Earth

Would you live in a house made of dirt? The answer, I'm guessing, is no. As a building material, dirt has an image problem. Mud dwellings are practically synonymous with third-world poverty. At best, an earth structure is something you expect to encounter in an old hippie compound. Yet some of the world's most magnificent structures are made of little more than dirt and water, from New Mexico's pueblos to the great Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu. Now, thanks to the effort of several committed architects, dirt is making a comeback, this time as the material of choice for modern buildings, including multistory ones.

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.

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.

Don't look to the heavens for signs of apocalyptic prophecies coming true. But over the next month, the skies will offer several interesting sights, including a solar eclipse and a rare view of Venus crossing the sun. Only one sight, though, will be easy to view here. ( Weather-permitting , of course.) That's Saturday night's so-called "super moon," which will rise shortly before 8 p.m. While it's near the horizon will be the ideal time for viewing, says Franklin Institute astronomer Derrick Pitts.

Celebrate Earth Day on Sunday at the National Constitution Center and learn how you can go green. From noon to 5 p.m., guests can learn how to become active citizens working for a better environment. You can take the "It Is Easy Being Green" quiz and see how much you know about living an eco-friendly life, and learn about environmental trailblazers such as Lady Bird Johnson. At 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., guests can do the math by calculating the founding fathers' carbon footprint to see how environmentally friendly Philadelphia was during Revolutionary times.

FUNNY THING about the lists of "helpful planet-saving tips" that show up as Earth Day (Sunday) approaches: They rarely include, much less spotlight, the daily action that could have the most impact: cutting down your meat and dairy consumption. The United Nations has repeatedly stated that we must drastically change our eating patterns, given that somewhere from 18 percent (if you credit the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization 2006 estimate) to 51 percent (Worldwatch Institute's estimate, 2009)

Would you live in a house made of dirt? The answer, I'm guessing, is no. As a building material, dirt has an image problem. Mud dwellings are practically synonymous with third-world poverty. At best, an earth structure is something you expect to encounter in an old hippie compound. Yet some of the world's most magnificent structures are made of little more than dirt and water, from New Mexico's pueblos to the great Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu. Now, thanks to the effort of several committed architects, dirt is making a comeback, this time as the material of choice for modern buildings, including multistory ones.

SYDNEY - Sydney's iconic Harbor Bridge and Opera House went dark on Saturday as Australians switched off lights around the country for an hour as part of a global effort to shine a spotlight on climate change. Hundreds of landmarks around the world including Washington's National Cathedral, London's Clock Tower, the Great Wall of China, and Berlin's Brandenburg Gate were being dimmed at 8:30 p.m. local time. The central Sydney icons have been taking part in the annual event since Earth Hour began as a Sydney-only event in 2007.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - As world leaders close ranks against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, President Obama summed up the popular wisdom during a recent White House news conference: "Ultimately, this dictator will fall. " That prediction may be premature. Regime forces have retaken the major opposition strongholds, the rebels are low on money and guns, and the United Nations has ruled out any military intervention of the type that tipped the scales against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

AUSTIN, Texas - What's the future of the music business? During the last week at the South by Southwest Music & Media Conference, that question was pondered over bites of barbecue and swigs of Shiner Bock. The answer, the industry types figured, had something to do with the cloud, and online streaming music services like Spotify, and making the right deals to build your band into a brand. And with that question settled (or not), everybody took to the streets to hear some music.

You didn't need to be a solar physicist to be riveted by the "solar storm" that sent a blast of charged particles our way this month. That particular flare-up fizzled, but in the long term, the sun's temper is worthy of our attention. Our sun changes, and living things adapt or die. Our planet circled a very different star when life first emerged on Earth some four billion years ago. The sun was dimmer and cooler, but more violent, sending deadly blasts of X-rays as well as particles that would have lit up the skies with spectacular auroras.

STRANGE THINGS often start happening soon after hydraulic fracturing for natural gas - known as "fracking" - comes to an area. Drinking water become undrinkable (Wyoming, among other places) or erupts into flames (Pennsylvania). And places not known to have earthquakes suddenly start to feel tremors, including Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma - and our neighbor, Ohio. Why should we be surprised that forcing great amounts of water and chemicals into the earth - and then disposing of the wastewater by using high pressure to inject it deep into underground wells - might possibly affect the environment?

F. Sherwood Rowland, 84, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist who sounded the alarm on the thinning of the Earth's ozone layer and crusaded against the use of man-made chemicals that were harming Earth's atmospheric blanket, has died. He died Saturday at his home in Corona del Mar of complications from Parkinson's disease, the dean of the physical sciences department at the University of California, Irvine, said Sunday. Mr. Rowland was among three scientists awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry for explaining how the ozone is formed and decomposed through chemical processes in the atmosphere.