Earth Feature

One of the least understood weather phenomena and seemingly a close cousin of earthquake lights, is ball lighting. Though with some distinctive properties of its own, ball lightning has been witnessed and researched for over 200 years. A typical ball is 4 inches upward to 2 feet or more in diameter and glows red, orange, or yellow in color, and sometimes blue or white. To date there is still debate on what ball lighting is and how it is formed. With so many eyewitness accounts but no way to study it physically, it is clear there is something creating these balls of light, but only theory to explain it. Some say electricity from the atmosphere, others radiation and gamma rays. Some theorize small particles from meteorites, charged electrically in some way, while falling through our atmosphere.

Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News reported that In 2007 Brazilian scientists creating ball lightning in a lab. Physicist Antonio Pavao and doctoral student Gerson Paiva of the Federal University of Pernambuco have created orbs of electricity about the size of golf balls that mimic natural ball lightning. They created this "ball lightning" by applying an electrode to silicon wafers to create electrified silicon vapor. The vapor then sparks orbs of ball lightning that bounce across the laboratory floor.

This was our Halloween feature for October 2008. I Thought we would share this "tid-bit" about the Pallad Bat during the Halloween celebration. Pallid bats are mainly North American bats, and they do consume insects as other bats. What makes the pallid bat different from most bats is they actually catch their food on the ground, rather than while in flight like most other bats. A feature of the pallid bat is it has big ears, and utilizes these ears to hear it's prey on the ground. This makes the pallid bat an insectivore, feeding on small insects such as crickets. They can hear and catch their prey in a second from over 15 feet away.

Pallid Bats have another interesting feature about them. They can control their body temperature. They can adjust their temperature to suite the environment. This type of bat does hibernate during the winter, and it uses this ability of adjusting it's temperature during this time also. This is called being heterothermic and homoethermic. The pallid bat does it's mating business in the fall. The mothers can carry 1 to 4 embryos and the gestation period is about 60 days. It is common with this bat to have twins on a regular basis. The young feed of the milk from their mothers until they can eat insects. Even then some still feed off their mothers while also eating insects.

Here we bring you, not to snow as a whole, but a break-down of snow into its smallest form, a snowflake. Also referred to as a snow crystal. I stumbled upon this mans work of over ten years and found it so interesting I wanted to share it with you too. A guy by the name of Kennth Libbrecht takes these type photographs of snowflakes. He has studied them for a long time and has found a unique way to capture their beauty. Using a photomicroscope to capture them he has managed to decipher how they form.

Up in the clouds under the right conditions, condensation starts to freeze in tiny droplets. As the condensation builds up on the surface of each of these droplets, they begin to increase in size, and eventually start branching off in all directions. Something interesting is they always seem to form in six given directions and form a classic hexagonal shape as they develop further into a complete snowflake. Although most all snowflakes form in this six pointed form, they all tend to look different because they are all formed at random and under different environments. Considering the wind, temperature, the amount of condensation, and other factors, makes each snowflake unique. Finally the snowflake falls to the ground, but we don't see them as you see them in these pictures. To the naked eye we see a glimpse of the unique patterns if we look closely. These photomicroscope pictures show us what they look like in great detail.

Clouds are one of the most obvious things we see floating around in our atmosphere on a daily basis. So naturally we should add them here in our Natural Air category. Clouds are basically a mass of condensed water vapors. Once enough of these vapor water droplets condense together we start to see a visible cloud. Most clouds appear to be white when they are thin enough to allow sunlight to pass through them. Other clouds appear to be dark or grey because they are so thick that sunlight cannot pass through them easily, so they appear darker. In the winter seasons where you have colder temperatures, these water vapors may transform into ice particles, producing thick heavy "snow-clouds".

Clouds effect our earth on every level considering they can control our temperatures here on the ground. Clouds can refect sunlight back into space causing the temperature to be cooler on the ground, if the clouds are thick enough and span a large area. They alternatively can also cause the ground temperature to remain heated by "trapping" the air below the clouds. This is caused by the clouds absorbing the infrared radiation acting as a form of insulation keeping the heat below them. So clouds play an important role in protecting earth life on all levels. Especially plant life.

Here is some astronomy on the moon, a natural satellite of Earth. Visible in our night sky, always lighting the darkness by reflection of the sun, for the new day to come. Said to be over 4.5 billion years old it moves eastward across our sky each night. The moon follows the same path as the sun, from east to west.

The moon takes about a month to go through its own cycle of phases being measured from one "new moon" to the next new moon. because the earth is rotating around the sun the calendar month is shorter. The moon orbits earth and takes about 29 and a half days to complete its month, called the "lunar month".

Although the moon appears to be slow from our view-point on the ground, it is actually moving over 2,200 miles per hour around the earth, completing an orbit of about 1.4 million miles. It appears to move slowly to us because it is 250,000 miles away from earth. Due to the unique rotations of earth and the moon, as we travel around the sun, we only see one side of the moon. A portion of the moon is not visible to us, because when that portion is facing us, we are on the opposite side of the earth. If the earth was transparent, like glass, and we could see through the earth, then we would be able to see this unseen portion.

The moon is about 2,000 miles in diameter and cluttered with many craters all over its surface. Scientists say these craters were made by meteor showers hitting the moon over 3 and a half billion years ago. The surface also reveals mountains, valleys, and lava plains. The moon does not have an atmosphere, contains no water, wind or weather phenomena.

Recently in late 2009 NASA sent two satellites toward the moon with the intention of sending the first one crashing into the surface. The second satellite was to follow behind it at 4 minutes, to take pictures of the first impact and exploded debris that flew into a cloud around the impact zone, of the first crash. The mission was successful. What they found in the pictures of the floating debris and below the surface of our moon was shockingly...WATER!!!!!!!!!!!

This is one very beautiful, but endangered bird species. The Bali Starling is one of many birds on the critically endangered IUCN Red List 2007. (appendix I of CITES). This birds habitat is of the island Bali in Indonesia. Here there is the Monsoon Forest where this bird is found. There is little natural habitat left for this bird. Thankfully the West Bali National Park has 77,000 hectares of rainforest, woods and swamps left for this bird, and many other birds for that matter.

As for the breeding season, it is in the fall. This starling builds it's nest in holes of trees and some woodpecker holes or other natural havens. The Bali Starling feeds on insects, seeds and fruits of this region.

Some of our content here at Earth Feature is presented to bring about awareness to our readers, of important issues concerning our environment, and the importance of our supporting necessary laws, to protect our children futures...and the future of our earth and it's life.