Category Archives: Geoscience

Armchair eschatology: The shifty business of True Polar Wander

True Polar Wander
True Polar Wander

Some say the world will end in fire; some say ice. Others prefer to trot out obscure scientific theories. Strange as it might seem, the pole shift hypothesis, in which the Earth’s crust and mantle (or outermost layers) move as one piece, did not spring from the fevered imaginations of the sandwich-board set, but from scientific circles, and it’s rooted solidly in physics.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Hollywood got it right …

Are the Earth’s poles shifting in 2012?

Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink

How can we live on a planet overflowing with 326 million trillion gallons of water and still face shortages? Even if only about .05 percent of it is drinkable, shouldn’t there be some way to purify the rest? Actually, people all over the world convert seawater to potable water, but the process tends to be prohibitively expensive at large scales. Even so, with looming droughts, natural disasters and the large-scale redistribution of moisture threatened by climate change, the need for a solution grows more essential every day.

Why can’t we convert salt water into drinking water?