

Turns out, it is a river in Egypt - chanux
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/11/08/turns-out-it-is-a-river-in-egypt/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BadAstronomyBlog+%28Bad+Astronomy%29

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simonw
I'm in Egypt at the moment. We're in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsular - but we
spent several weeks travelling on the Nile from Cairo to Aswan and Luxor
before we got here.

The experience that really brought home the importance of the Nile was taking
the overnight train from Cairo to Aswan. You wake up in the morning to sunrise
over the Nile. If you look out of the left hand window of the train, you see
desert - nothing but sand and rocks. If you look out of the right hand window,
you see literally just a few hundred metres of lush green farmland followed by
the expanse of the river. It makes you realise that a large chunk of Egypt's
usable land is hundreds of miles long but less than half a mile wide.

~~~
simonw
Here's a video my wife took that illustrates the point:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliedowne/5120992880/>

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demallien
Great video. I find it depressing that they couldn't think of anything better
to do with that fertile land than to put a highway along the middle of it.

From Luxor onwards the fertile band is substantially wider, more like 20km, as
can be seen on Google Maps.

[http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.61167,31.330261&...](http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.61167,31.330261&spn=1.34433,2.763062&t=h&z=9)

Does anyone know why the desert of North Africa is so... desert? - In
Australia, even the deserts, which are supposed to be some of the driest in
the world, in terms of rainfall, have far more vegetation. See here for an
example:

[http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=-21.002351,124.804816&...](http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=-21.002351,124.804816&spn=0.022556,0.043173&t=h&z=15)

~~~
stygianguest
Moving sand dunes make it very hard for vegetation to grow.

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tjic
> Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see:
> country borders.

Except, some country borders are phenomenally obvious from space - those that
separate totalitarian / communist countries from free market / democratic
countries.

Look at the border between Israel and Syria.

Look at the border between North Korea and South Korea.

Look at older pictures of the border between East Germany and West Germany.

Capitalism lets people grow, innovate, and develop. Authoritarian governments
stifle that.

Thus, in pictures from space, capitalist countries are well lit (if at night),
or covered in crops (during the day), and countries with large governments are
dark (at night) and barren (during the day).

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nlwhittemore
Pretty amazing. On the books, Cairo has 11 million people. Most people think
its closer to 20, and that, day to day, another 20 or so come in from outside
for work. I lived there on and off for a few years, and it's truly one of the
most remarkable places in the world.

~~~
eru
Day to day only 20 people on average and net come to Cairo? That would be just
7300 a year and nothing to write home about. (I guess it's more than that. By
comparison, Istanbul grew by around a million people a year for a very short
time in the 90s.)

~~~
kloncks
Pretty sure the author of the comment meant 20 _million_

~~~
eru
Oh, I misread. I read another day another x people come permanently for the
better job opportunities. And he was talking about commuters.

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kloncks
I'm Egyptian. One of my absolutely favorite parts of Egypt is Nuweba (North of
Dahab, South of Taba) in the Sinai.

You stand in the Gulf of Aqaba and just a few hundred meters in front of you
is the coast of Saudi Arabia. To the Northeast, you can have a glimpse at the
port cities of Eilat in Israel and Aqaba in Jordan.

I've never been in a place with so many countries right next to each other.
The profound thing, like the author mentions, is that there's absolutely
nothing in that nature dictating or talking about any borders.

From that perspective, all those lands look pretty much the same: gorgeous.

~~~
ronnier
I've been in the same situation, but a different perspective.

In Eilat, viewing Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

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kloncks
It's sad that to this day not enough Israelis/Egyptians take advantage of the
peace accords provisions and travel to the other country.

Little known fact: Israelis can enter the Sinai with just personal id and no
visa. Same goes for Egyptians in specific parts of Israel.

Not enough people cross over, due to the "borders" that we put up.

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alexyoung
The airglow in that photo is beautiful, I don't think I've ever seen that
effect appear in such a way before.

