Certain parts of Earth’s oceans are so oxygen depleted that they can hardly sustain life. Climate models predict that these “dead zones” will expand as global warming progresses, affecting ecosystems, fisheries, and the climate itself. Now Lengger et al. provide new evidence that such predictions do not […]
The divide between lush forest and desert is striking in this photograph taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Meandering rivers and farmland comprise most of the lower right half of the photo, while the upper left shows part of the Atacama […]
Deep below the Earth’s surface lies a thick rocky layer called the mantle, which makes up the majority of our planet’s volume. While Earth’s mantle is too deep for humans to observe directly, certain meteorites can provide clues to this unreachable layer. In a study […]
1. Geo Centric Phase The spacecraft is injected into an Elliptic Parking Orbit by the launcher. With six main engine burns, the spacecraft is gradually maneuvered into a departure hyperbolic trajectory with which it escapes from the Earth’s Sphere of Influence (SOI) with Earth’s orbital […]
One of the most luminous stellar explosions ever detected may now be explained. It came from the detonation of a dead star within the dense shell of matter ejected from that sun’s companion star, a new study suggests. Supernovas are explosions that can happen when stars […]
HONOLULU — A tiny satellite studying alien worlds may be gone for good, but during the two years the spacecraft operated, it laid the foundation for what may become a new way of finding exoplanets. The Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics satellite (ASTERIA) fell silent […]
Scientists recently identified the oldest material on Earth: stardust that’s 7 billion years old, tucked away in a massive, rocky meteorite that struck our planet half a century ago. This ancient interstellar dust, made of presolar grains (dust grains that predate our sun), was belched […]
Astronomers have detected several supermassive black holes wandering through their dwarf host galaxies, providing new clues about how similar black holes evolved in the early universe. Using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, the researchers identified 13 dwarf […]
Proxima b may not be an only child after all. In August 2016, astronomers announced that a roughly Earth-size exoplanet circles the closest star to the sun, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, which lies a mere 4.2 light-years from us. (For perspective, the Milky Way galaxy’s spiral disk is […]
It’s the award no one wanted to win: 2019 was the second hottest year on record, government scientists confirmed. That’s according to two separate analyses: one conducted by NASA and one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Each study compared 2019 Earth temperature data with scientists’ historical […]