Space and astronomy news
Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond. If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, for example, the black hole can expel it out into space as a rogue star.
What would happen to Earth if one of these stellar interlopers got too close?
Continue reading “What Would Happen to Earth if a Rogue Star Came Too Close?”
While preparing for the threat of an asteroid strike might seem like a hypothetical exercise, it’s really not. The Solar System has calmed down a lot from earlier times when impacts were more frequent. But it is only a matter of time before an asteroid heads straight for Earth. The probability of an impact is not zero.
Equally as difficult as determining when one will come for us is the task of getting humanity to cooperate and prepare for it.
Continue reading “If You’re Trying to Prevent an Asteroid Impact, the Technical and Political Challenges are Staggering”
A bewildering number of factors and variables led up to the planet we occupy today, where life finds a way to survive and even thrive in the most marginal conditions. The Sun is the catalyst for it all, propelling life on its journey to greater complexity with its steady fusion.
But the Sun is only benign because of Earth’s built-in protection, the magnetosphere. Both the Sun and the magnetosphere have changed over time, with each one’s strength ebbing and flowing. The Sun drives powerful space weather our way, and the magnetosphere shields the Earth.
How have these two phenomena shaped Earth’s habitability?
Continue reading “Earth’s Past and Future Habitability Depends on Our Protection from Space Weather”
Earth’s early history is marked by massive collisions with other objects, including planetesimals. One of the defining events in our planet’s history, the formation of the Moon, likely resulted from one of these catastrophic collisions when a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. That’s the Giant Impact Hypothesis, and it explains how the collision produced a torus of debris rotating around the Earth that eventually coalesced into our only natural satellite.
New research strengthens the idea that Theia left some of its remains inside Earth.
Continue reading “Earth is Hiding Another Planet Deep Inside”
When a giant meteor crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, the impact pulverized cubic kilometers of rock and blasted the dust and debris into the Earth’s atmosphere. It was previously believed that sulfur from the impact and soot from the global fires that followed drove a global “impact winter” that killed off 75% of species on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
A new geology paper says that the die-off was additionally fueled by ultrafine dust created by the impact which filled the atmosphere and blocked sunlight for as long as 15 years. Plants were unable to photosynthesize and global temperatures were lowered by 15 degrees C (59 F).
Continue reading “Devastating Clouds of Dust Helped End the Reign of the Dinosaurs”
Even though Venus is very similar to Earth in many ways, it’s a hell-world with a runaway greenhouse effect. It was assumed this was because it lacked plate tectonics like Earth to sequester carbon inside the planet. A new study suggests that the high nitrogen and argon in its atmosphere are evidence from outgassing when it had plate tectonics billions of years ago. This could mean that Venus was habitable for a long time before something went horribly wrong.
Continue reading “Venus Might Have Had Plate Tectonics Just Like Earth”
A recent study published in Nature Geoscience uses supercomputer climate models to examine how a supercontinent, dubbed Pangea Ultima (also called Pangea Proxima), that will form 250 million years from now will result in extreme temperatures, making this new supercontinent uninhabitable for life, specifically mammals. This study was conducted by an international team of researchers led by the University of Bristol and holds the potential to help scientists better understand how Earth’s climate could change in the distant future from natural processes, as opposed to climate change.
Continue reading “In 250 Million Years, a Single Supercontinent will Form, Wiping Out Nearly all Mammals”
Earth was once entirely molten. Planetary scientists call this phase in a planet’s evolution a magma ocean, and Earth may have had more than one magma ocean phase. Earth cooled and, over 4.5 billion years, became the vibrant, life-supporting world it is today.
Can the same thing happen to exo-lava worlds? Can studying them shed light on Earth’s transition?
Continue reading “How Do Lava Worlds Become Earth-Like, Living Planets?”
The ESA launched Gaia in 2013 with one overarching goal: to map more than one billion stars in the Milky Way. Its vast collection of data is frequently used in published research. Gaia is an ambitious mission, though it seldom makes headlines on its own.
But that could change.
Continue reading “Gaia is Now Finding Planets. Could it Find Another Earth?”
Methanol is one of our most extensively used raw materials. It’s used as a solvent, a pesticide, and in combination with other chemicals in the manufacture of plastic, clothing, plywood, and in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.
It’s also used as a fuel.
Continue reading “Engineers Want to Make Methanol by Pulling Carbon Right Out of the Air”