Fault-block mountains
Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, USA
Block mountains are created when large areas are widely broken up by faults creating large vertical displacements. This occurrence is fairly common. The uplifted blocks are block mountains or horsts. The intervening dropped blocks are termed graben: these can be small or form extensive rift valley systems. This form of landscape can be seen in East Africa, the Vosges, the Basin and Range province of Western North America and the Rhine valley. These areas often occur when the regional stress is extensional and the crust is thinned.
Rock that does not fault may fold, either symmetrically or asymmetrically. The upfolds are anticlines and the downfolds are synclines: in asymmetric folding there may also be recumbent and overturned folds. The Jura Mountains are an example of folding. Over time, erosion can bring about an inversion of relief: the soft upthrust rock is worn away so the anticlines are actually lower than the tougher, more compressed rock of the synclines.
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Mountain
Chimborazo, Ecuador, the point farthest from the center of the Earth.
The Matterhorn, Swiss Alps
The view of Jeff Davis Peak from the glacier-carved summit of Wheeler Peak, Nevada. Because Boundary Peak, Nevada is partially in California, and is actually a sub-peak of Montgomery Peak, the shorter Wheeler Peak can be considered the tallest mountain in Nevada.
Mountain in Carbon County, Utah
Mount Olympus in Greece
The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everest
Dolphin
Jumping and playing
Dolphin
Jumping and playing
Pacific white-sided dolphins porpoising
Dolphins occasionally leap above the water surface, and sometimes perform acrobatic figures (for example, the spinner dolphin). Scientists are not certain about the purpose(s) of the acrobatics. Possibilities include locating schools of fish by looking at above-water signs like feeding birds, communicating with other dolphins, dislodging parasites or simple amusement.
Play is an important part of dolphin culture. Dolphins play with seaweed and play-fight with other dolphins. At times they harass other local creatures, like seabirds and turtles. Dolphins enjoy riding waves and frequently surf coastal swells and the bow waves of boats, at times “leaping” between the dual bow waves of a moving catamaran. Occasionally, they playfully interact with swimmers. Captive dolphins have been observed in aquariums engaging in complex play
Dolphin
Jumping and playingDolphin
Jumping and playing
Jumping and playing
Parts of the Sun
From here on Earth, the Sun like a smooth ball of fire, and before the discovery of sunspots by Galileo, astronomers even thought it was a perfect orb with no imperfections. However, we now know that the Sun, like Earth, is actually made up of several layers, each of which serves its own purpose. It’s this structure of the Sun that powers this massive furnace and provider of all terrestrial life and energy.
What is the Sun Made Of?
If you could take the Sun apart, and stack up its various elements, you would find that the Sun is made of hydrogen (74%) and helium (about 24%). Astronomers consider anything heavier than helium to be a metal. The remaining amount of the Sun is made of iron, nickel, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, magnesium, carbon, neon, calcium and chromium. In fact, the Sun is 1% oxygen; and everything else comes out of that last 1%.
Supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5. Supernovae provided the heavier elements in the Sun. Image credit: NASA/ESA/CXC
Supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5. Supernovae provided the heavier elements in the Sun. Image credit:
Where did these elements come from? The hydrogen and helium came from the Big Bang. In the early moments of the Universe, the first element, hydrogen, formed from the soup of elementary particles. The pressure and temperatures were still so intense that the entire Universe had the same conditions as the core of a star. Hydrogen was fused into helium until the Universe cooled down enough that this reaction couldn’t happen any more. The ratios of hydrogen and helium that we see in the Universe today were created in those first few moments after the Big Bang.
The other elements were created in other stars. Stars are constantly fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores. Once the hydrogen in the core runs out, they switch to fusing heavier and heavier elements, like helium, lithium, oxygen. Most of the heavier metals we see in the Sun were formed in other stars at the end of their lives.
Watergate scandal
"Watergate" redirects here. For other uses, see Watergate (disambiguation).
Watergate |
---|
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex
in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up
of its involvement. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon,
the President of the United States, on August 9, 1974, the only
resignation of a U.S. President. The scandal also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of 43 people, including dozens of top Nixon administration officials.
"Watergate" redirects here. For other uses, see Watergate (disambiguation).
Watergate
The Watergate Building
Events
Timeline
"White House horrors"
1972 presidential election
Watergate burglaries
White House tapes
"Saturday Night Massacre"
United States v. Nixon
Inauguration of Gerald Ford
People
Watergate Burglars:
James McCord
Bernard Barker
Frank Sturgis
Virgilio Gonzalez
Eugenio Martinez
Committee to Re-Elect the President:
Jeb Magruder
John N. Mitchell
Robert Mardian
Fred LaRue
Kenneth Parkinson
Maurice Stans
The White House:
John Dean
E. Howard Hunt
Egil Krogh
G. Gordon Liddy
John Ehrlichman
H. R. Haldeman
Charles Colson
Gordon C. Strachan
Alexander Butterfield
Richard Nixon
Judicial:
Archibald Cox
Leon Jaworski
John Sirica
Journalists:
Carl Bernstein
Bob Woodward
Intelligence Community:
Richard Helms
James Schlesinger
L. Patrick Gray
W. Mark Felt ("Deep Throat")
Groups
Committee for the Re-Election
of the President (CRP)
"White House Plumbers"
Senate Watergate Committee
The Washington Post
* v
* t
* e
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, on August 9, 1974, the only resignation of a U.S. President. The scandal also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of 43 people, including dozens of top Nixon administration officials.
The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) connected cash found on the burglars to a slush fund used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, a fundraising group for the Nixon campaign.[1][2] In July 1973, as evidence mounted against the president's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and he had recorded many conversations.[3][4] Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing he had attempted to cover up the break-in.[2][5] After a protracted series of bitter court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes to government investigators; he ultimately complied.
Facing near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and a strong possibility of a conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.[6][7] His successor, Gerald Ford, then issued a pardon to Nixon.
Monday, 28 May 2012
Lion
Lion
The lion (Panthera leo) is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg (550 lb) in weight,[4] it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger. Wild lions currently exist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia with an endangered remnant population in Gir Forest National Park in India, having disappeared from North Africa and Southwest Asia in historic times. Until the late Pleistocene, about 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread large land mammal after humans. They were found in most of Africa, across Eurasia from western Europe to India, and in the Americas from the Yukon to Peru.[5] The lion is a vulnerable species, having seen a possibly irreversible population decline[clarification needed] of thirty to fifty percent over the past two decades in its African range.[2] Lion populations are untenable outside designated reserves and national parks. Although the cause of the decline is not fully understood, habitat loss and conflicts with humans are currently the greatest causes of concern. Within Africa, the West African lion population is particularly endangered.
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