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Science Friday > Archives > 1997 > July > July 25, 1997

Hour One: Geology News / Computer Update

More than 500 million years ago, the Earth's poles migrated, rearranging the continents. At about the same time, life on Earth diversified at a rate twenty times faster than normal. Now, researchers think they know the connection between the two.

In other geology news, a huge impact crater in Siberia has just been dated to within a blink of an eye (geologically speaking) of another crater in the Chesapeake Bay area. These two catastrophic events, placed so close together, could have had serious consequences for the Earth's environment - possibly enough to cause a massive surge forward in evolutionary history. In this hour of Science Friday, we'll hear how geologic evidence is providing new information about past biologic events.

Then.. a computer update. As always, computer technology has been changing and changing and changing. Microsoft has just announced the name of its next operating system - Windows '98 - and we already have a sneak peek at what it'll look like. Meanwhile, Apple Computer also has a new OS, OS8 - but questions over the future of the company following the resignation of CEO Gil Amelio are still in the air.

On the web, the Mars Pathfinder landing has been a defining moment for the internet industry. We're seeing faster processors, lower-cost machines, and computers that are getting smaller and smaller.

From the biggest corportations to the smallest sub-sub-notebooks - we'll talk about it in this segment of Science Friday.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:
Joseph Kirschvink
Professor of Geobiology
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California

David Evans
Graduate Student, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California

Richard Bottomley
Professor of Physics
Canadian University College
College Heights, Alberta, Canada

Larry Magid
Syndicated Columnist
Los Angeles Times
Contributing Editor
Home PC Magazine
Palo Alto, California

Books/Articles Discussed:

"Evidence for a large-scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander." by J.L. Kirschvink and D. A. Evans. Science, July 25, 1997.

"The Age of the Popigai Impact Event and its Relation to Events at the Eocene/Oligocene Boundary." by Richard Bottomley, Richard Grieve, Derek York, and Victor Marsalis. Nature , July 24 1997.

Related links:

More info on Paleomagnetism and Continental Drift
More info about continental drift from Caltech
Pictures, Movies, and Related Info
Paleomagnetic Data
Institute for Rock Magnetism
The Ocean Drilling Program
Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism

Popigai

A Pangea Picture
SciFri's March 7, 1997 show on the Cambrian Explosion

Computer Update:

Larry Magid's Homepage

The OS Wars
Microsoft Windows 98
Apple's OS8