via The Astronomer’s Universe

This just in: my latest installment of The Astronomer’s Universe on AstroCast.TV is now live!

Also check out Bente Bye’s wonderful installment of A Green Space — A Green Earth, tying Earth science and the Haiti earthquake together into a compelling story. It’s often tempting when we study Earth systems in geology or atmospheric conditions on a planet or volcanic systems to overlook the human impact that changes in those systems can have. We live on an active planet — we formed here, we evolved in its ecological niches, and in some very real senses, we are changing the planet by our presence. We often forget that the planet can change US — as the Haiti earthquake so profoundly illustrates. This is something that geologists and other earth scientists know by heart.

Bente is an astrophysicist and earth science expert living in Norway. She specializes in observing planet Earth and describing how it changes and what those changes mean to us. Her episode is in the best tradition of earth science — reporting what happened, how it happened, and going beyond the physics of the situation to the actual human toll that living on an active planet takes. Check out her episode here.

There’s a lot more on this month’s Astrocast.TV, including what’s up in the sky for skygazers in February, and a look at Mars exploration. For the full program, visit the Astrocast.TV website.