{"id":119440,"date":"2016-04-22T08:07:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T06:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/germistoncitynews.co.za\/119440\/mother-earth-what-if-she-is-alive\/"},"modified":"2016-04-22T08:43:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-22T06:43:38","slug":"mother-earth-what-if-she-is-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/news-headlines\/2016\/04\/22\/mother-earth-what-if-she-is-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother Earth: What if she is alive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is International Mother Earth Day<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Gaia Day.<\/p>\n

Gaia is the ancient Greek goddess of the earth \u2013 the great Mother Goddess. She is Earth itself.<\/p>

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Throughout history, the concept of\u00a0Mother Earth\u00a0has been a part of human culture in one form or another.<\/p>\n

What if the earth is ‘alive’?<\/h3>\n

Contrary to the common belief that the earth is simply a dense planet whose only function is a resource for its inhabitants, our planet is in fact a living, breathing organism. When we think of the earth holistically, as one living entity, instead of the sum of its parts, it takes on a new meaning.<\/p>

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Earth’s seasonal transformations<\/h3>\n

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John Nelson illustrated the\u00a0\u201cBreathing Earth\u201d<\/a>, which are two animated GIFs he designed to visualize what a year\u2019s worth of earth\u2019s seasonal transformations look like from outer space. Nelson\u2013a data visualizer, stitched together from NASA\u2019s website, 12 cloud-free satellite photographs taken each month over the course of a year. Once the images were put together in a sequence, the mesmerizing animations showed how as\u00a0the climate changes, the planet comes alive. Earth appears to breathe when ice cover grows and melts \u2013 in and out, in and out.<\/p>\n

What is Gaia?<\/h3>\n

James Lovelock<\/a> published a book in 1979 about the earth acting\u00a0as a single system \u2013 it is a coherent, self-regulated, assemblage of physical, chemical, geological, and biological forces that interact to maintain a unified whole balanced between the input of energy from the sun and the thermal sink of energy into space.<\/p>\n

The truly startling component of the\u00a0Gaia hypothesis\u00a0is the idea that the earth is a single living entity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The connectedness of all things<\/h3>\n

The idea of the earth acting as a single system has stimulated a new awareness of the connectedness of all things and the impact that man has on global processes.<\/p>\n

Everything that happens on the planet \u2013 the deforestation\/reforestation of trees, the increase\/decrease of emissions of carbon dioxide, the removal or planting of croplands \u2013 all have an affect on our planet.<\/p>\n

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