Earth

Earth Alley 3602 Elm Ave., Hampden 410-366-2110 Hours: 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; 4 p.m.-8 p.m. Thursday; noon-7 p.m. Friday & Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday Just in time for an eco-friendly holiday, Earth Alley has opened in Hampden. The gift and home accessories shop with the grass-green facade is one with the planet, so to speak, and features sustainable design and fair-trade items. Owner Eva Khoury likes to think of many of the things in her store as "upcycling" - things like purses made of old records, tires and magazines; picture frames from parts of old boats; and tree-free greeting cards created with sugar cane fiber.

Looking for an out-of-this-world conversation starter for your den? A hefty chunk of space debris made a brief stop in Owings Mills yesterday on its way to New York to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Professional meteorite hunter Steve Arnold brought his 1,400-pound find to Direct Dimensions, an Owings Mills-based 3-D imaging company, to gather precise measurements of its mottled exterior. The meteorite - a chunk of interplanetary debris that falls to the earth's surface - is an "oriented pallasite," composed of iron and olivine, a semiprecious gemstone known as peridot.

EAST COLUMBIA communities, like diamonds, have many faces. Each one, like a precious jewel, reflects light in its own way.On a blustery Saturday in November, Sean Martin, fourth-grade teacher at Phelps Luck Elementary School, took 20 pupil and parent volunteers on a cleanup campaign along the paths of Kendall Ridge.The idea grew out of a citizenship lesson in his social studies class.Reading for the class included a book about Chief Seattle, respected leader of the Northwest Nations in the 1850s, who negotiated with the U.S. government for the purchase of land belonging to the tribes.

EAST COLUMBIA communities, like diamonds, have many faces. Each one, like a precious jewel, reflects light in its own way.On a blustery Saturday in November, Sean Martin, fourth-grade teacher at Phelps Luck Elementary School, took 20 pupil and parent volunteers on a cleanup campaign along the paths of Kendall Ridge.The idea grew out of a citizenship lesson in his social studies class.Reading for the class included a book about Chief Seattle, respected leader of the Northwest Nations in the 1850s, who negotiated with the U.S. government for the purchase of land belonging to the tribes.

THE WORLD'S leading astronomers recently adopted a new rating system likely to have a Deep Impact on many people. Similar to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, it predicts the devastation likely to be wrought by a collision between Earth and an asteroid.Category 0 or 1: "You hit the snooze button and go back to sleep," said prominent astronomer Richard Binzel, who developed the 0-10 rating system for the International Astronomical Union.Category 10: "It will ruin your day." At a minimum.

After all the New Years' fireworks simmer down, and the revelers sober up, sky-watchers in Maryland can settle in for what should be a terrific year for backyard astronomy in 2000.The year promises the first total eclipse of the moon visible from these parts since September 1996, and a partial solar eclipse on Christmas Day 2000 that seems certain to herald something portentous to someone.Jupiter and Saturn will converge all winter and spring in the evening sky. The coming solar maximum could shove some Northern Lights south toward our latitude.

Sometimes, planning can be fruitless.It was for Proud Run in the $75,000 All Brandy Stakes yesterday, as the 5-year-old mare altered her game plan by surging to challenge for the lead, capturing it, then holding off Earth to Jackie for a convincing length victory over a firm turf course at Laurel Park.The daughter of Proud Truth completed 1 1/8 miles in 1 minute, 46 2/5 seconds while scoring her first victory of 1999 after a string of five seconds and thirds."We planned to lay off the speed, but it didn't work out that way," said jockey Mark Johnston.

WHAT IF physicians had ignored death rates that suggested bloodletting wasn't such a great cure? What if mapmakers kissed off sailors' stories that disproved the Earth is flat? What if astronomers had evidence that Pluto isn't really a planet but decided to keep calling it one anyway? Hold it, that's where we are.The International Astronomical Union says it will continue to list Pluto as our solar system's ninth planet even if it doesn't measure up. The IAU has gone medieval by placing tradition over science.

When you know the answers to these questions, go to http://www.4Kids.org/detectives/1. What was Wolfgang's sister's name?2. At the current rate, when might the rain forests disappear?3. How should teens deal with sports injuries? (Go to http://www.kidshealth.org to find out.)HANG AROUND WITH WOLFGANGIf you want your day to end on a high note, try tickling the ivories with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (you know, the child genius who went on to become one of the world's greatest musical composers)

HESPERIA, Calif. -- It's not exactly that the aborigines of Australia's Western Desert have forgotten how to build traditional earth houses. It's just that it's been a while, and besides, they've heard about some new architectural ideas for using nature-friendly building materials.Sandbags, for instance.A half-dozen village leaders from the Ngurawanna community, in the Pilbara region of the great Outback, were on a walkabout of sorts this month at a seminar put on at Iranian-born architect Nader Khalili's Cal-Earth Institute.

