This article was taken from the December issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
The textbooks written by Roy A Gallant taught a generation of students that science could also be art. But research progresses and illustration evolves. Showcased over the next three pages, we give these mid-century classics a 21st-century update.
When Gallant's Exploring Under the Earth was published in 1960, unconnected sensors scattered around the world could measure the force of an earthquake. But exactly how the shock waves rattled around the planet's interior was understood less well, as the simplified diagram below shows.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/659x425/d_f/earthquake_old.jpg" alt="Earthquake Old"/>
Since then, the use of networked sensors and seismic modelling has improved knowledge of deep-Earth dynamics.
To depict the effects of a tremor, illustrator Jason Lee researched how P waves (which travel in compression like a Slinky) and S waves (which travel like undulations in a rope) move through the geologic layers. "The challenge with an earthquake is depicting the motion and how it changes over time," Lee says. "People think of waves as linear, but a quake releases energy in all directions, making it hard to visualise."
Using simulations from a program called Seismic Waves, created by Alan Jones at Binghamton University, New York, Lee was able to trace the complex paths travelled by that energy, including how the waves change their course (or type) when they hit areas of different density. "I first visualised the various stages of an earthquake," he says, "and then composited some of them into a single image showing its progression through and around Earth's core."
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/674x952/d_f/earthquake_new.jpg" alt="Earthquake New"/>
Maps created from Earth-based telescope images - such as the one at far bottom from Exploring Mars - can't capture the same detail that a modern satellite survey can.
So in 2002, Nasa and the US Geological Survey published the shaded relief map. It looks like a high-resolution photograph, but it's actually a computer image generated from more than 600 million laser measurements of the Martian surface. The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter spent about four years scanning the planet, taking measurements at 300-metre intervals over the entire surface. The data was transmitted back to Earth, where it was converted to a digital elevation model, with red showing the highest elevations and blue the lowest.
Researchers are currently using the next generation of this technology to chart the Moon. These maps are the culmination of millions of dollars of research - a far cry from the vintage chart crafted with a telescope and tools available at an art-supply store.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/674x952/k_n/mars-new-map.jpg" alt="Mars New"/> <img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/659x425/o_r/old-mars-map.jpg" alt="Mars Old"/>
As the space age dawned, people took new interest in the skies above. Two-dimensional maps of Earth's atmosphere like the one below showed the distances involved in, say, putting a satellite into orbit.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/659x425/a_c/atmosphere_old.jpg" alt="Space Old"/>
However, a three-dimensional presentation of the same information can provide a more intuitive feel for the structure of the atmosphere. "The challenge," illustrator Bryan Christie says, "is to create a richer experience - through light, shadow, refraction, and opacity - without adding clutter or losing legibility." The updated illustration below depicts the atmospheric layers more accurately (including details like the mesosphere, missing in the earlier diagram), and can unarguably stand alongside the classics of yesteryear as a work of art.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/674x952/a_c/atmosphere_new.jpg" alt="Space New"/>
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
