<IT
WORLD>
New wonders to behold By Martin J
Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - Man's
ancient fascination with celestial matters, often
forgotten in this urban age, resurfaced this week
in a variety of guises, with a solar eclipse
across Asia, a large object crashing into Jupiter,
and the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon
landing. Closer to home, Asia Times Online
proclaimed the introduction of its own new star
into cyberspace.
To celebrate man’s fateful first steps on
the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, Google added
the moon to its popular "Earth" program. The
search giant has teamed up with the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which
has provided data and footage integrated into
Google Earth enabling users to re-live mankind's
giant leap. By selecting "moon view" in Google
Earth 5, users can explore the surface in great
detail and even follow the
Apollo missions and
other lunar exploration efforts with guides that
have been flagged by location on the 3D model.
The project is a result of Google's Space
Act Agreement with NASA and the donation of a
global terrain dataset of the moon by Japan's
space agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
(JAXA). The moon is the latest addition to
Google’s Earth, Sky, Ocean and Mars education and
exploration tools.
Sky-watchers across
Asia were treated to the longest solar eclipse in
a century this week as a six-and-a-half minute
black-out swept across India, China, Southern
Japan and the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday. Millions
of people took to the streets and rooftops,
donning dark glasses to get a rare view of the
sun's corona as cities were pitched into darkness.
Total eclipses happen around twice a year
- the scientific explanation is that they occur
when the moon passes between the Earth and the Sun
on the same plane as Earth's orbit. Yet they
remain shrouded by superstition in many parts of
the world, not least in Asia. In the Indian holy
city of Varanasi, thousands took a dip in the
Ganges River to cleanse their souls.
Shanghai was touted as one of the best
places to view the eclipse, Chinese tradition
tells of a celestial dragon eating the sun at such
times, and noise must be made to scare off the
dragon and rescue the sun. In Thailand, monks held
a ceremony to ward off what they claimed would be
a bad omen for the country. A partial eclipse was
viewed as far north as Siberia and in most of
Southeast Asia.
As the phenomenon passed,
the world kept spinning despite rumors and
Internet circulars warning of tectonic plate
shifts and tsunamis caused by an increased
gravitational pull from the alignment of the sun
and moon.
An earthquake did occur in the
south Pacific a week before the eclipse, so there
may have been some substance to the online
doomsday theories - or it could be mere
coincidence. The 7.8 magnitude quake off the
south-west coast of New Zealand was so powerful
that it has actually moved the country 30
centimeters closer to its neighbor, Australia.
Only Mother Nature knows whether the two
incidents were linked. The next total eclipse
across the Pacific will be on July 11, 2010.
Unfortunately we cannot predict the next
earthquake.
Further out in space, a large
impact created a black spot as large as the
diameter of the Earth on the multi-hued surface of
Jupiter, surprising astronomers and thrilling
Australian sky-watcher Anthony Wesley who first
noticed the spot and relayed his findings to
researchers. Observers at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California said the blemish was
caused by a comet or asteroid collision.
Astronomers have yet to confirm the size,
material and origin of the object that slammed
into our gas-giant neighbor, while their failure
to forecast the event makes one wonder what else
could be missed up there. Jupiter, with its huge
gravitational field, to some extent protects the
Earth from similar such impacts.
Asia
Times Online's new website derives its billing as
"a new star in cyberspace" by daring to be
different in how it offers readers more site
integration. The site shuns the subscription model
tried by numerous media outlets that offer premium
content at a price whilst readers wanting free
content are bombarded with flashing banners,
annoying videos and popups. Atimes.net readers can
view content free of such intrusions, while a
subscription allows more engagement with writers
and fellow readers.
The site is powered by
a hybrid database driven content management
system, whose feature-rich interface has
amalgamated the best components from other sites.
These features enable the members to shape the
content of the site beyond its daily selection of
articles from around the globe.
Readers
can have direct communication with correspondents,
contribute commentaries, be involved in
discussions on the site's blogs and forums, submit
reviews and critique submissions. A "You Report"
section lets members write their own headlines to
stories they have found interesting elsewhere in
cyberspace.
Members can also fully
customize the site to target their exact field of
interest in a Google News-type fashion and post
instant messages in a Twitter-type window on its
front page. All of this for less than six bucks a
month; we'd call it a bargain.
In
contrast, Yahoo's revamped website, also launched
this week, has a front page that looks uncannily
similar to its old one. The direction is that of a
complete personal homepage where users can add in
their own Internet resources and social networking
sites by using in-built applications.
With
the advances in tabbed browsing and full browser
functionality the concept of one homepage may have
become a thing of the past. Fewer people will be
going online and opening one website from which to
navigate elsewhere; this can all be done with the
likes of Safari, Firefox and the latest version of
Internet Explorer. If Google's Chrome OS takes off
the reliance on one website to control them all
will be diminished - unless it begins with G of
course!
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times
Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
