EARTHTIME is an organized, community-based international scientific initiative aimed at sequencing Earth history through the integration of high-precision geochronology and quantitative chronostratigraphy. Our main goal is the development of the geochronological techniques necessary to produce temporal constraints with uncertainties approaching 0.1 percent of the radioisotopic ages.”

EARTHTIME

Beautiful Earth images:

• Blue Marble explained
• Blue Marble, next generation
• Visible Earth
• Earth Observatory