By Jordan Belson
Jordan Belson was an American experimental filmmaker and artist. You can access his films by visiting this site and picking up the excellent DVD entitled Jordan Belson: 5 Essential Films (2007). Check out this video by John Whitney (Of course, youtube is the worst venue for these kinds of work- go see it on a properly released DVD or better yet in a cinema!!):
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Alien-like lady: Tilda Swinton. Read Worn Fashion Journal‘s on-line piece about her here (be sure to check out the comment section for Serah-Marie’s refreshing analyis).
Tilda Swinton, Oscars 2008
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SO, all of this because an asteroid passed very close to Earth the other day. From CNN.com (March 3rd 2009):
“While a direct hit on Earth could be a devastating natural disaster, McNaught said keeping track of asteroids can make a hit “potentially preventable.”
A HUGE asteroid crashed into Siberia in 1908 and the effects were devestating! It was called the Tunguska event:
“At around 7:17 a.m. local time, Tungus natives and Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. About 10 minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion reported the sound source moving east to north. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of miles away. The majority of eyewitnesses reported only the sounds and the tremors, and not the sighting of the explosion. Eyewitness accounts differ as to the sequence of events and their overall duration.
The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia. Although the Richter scale was not developed until 1935, in some places the shock wave would have been equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale. It also produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain. Over the next few weeks, night skies were aglow such that one could read in their light, caused by dust suspended in the stratosphere by the explosion.”
There are eye-witness accounts on the Wiki page, linked above. Thanks to Mike for sharing some ideas with us!
Photograph from the Soviet Academy of Science 1927 expedition led by Leonid Kulik
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