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shivam14
Looking at a composite night picture of the world, another river with a heavy
relative concentration seems to be the Indus in Pakistan.
[http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.j...](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg)

In general, the picture provides a great insight into both the affluence and
population density of various parts of the world.

~~~
eru
That picture is now ten years old. I wonder how affluence and population
density have changed since then.

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shawndumas
’enphaoronate’?! Embiggen; I say. Is enphaoronate cromulent?

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gojomo
_Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see:
country borders._

There are some borders you can see from space, such as the transition between
North and South Korea:

[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-
dark....](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm)

~~~
nhebb
_Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see:
country borders._

I don't know why the author thought that was so _profound_. Did he really
expect the borders to be outlined with lights?

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mapleoin
I think this paragraph should shed a bit more light on what the author meant:

 _But if enough people can get to space, they’ll see the planet for what it
is: a fragile, magnificent ball with a thin shell of atmosphere protecting it
from the entire Universe… and no artificial boundary lines to be seen. We made
those ourselves, and we put an awful lot of stock in them. Remembering that
fact might also be an important way to make sure our species endures._

~~~
three14
I have no problem getting rid of international borders. Just install a global
government of my choosing to control everything. No one else will have a
problem with my choice, right?

~~~
three14
Interesting that this was downvoted - probably because someone was impressed
by the importance of remembering that we all need to unite to solve problems.
I was trying point out how many problems are solved _because_ we have
international borders. Absolute power corrupts absolutely? We at least can
limit power at borders. Seeking asylum? Sure is great that there's more than
one country. Your government taken over by Communists? At least there are
other countries reminding your fellow citizens that Communism isn't the best
idea. It's not like you actually need borders to create wars.

Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that Western Europe became more
advanced than China despite a head start in China because there were so many
countries, so one country's government couldn't ruin things.

~~~
mkarmac
This idea of "containment" may have worked well in the past, but is not as
practical anymore. The world is so deeply connected, and technology so
advanced, that international cooperation is far more essential.

Nuclear weaponry is but one of a number of salient examples. Even such staunch
realists as Kissinger have come to recognize that they must be eliminated, and
that intense international cooperation will be necessary to do so:

[http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-
digest/article/610...](http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-
digest/article/6109)

~~~
three14
I agree with that. (Well, except for the idea that it's practical to get rid
of every last nuke.) We need to work together AND we benefit from having
separate countries and borders.

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VladRussian
"Many astronauts come back from long-durations stays on the ISS with a deep
new sense of citizenship not of just their country, but of their planet."

watched "Independence Day" yesterday again. I don't think there is another way
short of that to make majority of human species on Earth to feel as "citizens
of planet". Things like ecology/green movement doesn't seem to be a way to do
it as it is subject to tragedy of commons... at least until it will be out
weighted by an order of magnitude bigger tragedy

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KevinMS
_Back on the ground, most of the land area around the river is dark, of
course, because it’s desert._

Maybe I'm weird, but now I want to know what those lonely spots of light are.

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throw_away
from google maps, you can figure out some of the places by comparing them to
the satellite image:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cairo&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.863178,86.220703&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Cairo,+Egypt&ll=29.276816,29.6521&spn=5.077857,10.777588&t=h&z=7)

this seems to be one of the more isolated ones:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahariya_Oasis>

pretty fascinating.

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Pyrodogg
Thats what I was thinking. The few places in the desert that people found
water.

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paulgerhardt
Anyone know what this article meant by "enphaoronate"?

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wlievens
When linking pictures, Phil Plait always adds a line that basically means
"Click to enlarge". He started using the Simpsons phrase embiggen at some
point, and a while after that he started making up words vaguely related to
the context.

Pharaos are big in a metaphorical sense. Enpharaoronate means embiggen.

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mohamedsa
> Pharaos are big in a metaphorical sense.

Incidentally, I've heard that 'Pharaoh' comes from an ancient Egyptian word
meaning 'big house' or 'big palace'.

Another speculation is that it's related to the Arabic word فارع, meaning
'very tall'. So it's might be nearer than expected to the intended meaning :)

If 'Enpharaoronate' were a real word it would fit very well in translating a
famous Egyptian proverb from Arabic: "Said to the Pharaoh: what
Enpharaoronated you? He said: I didn't find anyone to stop me."

