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Outer Solar System

Illustration of the outer Solar System, including the Sun, rocky planets, asteroid belt, gas planets, Kuiper Belt, and the hypothetical Oort Cloud.


Illustration of the outer Solar System, including the Sun, rocky planets, asteroid belt, gas planets, Kuiper Belt, and the hypothetical Oort Cloud. Beyond Neptune’s orbit lies the Kuiper Belt, home to icy bodies such as Pluto and Eris. It occupies a disc-like region from approximately 30 to 50 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. Beyond this lies the hypothetical Oort Cloud, a vast, spherical shell of icy remnants extending from roughly 2,000 AU to as far as 100,000 AU (nearly 1.6 light-years), enveloping the Solar System in all directions. While the Kuiper Belt is relatively well-studied, no direct observations of Oort Cloud objects have yet been confirmed. Together, these distant regions preserve material from the early Solar System and are sources of long-period comets that occasionally visit the inner planets.

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Known Exoplanets

The collection of known Exoplanets represented based on their date of detection and their relative size to scale.

The collection of known Exoplanets represented based on their date of detection and their relative size to scale. Exoplanets are planets outside our solar system with known radii. The largest planetary bodies are annotated with their names. Note that there is some uncertainty in classifying and measuring “exoplanets”. The current figure includes objects (such as some Brown Dwarfs) that do not necessarily fulfil the true definition of an “exoplanet”. This definition would limit the collection to planetary bodies with true masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium, which is currently calculated to be 13 Jupiter masses for objects of solar metallicity, that orbit stars or stellar remnants are (see e.g., https://www.iau.org/static/resolutions/IAU2003_WGESP.pdf for a discussion thereof).

The first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet occurred in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail, who detected two Earth-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. These were the first exoplanets ever confirmed, but because they orbit a neutron star rather than a Sun-like star, they were a very unusual find.

First discovery 30 years ago

In 1995, Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first confirmed exoplanet around a main-sequence star (a more Sun-like star), named 51 Pegasi b and shown in the very centre of the graphic. This discovery marked a major milestone and is often considered the true beginning of modern exoplanet astronomy. Mayor and Queloz were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

The Scientific colour map ‘devon‘ is used to represent data accurately and to all readers.

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Biomass on Earth

The total biomass on the Earth, the combined weight of all living organisms.



The total biomass on the Earth, the combined weight of all living organisms, is estimated at around 550 Billion tons of carbon (Gt C). This mass is primarily made up of plants, particularly land plants such as trees, which account for roughly 450 Gt C. Bacteria and fungi also contribute significantly, together with about 80 Gt C. Animals, including humans, represent a smaller fraction, around 2 Gt C. Understanding the distribution and composition of biomass is crucial for studying ecological processes, biodiversity, and the impact of human activities on the environment. The data are from Bar-On et al. (2018) and the Scientific colour map ‘navia‘ is used to represent data accurately and to all readers.

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Science graphic design guideline

Supporting guideline and check-list for designing a good science figure with purpose.

Supporting guideline for designing a science figure that has a clear purpose, is tailored to its audience and medium, is scientifically accurate and universally readable, effective and engaging, and reproducible and reusable. The guideline is available in multiple languages.

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Plate tectonic Earth map

Visually accessible and scientifically accurate global map of key plate tectonics characteristics on the Earth.

Visually accessible and scientifically accurate global map of key plate tectonics characteristics on the Earth. Superposed on the Earth’s surface topography (from s-ink.org/surface-topography-relief) are the seafloor age (from s-ink.org/oceanic-plate-age), plate boundaries (from s-ink.org/subduction-zones-map) and tectonic plate names (from s-ink.org/tectonic-plates-simple), active volcanoes (from s-ink.org/global-volcano-distribution), largest earthquakes (from s-ink.org/historic-earthquake-distribution), major rivers, and the outlines of the world map. 

