Will we ever understand how life got started on Earth? We’ve learned much about Earth’s long, multi-billion-year history, but a detailed understanding of how the planet’s atmospheric chemistry evolved still eludes us. At one time, Earth was atmospherically hostile, and its transition from that state to a planet teeming with life followed a complex path.
Continue reading “Lessons From Ancient Earth’s Atmosphere: From Hostile to Hospitable”Good News, the Ozone Layer Hole is Continuing to Shrink
Climate change is a huge topic and often debated across the world. We continue to burn fossil fuels and ignore our charge toward human driven climate change but while our behaviour never seems to improve, something else does! For the last few decades we have been pumping chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere causing a hole in the ozone layer to form. Thanks largely to worldwide regulation changes and a reduction in the use of these chemicals, the hole it seems is finally starting to get smaller.
Continue reading “Good News, the Ozone Layer Hole is Continuing to Shrink”Webb Reveals a Steam World Planet Orbiting a Red Dwarf
The JWST has found an exoplanet unlike any other. This unique world has an atmosphere almost entirely composed of water vapour. Astronomers have theorized about these types of planets, but this is the first observational confirmation.
Continue reading “Webb Reveals a Steam World Planet Orbiting a Red Dwarf”One Step Closer to Solving the Mystery of Mars’ Lost Water
Few scientists doubt that Mars was once warm and wet. The evidence for a warm, watery past keeps accumulating, and even healthy skepticism can’t dismiss it. All this evidence begs the next question: what happened to it?
Continue reading “One Step Closer to Solving the Mystery of Mars’ Lost Water”Fast-Tracking the Search for Habitable Worlds
Modern astronomy would struggle without AI and machine learning (ML), which have become indispensable tools. They alone have the capability to manage and work with the vast amounts of data that modern telescopes generate. ML can sift through large datasets, seeking specified patterns that would take humans far longer to find.
The search for biosignatures on Earth-like exoplanets is a critical part of contemporary astronomy, and ML can play a big role in it.
Continue reading “Fast-Tracking the Search for Habitable Worlds”Webb Directly Images a Jupiter-Like Planet
The JWST has directly imaged its first exoplanet, a temperate super Jupiter only about 12 light-years away from Earth. It could be the oldest and coldest planet ever detected.
Continue reading “Webb Directly Images a Jupiter-Like Planet”Our Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have a Mesmerizing Side
Our CO2 emissions are warming the planet and making life uncomfortable and even unbearable in some regions. In July, the planet set consecutive records for the hottest day.
NASA is mapping our emissions, and while what they show us isn’t uplifting, it is visually appealing in a ghoulish way. Maybe the combination of visual appeal and ghoulishness will build momentum in the fight against climate change.
Continue reading “Our Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have a Mesmerizing Side”A New View of Olympus Mons
After 100,000 orbits and almost 23 years on Mars, NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter has seen a lot. The spacecraft was sent to map ice and study its geology, but along the way, it’s captured more than 1.4 million images of the planet.
A recent image captured the Solar System’s tallest mountain and volcano, Olympus Mons.
Continue reading “A New View of Olympus Mons”Could We Detect an Alien Civilization Trying to Warm Their Planet?
Humanity is facing an atmospheric threat of our own device, and our internecine squabbles are hampering our ability to neutralize that threat. But if we last long enough, the reverse situation will arise. Our climate will cool, and we’ll need to figure out how to warm it up. If that day ever arises, we should be organized enough to meet the challenge.
If there are other civilizations out there in the galaxy, one may already be facing a cooling climate or an ice age. Could we detect the greenhouse chemicals they would be purposefully emitting into their atmosphere in an attempt to warm their planet?
Continue reading “Could We Detect an Alien Civilization Trying to Warm Their Planet?”Earth’s Atmosphere is Our Best Defence Against Nearby Supernovae
Earth’s protective atmosphere has sheltered life for billions of years, creating a haven where evolution produced complex lifeforms like us. The ozone layer plays a critical role in shielding the biosphere from deadly UV radiation. It blocks 99% of the Sun’s powerful UV output. Earth’s magnetosphere also shelters us.
But the Sun is relatively tame. How effective are the ozone and the magnetosphere at protecting us from powerful supernova explosions?
Continue reading “Earth’s Atmosphere is Our Best Defence Against Nearby Supernovae”