Jack Scott in Baltimore says he was taught that the dark portion of a less-than-full moon is caused by "the sun casting the shadow of the Earth upon it." But after seeing the sun rise alongside a crescent moon, he asked, "How can that be?" Re-read your class notes, Jack. The dark portion lies in the moon's own shadow. It's the side facing away from the sun. Earth's shadow falls on the moon only during lunar eclipses.

Planetary scientists are preparing for another quick and close-up look at the planet Mercury on Tuesday evening as the Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft skims to within 142 miles of the sun's closest neighbor. The flyby, around 6 p.m., will be the scientists' last look at Mercury until their spacecraft returns in March 2011 and, if all goes well, become the first ever to orbit the tiny planet. "Every time we encounter this planet we are surprised," said Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the $446 million mission's principal investigator.

Earth *** 1/2 ( 3 1/2 STARS) Families of polar bears, whales and elephants cavort through some of the most magnificent scenery on the planet in this truncated (and Disney-fied) version of the BBC and Discovery Channel's Planet Earth series. Earth should please all ages: Adults will love the breathtaking vistas and wondrous wildlife photography, while kids will laugh at all the animal antics. Opening next Friday Drag Me To Hell : (Universal Pictures) Sam Raimi directs this tale of a loan officer who's cursed after she evicts a strange old woman from her home.

Polar bear cubs seeing daylight for the first time. Mother elephants plodding through the desert. Humpback whales leaping out of the ocean. Exhausted geese, struggling to fly over the top of Mount Everest. With such a photogenic and charismatic cast, how could Earth miss? This first release from the new Disneynature line is both a throwback to and an update of the wildlife films Disney began producing in the 1950s, films that turned an entire generation into nature lovers. This film, especially when experienced with all the clarity and magnificence new projection technology can muster, should do much the same.

Wednesday is Earth Day, a time set aside for appreciating and taking stock of the environment. In Maryland, our attention inevitably turns to the state's greatest natural resource, the Chesapeake Bay, which can use all the appreciating and attention it can get. The bay's woes are substantial and well-documented. Given all the bad news, from the decline of oysters and other native seafood to the rise of oxygen-free dead zones, one might expect public enthusiasm for the Chesapeake to waiver or at least a certain amount of fatigue to set in. Haven't we heard it all before?

Warming skeptics resolve to respond Contrary to the suggestion in the editorial "A New Year's resolution" (Jan. 2), it is quite possible to be a concerned environmentalist and be a skeptic about man-made global warming. The Baltimore Sun suggests that the relevant scientific community has reached a clear consensus; this is only true of the politically motivated part of such community. Ironically, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported that "three independent research groups have concluded that 2008 was a comparatively cool year on planet Earth."

An asteroid hurtles toward Earth, threatening devastation. A team of attractive young scientists and engineers launches a rocket that crashes into the asteroid and knocks it off course - just in the nick of time. But wait. The crash pushes the giant space rock toward a "keyhole" in space: a tiny window that guarantees that the asteroid will come back and obliterate some hapless city in the future. What to do? A scruffy grad student raises his hand. How about a "gravity tractor" to tow it off course?

WALL-E stays true to Pixar's promise that toy-oriented animation will keep growing with its audience. The title character, a Charlie Chaplin-meets-R2D2 hero, is sure to tap emotions in humans of all ages. The film, like its protagonist, moves from scrappy kiddie comedy to over-the-moon romance. WALL-E conjures magical comedy out of the confusions of adolescence and the wrong turns of adulthood, as well as the exuberance of childhood. It's sometimes bright, sometimes gloomy, but always engaging and accessible.

So how do you send a spacecraft to the sun without broiling it to a cinder? "We go at night," said Andrew A. Dantzler, project manager for Solar Probe, a new space science mission announced yesterday by the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab near Laurel. That has been the running joke around the lab, Dantzler said. But APL scientists and engineers are perfectly serious about the $750 million NASA-funded mission - the first ever to fly scientific instruments through the sun's million-degree corona and to within 4.1 million miles of its roiling surface.

SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS from around the world are genuinely predicting that five years from now, all life on Earth could well finish. Some say it'll be humans that set it off. Others believe a natural phenomenon will be the cause. And religious folks say God himself will press the stop button!" So go the postings of Community Forums on the Web. If you want to read this kind of stuff, just type in "2012" or "end of days." It gets pretty scary and deep. There's the Mayan Calendar that sets Dec. 21, 2012, as the end of the world.