Earth

It's about rocks. It's about crystals. It's about the very core of the planet. It's the Academy of Natural Sciences' newest exhibit, "What on Earth. " The fact-filled displays also deal with fault lines and mountain regions and other geological phenomena. Some area students yesterday got a preview of the exhibit, which opens Saturday.

The Medical Mission Sisters are sponsoring a public sunrise service Sunday to celebrate the "Harmonic Convergence," a global healing event that will encourage people to change their attitudes toward the Earth and to stop abuses of the Earth. The service, which will be at 6 a.m. on the Mission Sisters grounds at 8400 Pine Rd., will consist of singing and meditation, according to Sister Estelle Demers. Earthings, a Mission Sisters project concerned with the well-being of the Earth, is sponsoring the service.

THERE'S a question I've been trying to find an answer to for quite some time. The total mass of our planet seems to be steadily decreasing. For millions of years, the earth's mass stayed relatively the same. Land masses shifted, glaciers formed and melted, but our total weight stayed the same. But with the Industrial Revolution came our dependence on fossil fuel. The oil and coal we have extracted from the earth does not replenish itself and has, to some extent, changed the mass of our planet.

A thin, filmy blue arch sweeps across the screen. Above is the blackness of outer space. Below is the living Earth. The planet is huge, the abyss even greater, and all that separates one from the other is the frail blue line - our atmosphere. The atmosphere that we are polluting, tampering with, poking holes in. This scene, taken with special 70mm cameras from an orbiting space shuttle, in one spectacular image rams home how delicate is the world we treat so rudely. This is the sobering yet vivid vision of Blue Planet, opening today at the Franklin Institute's Omniverse Theater.

Is Earth fragile and vulnerable or tough and ruthless? Is it possible for us to trash a whole planet? Or is it about to trash us? "Gaea, as I see her, is no doting mother tolerant of misdemeanors, nor is she some fragile and delicate damsel in danger from brutal mankind. She is stern and tough, always keeping the world warm and comfortable for those who obey the rules, but ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress," said James Lovelock, originator of the idea that Earth is one integrated organism.

Don't get Dolly Parton started about end-of-the-world prognosticators. On her new album, "Better Day," Parton sounds, in the first song, "In the Meantime," like she's been writing straight off the headlines generated by the prediction that Judgment Day would come on May 21. Yet: "I started writing it years ago," Parton said. "I wrote it when some other crazy looney-tune was saying the world was coming to an end. God knows when the end of time will come, not some fanatic. . . . Anyway, we're more apt to blow the world up than something else happening.

More than 3,000 dead. Entire blocks of Kobe, Japan burned beyond recognition. Hundreds of thousands of residents streaming out of a city collapsing under the demands of so heavy a relief operation. The earthquake that struck Japan's busy port center at 5:46 a.m. Tuesday caused scenes of unimaginable grief and destruction. And those half a world away, watching the force of nature at its most brutal, can't help but wonder whether there is anything human beings can do to minimize the damage.

Some of the most active advocates for peace have been scientists. Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Linus Pauling, and Albert Schweitzer were among the scientific luminaries who worked tirelessly for global harmony. Perhaps their understanding of Earth's preciousness as the only known planet with life helped inspire their efforts. This season, when night is longest and darkest, offers ample opportunity to reflect on our place in the universe, and to share in the sense of humility that has motivated many thinkers to contemplate ways to bring unity to Earth.

The U.S. Postal Service inches closer to its 2000 program of more than 100 stamps with 20 additional commemoratives honoring the Pacific Coast rain forest, sculptor Louise Nevelson and astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble. A self-adhesive sheet of 10 stamps, each 33 cents, was issued March 29 depicting more than two dozen animal and plant species common to the temperate rain forest that stretches from northern California to the Gulf of Alaska. First-day ceremonies will be held at the Elk Overlook in Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Wash.

Imagine 200 gigantic marine farms that drift on the surfaces of the world's oceans. Or satellites bigger than Boston or San Francisco that beam solar energy back to Earth. Or so many tons of chemicals dumped into the atmosphere to cleanse it that the sky is bleached white. These are just a few of the visionary schemes being dreamed up by some of the nation's most brilliant scientists as possible ways to combat the global warming that is expected to occur as a result of the greenhouse effect.

