#01 LIFE ON THE EDGE

+ "But the Arctic has been calling me back. I crave its isolation and slower pace of life. In this frozen northern landscape, my imagination flies like the wind, with no obstacles. Every object becomes symbolic, every shade of color meaningful. I am my real self only when I am here." Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva returns to her roots in the Russian far north to document what life is like for those who live on the edge of the Earth.

#02 UNDERWATER PALEONTOLOGY

+ An international and interdisciplinary team of scientists and expert cave divers has mapped underwater caverns in Tsimanampetsotse National Park in southwest Madagascar. The expedition recovered over 500 fossils that are thousands of years old, as well as stalagmites that formed when the cave was still dry. To make matters more difficult, the cave is at the bottom of a deep sinkhole, and the divers still rely on age-old tools like the string and compass to find the way underground. 

+ In a tangentially related story, recently published research indicates that dolphins avoid decompression sickness by consciously slowing their heart rate before diving.

#03 ABOVEGROUND ARCHEOLOGY

+ "In the scrub-speckled desert north of AlUla in Saudi Arabia, rocky outcrops and giant boulders the size of buildings, beautifully carved and with classical-style pediments and columns, poke out of the sands like divinely scattered seeds." The archeological site of Hegra, a one-time international trade hub built by the Nabataean people and left undisturbed for 2,000 years, will now be more accessible to researchers and tourists due to the Saudi's effort to diversify the country's income beyond oil. 

#04 SPACE

+ Plenty of news in the launch category this week. SpaceX safely delivered four astronauts to the space station for the company's first regular crew rotation and then launched the Sentinal 6 climate satellite less than a week later. The Chinese successfully sent a sample return mission to the moon. Meanwhile, small satellite launch startup RocketLabs recovered a first stage booster for the first time. And lastly, faulty cabling was blamed for the loss of a European Vega rocket.

+ There were presumably many teary-eyed radio astronomers this last week when the National Science Foundation announced it would decommission and demolish the famed Arecibo Observatory. Two cables that support the telescope failed this year, damaging the 1,000-foot wide radio dish and risking the safety of any personnel who would be needed to repair the damage. The radio telescope was the largest single-dish instrument in the world for 55 years starting with its commissioning in 1963. In addition to being a workhorse for radio astronomy, Aricebo has famously been used to search for signals of extraterrestrial intelligence and even made its mark in pop culture through movies like Contact and GoldenEye.

+ If you want to be the first person to Mars, you'll want to make sure and be nice!

#05 OCEAN SANCTUARIES

+  Enric Sala quit his job as a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2007  because "he was tired of writing death notices" for the ocean. The following year, he would work with National Geographic to form the Pristine Seas project. Remarkably, in the last 12 years, the project has helped create 22 marine sanctuaries, nearly two-thirds of the world's fully protected marine areas covering over two million square miles. "Now Sala and his team have set an even more ambitious goal: to see more than a third of the world’s ocean conserved for the purpose not just of sustaining biodiversity but also of replenishing fish stocks and storing carbon."

#06 A SPACE ODYSSEY?

+ In a scene eerily reminiscent of 2001: Space Odyssey, wildlife spotters in Utah discovered a large metal monolith in a remote canyon while performing an aerial count of bighorn sheep. The Bureau of Land Management would like to remind everyone, “It is illegal to install structures or art without authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you're from.” So far, the aliens have yet to respond.

#07 A GOOD BOOK

+ Maps take you places even if you're stuck at home, and Judith Schalansky's Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will takes you further than most. Shalansky grew up behind the iron curtain in East Germany and used maps as a release from her very real geographic confinement. Her atlas features 50 remote islands from around the world, none of which is more than a few miles across. Each map is paired with a short anecdote about the island. Many are whimsical, some are serious, others humorous. Together they form something of a geographic cabinet of curiosities. The places are real and the author promises all the information is true, but I still walked away from this one with the best kind of, "I wonder..." in my head. There are times for encyclopedic facts, but this is not one of them. Instead, listen to the stories and let your imagination take over.

"Anyone who opens an atlas wants everything at once, without limits - the whole world. This longing will always be great, far greater than any satisfaction to be had by attaining what is desired. Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world."

That's all for this week! You can respond to this email to tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, tell me about a project you're working on, or suggest a story. You might also forward this email to a friend so they can subscribe too!

- Evan Hilgemann

This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers.

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