Data sets shown are from Amante and Eakins (2009), Müller et al. (1997), Argus et al. (2011), Bird (2003), Deep Sea Drilling Project (1989), NCEI Volcano Location Database, and Hayes (2018). The Scientific colour map ‘lipari‘ is used to represent data accurately and to all readers.

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Magnetic Seafloor Anomalies

Global map of magnetic anomalies imprinted onto the seafloor of the Earth in form of characteristic stripes and other patterns.


Global map of magnetic anomalies imprinted onto the seafloor of the Earth in form of characteristic magnetic stripes and other patterns. The magnetic anomalies are not only observable on the seafloor, but also provide insight into the subsurface structure and composition of the Earth’s crust. Anomalies trending parallel to the isochrons (lines of equal plate age) in the oceans reveal the temporal growth of oceanic plate and crust: seafloor spreading.

Ever so often the Earth’s magnetic field flips its polarity in an occurrence called a geomagnetic reversal. These reversals throughout Earth’s history are recorded in solidifying rocks, such as in the ones making up the growing oceanic crust at mid-oceanic ridges. The successive bands of ocean floor representing alternating magnetic polarity parallel with mid-ocean ridges was important evidence for seafloor spreading, the concept central to the acceptance of the early theory of plate tectonics.

The data plotted is from the global Earth Magnetic Anomaly Grid (EMAG2) and was compiled from satellite, ship and airborne magnetic measurements.

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Pangea

Reconstruction of the supercontinent Pangea (or Pangaea) that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras.

Reconstruction of the supercontinent Pangea (or Pangaea) that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. During the Carboniferous approximately 335 Million years ago, Pangea assembled from the earlier continental fragments of Gondwana, Euramerica, and Siberia, and started to break apart about 200 Million years ago, at the end of the Triassic and beginning of the Jurassic. Pangea extended between Earth’s northern and southern polar regions and was surrounded by the Panthalassa Ocean and the Paleo-Tethys and subsequent Tethys Oceans. Pangea is the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first that was reconstructed by geoscientists.

Here shown is not only the position of the continents, but also the reconstruction of the Earth’s surface paleotopography and paleobathymetry from Scotese & Wright (2018) paleo-digital elevation model (PaleoDEMS). The Scientific colour map ‘bukavu‘ is used to represent data accurately and to all readers.

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Earthquake distribution map (poster)

Global map of seismicity showing the distribution of large 5.8+ magnitude historic earthquakes derived from seismic wave measurements.

Global map of seismicity showing the distribution of large 5.8+ magnitude historic earthquakes derived from seismic wave measurements after the compilation by Hayes (2018). Shown are individual epicentres coloured by depth. For individual earthquake maps see: s-ink.org/historic-earthquake-distribution .

The Scientific colour map ‘oslo‘ is used to represent earthquake depth accurately and to all readers.

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Continental drift hypothesis

The comparison of geographic and geologic continental features across oceans that encouraged the continental drift hypothesis.

The comparison of continental coastline geometries, rock types and patterns, fossils, and glacial formations across oceans that encouraged the continental drift hypothesis.

This map displays a simplified view of the early supercontinent Gondwana. During the time of Gondwana, present-day continents were geographically assembled like a jigsaw puzzle. Continental deformation such as mountain chains, glacial erosion patterns, and the distribution of plants and animals left their marks across the entire supercontinent. When it eventually split up, at around 180 Million years ago, some of these marks were preserved in the geologic record of the dispersed present-day continents.

Geologists, amongst which Antonio Snider-Pellegrini and Alfred Wegener, realised that some of the fossils of similar organisms matched across the present-day continents and encouraged the revolutionary theory of continental drift. Continental drift describes one of the earliest ways geologists thought continents moved over time. More than fifty years later, this theory evolved into the concept of Ocean-plate tectonics, that describes the plate motion at the Earth’s surface as the uppermost dynamic part of mantle convection, the overturn of Earth’s solid but viscous silicate mantle.

The typeface ‚Fufu‘ by Lucia Perez-Diaz is used.

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