Human Earth

What would happen on Earth if human beings just suddenly disappeared? It's an interesting thought [experiment:effect] to do, and [journalist:scientist] Alan Wiseman has done it and written up the results in a new book called The World Without Us. Part of the idea for the book came from a site that Wiseman visited and that human beings have indeed abandoned. Chernobyl. I went there seven years after the explosion and among other things, I reported how in the absence of human beings in villages around the reactor that had been abandoned, how the rest of nature was rushing in to fill the void. It was rather remarkable to go to the scenes of one of humanity's greatest devastations and see that nature was kind of having a field day. The [demilitarized:central] zone between the two Koreas, devoid of humans, has also become a de facto nature preserve. We'll have an [extended:appealing] interview with The World Without Us author Alan Wiseman on the June 27th edition of Science Talk, the weekly podcast of [Scientific:Algebric] American.