Science and WeatherSmartphones track largest human migration in the world
Chinese Lunar New Year was on Friday, January 31st, ushering us into the Year of the Horse. Given that this is the only animal in the Chinese zodiac that's regularly used as a mode of transportation (although there could be an argument made for the Ox), it seems appropriate to this year that someone produced a map showing the truly incredible migration of people during the holiday festivities.
Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, posted on his Google+ account:
Hundreds of millions of humans take every possible avenue to return to their home villages from the cities they now live in. In a space of about one week to 10 days, 3.6 billion passenger miles will be clocked on trains, buses, and cars. The Chinese search engine company Baidu (Google equivalent) created a heat map of these trips gathered from the locations provided by the smartphones of their 200 million subscribers.
(H/T to Kevin Kelly & Earthsky.org)
[ More Geekquinox: NASA to create coldest spot in the universe on the International Space Station ]
There's been plenty of talk these days about smartphone tracking data being used to spy on us. However, this data can be just as easily used for good. Scientists have been producing applications for Apple and Android smartphones to track everything from weather, climate and air pollution, to earthquakes, to the distribution of different plant and animal species, and even things like meteorites. That's just a small sampling of what developers have already come up with, and there's sure to be more on the way to help us advance science and even save the world!
(Image courtesy: qianxi.baidu.com)
Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!
