Geography
20
Jul 09
Really Big Holes
Here are some of my favorite holes from across the internet:
This hole is so big that it sucked several helicopters into it and caused crashes. It’s not officially the biggest mine in the world, but you’ve probably seen it touted as such.
The Black Hole in the M87 Galaxy
This hole weighs more than 3 billion suns. Its diameter is 11 billion miles, or more than twice the orbit of Pluto around our sun. Luckily, this guy is 50 million light years away from us.
This blue hole near the Bahamas is 663 ft feet deep. It’s the deepest blue hole in the world. Blue holes were formed about 15,000 years ago when the ocean level was lower. The average blue hole depth is about 300 feet, so this one is pretty deep.
The USSR set up a project to just dig as deep as they posibly could into the ground. After 19 years, they had dug more than 40,000 feet straight down into the earth. The mud that was coming up toward the bottom was “boiling with hydrogen gas.”
From an eroding pipe system, this sinkhole is 204 feet deep. Unfortunately three people were killed when their house fell into it.
This isn’t really a big hole, but definitely an intense one. In the Karakum desert near Turkmenistan, a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punctured a gas pocket and caused the ground to collapse. To avoid dumping the gas into the atmosphere, the Soviets decided to set it on fire, and the hole has burning for the last 38 years.
Last year, the hole in the ozone layer was 27 million square kilometres. That’s the biggest hole on the planet by far.
13
Jul 09
Algonquian U.S. State Etymologies
It’s always strange to me to hear where the names of places come from. I hunted down some state names and found the Algonquian ones especially interesting. These are paraphrased, mostly from the excellent Online Etymology Guide. A sampling, mostly water related:
Michigan: Meshi-gami, meaning “big lake.”
Connecticut: Quinnitukqut “at the long tidal river,” from kwen (long), ehtekw (tidal river) and enk (place).
Massachusetts: The plural reference to the Algonquian native people who lived around the bay. Massachusett means “at the large hill,” in reference to the blue hills southwest of Boston.
Wyoming: Originally Chwewamink, meaning “at the big river flat,” from xw (big), wam (river flat) and enk (place).
Mississippi: Meaning big river, mshi (big) and ziibi (river).