BECAUSE OF HIS almost-forever fascination with the earth and sky, Marc Berlanger plans to major in geoscience at Bloomsburg University. Did someone say earth and sky? Thursday, those words were quite the fit for Berlanger's first two at-bats in an important Catholic Red baseball game. In both, he drove deep fly balls toward almost the exact same part of dead rightfield. The first launching offered momentary hope, then returned him to earth. The second sent him soaring sky high!

THE DOCUMENTARY "No Place on Earth" doesn't seem as if it should work quite as well as it does. A History Channel production, the tale of Ukrainian Jews who survived in underground caves for 511 days while hiding from the Nazis during World War II is structured around lengthy, foreign-language re-enactments of the events featuring costumed performers. Why not just commit to the undeniably thrilling theatricality of the story and make a fictionalized dramatic feature? Instead, Emmy-winning documentarian Janet Tobias ("Life 360")

T O MARK Earth Day, we talk with Dean Carlson, 41, of Elverson, Chester County, owner of the 360-acre Wyebrook Farm in Honey Brook. He practices sustainable agriculture and supplies the public - including several top restaurants - with grass-fed pork, chicken and beef. The former bond trader bought the foreclosed property in 2010 for $12,000 per acre. Q: How do you go from Wall Street trader to farmer? A: I got interested in agriculture as an investment because farmland is going to become more valuable over time.

A Novel By Ken Kalfus Bloomsbury. 224 pp. $24. Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler The equilateral triangle combines the virtues of uniformity and variety, Sanford Thayer, the main character in Ken Kalfus' new novel, proclaims. The component of all regular pyramidal solids and the basis of all human art, it is "the most visually satisfying geometrical figure of them all. " Drawing on his cigar, Wilson Ballard, Thayer's chief engineer, shoots back: "Bloody difficult to dig, though.

By Derrick H. Pitts Considering the recent close calls our planet has had with various asteroids, meteors, and comets, it's time to develop an early-warning system - a cosmic "heads up" - to detect the wanderers zooming through the solar system. The major concern, of course, is whether any of these space travelers is on a collision course with Earth. Our geologic record clearly indicates that not only have we been hit before, but in one instance, the object was large enough to significantly change the planet's environment, triggering the demise of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. If they couldn't survive an impact, what chance would mere humans have to survive?

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Now's your chance to see the comet that passed within 100 million miles of Earth last week. Twilight on Tuesday will provide the best photo op for Pan-STARRS. It will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere just above the western horizon - right next to a crescent moon. California astronomer Tony Phillips said the glare of the setting sun may make it difficult to see the comet with the naked eye. But he encourages casual sky gazers to give it a shot. The moon will provide an easy point of reference.

LOS ANGELES - In a Mars first, the Curiosity rover drilled into a rock and prepared to dump an aspirin-size pinch of powder into its onboard laboratories for closer inspection. The feat marked yet another milestone for the car-size rover, which landed last summer to much fanfare on an ambitious hunt to determine whether environmental conditions were favorable for microbes. Using the drill at the end of its 7-foot-long robotic arm, Curiosity on Friday chipped away at a flat, veined rock bearing numerous signs of past water flow.

An asteroid half the size of a U.S. football field will dart between Earth and orbiting satellites next week, sparing the human race and putting on a show for sky gazers in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia, NASA said. The 150-foot-diameter asteroid, named 2012 DA14, will pass about 17,000 miles above Earth on Friday - lower than the orbits of some satellites - in the closest-known approach of an object of its size. It will travel at 7.8 kilometers a second (17,400 miles an hour), or about eight times the speed of a rifle shot, NASA scientists said.

LA SALLE HEAD coach John Giannini tried to warn everyone. As brilliantly as the Explorers have played lately - including victories last week over ninth-ranked Butler and 19th-ranked Virginia Commonwealth - Giannini discouraged fans he encountered from becoming overly confident, especially given what appeared to him to be a certain battle Wednesday evening against Atlantic 10 rival Massachusetts. "Some wonderful, well-meaning people were so happy with what we have done, but I told them we were in for a challenge against UMass," said Giannini.

IT'S HAPPENED before and it will happen again, and if Mike Knuble had his druthers it will happen more often in the years to come. But it's still one of the more entertaining facets of hockey, watching two players side to side on a bench, one born somewhere around the time of the other's first foray into the professional game. So the other night, as the camera zeroed in on a conversation between Scott Laughton and Mike Knuble on the bench in Florida, it was natural to wonder: What on earth could they be talking about?