Travel Time from London in 1881

This is really cool!

My favorite part of this visualization is for a trip to Africa, as the rapid change in colors once you arrive on the content very nicely and tersely tells you something about the change in transportation mode (and topography, etc.).

I'm sure there are plenty of other similarly interesting things if one looks closely.

This map shows travel time from London in 1881 pic.twitter.com/CbMNxcDEpu

— Conrad Hackett (@conradhackett) December 23, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sydney Padua.)

Testing the Green-Cheese Origin Theory of the Moon

As I write in my latest post for the Improbable Research blog, the green-cheese origin theory of the Moon has been tested before. Well, sort of: a 1970 paper in Science includes sound-speed measurements of lunar rooks, terrestrial rocks, and terrestrial cheeses.