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NASA Earth Observatory: 3 ideas worth knowing

3 ideas from NASA Earth Observatory, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Two islands 3.8 km apart can be 21 hours apart in time

  Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in Alaska sit less than 4 km apart in the Bering Strait, close enough to see across on a clear day. The International Date Line runs direct…

  — NASA Earth Observatory, Yesterday and Tomorrow Islands

• Soviet engineers diverted two rivers, and the world's fourth-largest lake vanished

  In the 1960s, Soviet planners diverted the rivers feeding the Aral Sea to irrigate cotton fields across the Central Asian desert. Cut off from its water supply, the lake lost rough…

  — NASA Earth Observatory, World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea

• Dust blown off the Sahara crosses the Atlantic and fertilizes the Amazon rainforest

  Winds lift millions of tonnes of mineral-rich dust each year from Chad's Bodélé Depression, a former lakebed, and carry it 5,000 miles across the Atlantic. NASA satellite data show…

  — NASA Earth Observatory, Where Does the Amazon's Fertilizer Come From?

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