Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!<\/p>\n
It was very tempting to make this week\u2019s newsletter entirely about a certain ongoing space voyage<\/a> you may have heard about. But there\u2019s lots happening in the world, so we also have some charts on the strait of Hormuz, Melbourne\u2019s seasons and more.<\/p>\n But first \u2026 is it still \u2018space\u2019 if it\u2019s full?<\/p>\n To kick us off with a story from a different part of space, my UK colleagues have visualised the 32,000 objects currently orbiting Earth.<\/p>\n How a satellite-smashing chain reaction could spiral out of control. Illustration: Guardian Design<\/p>\n But perhaps even more alarming than the sheer number, is how fast this has grown \u2013 from about 7,000 objects in the 1970s and 20,000 in the 90s. The real map is animated \u2013 making it far more terrifying \u2013 and there are a bunch of other cool charts in here that you should check out<\/a>.<\/p>\n Back in Australia, Andy Ball and I have been tracking the fuel crisis<\/a>, including this animated map showing the (still) hundreds of service stations that are out of one or more fuel types:<\/p>\n Fuel outages in Australia as of 9 April. Illustration: Guardian Design<\/p>\n That page is being updated regularly with the latest fuel prices across major cities, outages, shipments and the country\u2019s fuel reserves.<\/p>\n Julian Fell and Casey Briggs at the ABC are using similar data to estimate fuel prices by capital city and regional classification<\/a>. Julian also had a neat story<\/a> about how the variation in fuel prices has reduced as margins get squeezed.<\/p>\n Four charts from the fortnight<\/p>\n 1. And then what happened?<\/p>\n Reuters has a brilliantly designed interactive<\/a> asking people to guess what has happened since Trump\u2019s tariff \u201cliberation day\u201d last year, by drawing and dragging on some charts:<\/p>\n What happened to US trade deficits. Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n We actually did a very similar interactive<\/a> a couple of years ago, asking whether things had gotten better or worse. But ours didn\u2019t have any interactive bar charts. Very jealous of Reuters\u2019 bar charts.<\/p>\n 2. That\u2019s just too many<\/p>\n How many seasons does Melbourne have? As an unwilling Melbourne resident I\u2019d say it has two \u2013 cold and colder. But software developer Max Craigie has built a very cool app<\/a> that suggests there are actually seven:<\/p>\n How many seasons are there? Photograph: Max Craigie<\/p>\n The methodology page<\/a> on this app is fascinating \u2013 even using cosine similarity to match season names with weather data! Max also notes that the Wurundjeri and other Kulin Nation peoples have long recognised seven seasons in Melbourne, although this drew on cultural practice and knowledge of plants and animals, rather than just weather.<\/p>\n I tried to investigate whether Melbourne\u2019s famous \u201cfour seasons in a day\u201d is true a few years ago, and wound up making a quiz to help you find where to live<\/a>.<\/p>\n 3. A very detailed map<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a lot of brilliant maps made of the strait of Hormuz, but this incredibly detailed one<\/a> by the New York Times really helped me get my bearings. It shows the scale of the Persian Gulf, and helps you understand where important sites like Kharg and Larak actually are.<\/p>\n One of the many brilliant maps of the strait of Hormuz. Photograph: Nytimes<\/p>\n This<\/a> was another great map piece from the NYT, showing the scale of the war. And the ABC mapped Israel\u2019s destruction of bridges<\/a> in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n 4. A \u2018double shock\u2019<\/p>\n My UK colleagues created this great\/horrifying visual guide to the fertiliser blockade<\/a>, and who it will affect. It included this map that stacks wonderfully on mobile:<\/p>\n The global dependence on imports of Gulf fertiliser. Illustration: Guardian Design<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a lovely Sankey chart in here<\/a>. Very underrated chart, the Sankey.<\/p>\n BookmarksOff the Charts<\/p>\n I really wanted to show you this ABC interactive<\/a> visualising the journey of Artemis II. Unfortunately I couldn\u2019t get permission in time for print newsletter-o-clock. But I really recommend you click through. It\u2019s great.<\/p>\n I also liked this New York Times story<\/a> that includes an animated timeline and some beautiful graphics of the ship itself:<\/p>\n Inside the Artemis II capsuel. Photograph: Nytimes<\/p>\n Quick! Someone make a minivan-to-Sydney-Harbour-volume conversion calculator.<\/p>\n Bloomberg has some fun little animations and 3D in this Artemis II interactive<\/a>. German newspaper Die Zeit\u2019s version<\/a> is absolutely gorgeous \u2013 worth it even if you don\u2019t speak Deutsch.<\/p>\n Sign up<\/p>\n