Thanks to the IEEE The Risk Factor blog for this story:

Google showed off a new version of Google Earth that will allow users to explore the oceans of the world.

According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News, “The program combines satellite images, ocean photography and scientific data to create interactive 3-D images of the oceans’ floors … Users can study global sea temperature changes and track migrating whales.”

Google used data from the National Geographic, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the US Navy, Scripps Oceanography, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, among others to generate the maps.

The company plans to launch software called Latitude on Wednesday that lets mobile phone users share their location with close contacts. Google hopes it will help people find each other while out and about and to keep track of loved ones.

The maps of 2008:  spontaneous mapping of live events like the terrorists attacks in Mumbai, the first Moon walk overlaid on a soccer field, and of course the presidential election result maps.

July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon:

Map of the 2008 presidential election results by county:

Map of the 2008 presidential election results by county where the county size is based on population, highlighting the voting weight of populated vs. rural areas:

See more maps from Mr. Newman, a physicist at the University of Michigan.   Make your own on this NYT page.

SNL‘s Fred Armisen demonstrates their “Megapixel Giant Touchmap” (MegaMap), a parody of CNN’s ridiculous-yet-awesome “Magic Wall” (“Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall”).  The MegaMap demo starts about 1:30 into the video.

Via The Map Room

Further reading:

AWEA – the reliability of wind power (better than you think)

Interstate Electricity Transmission Superhighway Essential to Growth of Low-Carbon Technologies: CleanTechnica

FEATURE-Wind energy lobbyist maps U.S. power superhighway | Markets | US | Reuters

A National Electric Superhighway.pdf by Ed Krapels

Map showing Mandatory Renewable Portfolio Standards for the states, note that several states require 20 or even 25+% renewable in the near future:

Find out about the planes and technology behind Microsoft’s Virtual Earth imagery.

Watch their video here:

Behind The Maps – Flying the UltraCam

Microsoft’s site currently features imagery of the Olympic sites in Beijing like the Bird’s Nest Stadium above: www.microsoft.com/ VirtualEarth

The umbrella site is called Gnod and will direct you to sites specific to music, movies and literature.

gnod : music | books | movies

Now there are some new twists and turns—essentially, three very positive developments that would not have been generally anticipated a decade ago. First, silicon-based solar technology has decoupled from the semiconductor industry and is achieving steady cost reductions, so that those following PV discern a kind of Moore’s law at work. In 2005, production of silicon for solar cells already surpassed production of silicon for semiconductors.

Second, the industry has become so confident in that evolutionary path, policymakers and planners have started to set dates when they expect PV-generated electricity to be competitive with the major sources of electricity sold on the grid now. And third, while the incremental path promises a commercial breakthrough within ten years, it’s suddenly looking like second generation technology may be arriving after all—in which case wide commercialization of PV could occur much sooner.

 
[Above, maps showing average daily solar energy]

In recent years, global PV production has been increasing at a rate of 50 percent per year, so that accumulated global capacity doubles about every 18 months. The PV Moore’s law states that with every doubling of capacity, PV costs come down by 20 percent. In 2004, installing PV cost about $7 per watt, compared to $1/W for wind, which at that time was beginning to stand on its own feet commercially, Last, year, as recently noted in this blog, average global solar costs had come down to between $4 and $5 per watt, right in line with the PV Moore’s law. Extrapolate those gains out six or seven years, and PV costs will be below $2/W, making photovolatics competitive with 2004 wind.

Click the image to see at full resolution.

This type of mapping metadata has been available in Google Earth for a long time, I’m actually surprised these features weren’t available sooner.

Want to see the same images that scientists at NASA use for their research or perform your own research with those images? Or do you want to see the Earth from the same perspective that astronauts see as they descend to Earth? How about taking a 5 minute break and viewing a panorama of a different city? Install WWT and start your explorations.

The WorldWide Telescope is a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Review at Astronomy.com:

With WorldWide Telescope, users pan left, right, up, down, back, and forward seamlessly — down to the full resolution of the available data. Users can view the stars and planets at any time and date from any point on Earth, explore the sky in dozens of different wavelengths, zoom into images by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, or see Mars from the Opportunity rover’s point of view.

“Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds and then cross fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago,” says Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I believe this new creation from Microsoft will have a profound impact on the way we view the universe.”

Download now, download page.

Windows XP & Vista only