Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky. Astronomers previously discovered three planets in […]
Sci/Tech
Children near airports may be exposed to dangerous levels of lead
January 10, 2023 – A new paper in PNAS Nexus, published by Oxford University Press, finds that children living near one California airport have higher lead levels in their blood. Since leaded gasoline is still used by piston-engine aircraft all around the United States, it appears children are still being exposed to toxic lead levels. This […]
Team projects 2 out of 3 glaciers could be lost by 2100
Assistant Professor David Rounce of Civil and Environmental Engineering led an international effort to produce new projections of glacier mass loss through the century under different emissions scenarios. The projections were aggregated into global temperature change scenarios to support adaptation and mitigation discussions, such as those at the recent United Nations Conference of Parties (COP […]
Cyclone researchers: Warming climate means more and stronger Atlantic tropical storms
AMES, Iowa, January 5, 2022 – A warming climate will increase the number of tropical cyclones and their intensity in the North Atlantic, potentially creating more and stronger hurricanes, according to simulations using a high-resolution, global climate model. “Unfortunately, it’s not great news for people living in coastal regions,” said Christina Patricola, an Iowa State […]
Cluster of prehistoric giant marine reptile fossils believed to be birthing grounds
RENO, Nev. – As many as 37 fossilized, school bus-sized marine reptiles from 225 million years ago are clustered in a remote, mountainous desert region of central Nevada in the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. A team of scientists have offered new evidence for solving the decades-old puzzle of why the extinct ichthyosaurs are there. The research, […]
Two Exoplanets May Be Mostly Water, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Find
A team led by of researchers at the University of Montreal has found evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star are “water worlds,” where water makes up a large fraction of the entire planet. These worlds, located in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, are unlike any planets found […]
National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power. On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted […]
Latest International Water Satellite Packs an Engineering Punch
Set for a Thursday, Dec. 15 launch, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite promises to provide an extraordinary accounting of water over much of Earth’s surface. Its measurements of fresh water and the ocean will help researchers address some of the most pressing climate questions of our time and help communities prepare for a warming world. Making […]
Feline genetics help pinpoint first-ever domestication of cats, MU study finds
COLUMBIA, Mo. December 5, 2022 – Nearly 10,000 years ago, humans settling in the Fertile Crescent, the areas of the Middle East surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, made the first switch from hunter-gatherers to farmers. They developed close bonds with the rodent-eating cats that conveniently served as ancient pest-control in society’s first civilizations. A […]
Solar snake spotted slithering across Sun’s surface
Solar Orbiter has spotted a ‘tube’ of cooler atmospheric gases snaking its way through the Sun’s magnetic field. The observation provides an intriguing new addition to the zoo of features revealed by the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission, especially since the snake was a precursor to a much larger eruption. The snake was seen on 5 […]
Big data modeling, forest fuels mapping aids in mitigating catastrophic wildfire risk
RENO, Nev. – Modeling and mapping fire-vulnerable forest vegetation across millions of acres in California, scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno are using a variety of new technologies with massive amounts of data and computational power. This research will help optimize fuel management to reduce fire risk, support carbon sequestration and improve water quality. […]
First kinetic impact test succeeds in shifting asteroid orbit
The kinetic impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft with the Dimorphos asteroid around its larger Didymos parent body has succeeded in shifting its orbit, meaning humankind’s first planetary defence test has been successful. Observations are continuing of the debris plume caused by the collision for as long as possible, as the asteroid system gradually recedes from Earth. As […]
Impact that killed the dinosaurs triggered “mega-earthquake” that lasted weeks to months
Denver, Colo., USA, 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision. The amount of energy released in this “mega-earthquake” is estimated at 1023 joules, […]
Collision May Have Formed the Moon in Mere Hours, Simulations Reveal
Billions of years ago, a version of our Earth that looks very different than the one we live on today was hit by an object about the size of Mars, called Theia – and out of that collision the Moon was formed. How exactly that formation occurred is a scientific puzzle researchers have studied for […]
Webb and Hubble capture detailed views of DART impact
Two of the great space observatories, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have captured views of a unique experiment to smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid. Observations of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact mark the first time that Webb and Hubble were used to simultaneously observe the same celestial […]
Coffee drinking is associated with increased longevity
Sophia Antipolis, September 27, 2022 – Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day is linked with a longer lifespan and lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared with avoiding coffee, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the ESC.1 The findings applied to ground, instant and decaffeinated varieties. […]
Hera team congratulates NASA asteroid impactors
ESA’s Hera mission team congratulates their counterparts in NASA’s DART mission team for their historic impact with the Dimorphos asteroid. Moving at 6.1 km per second, the car-sized Double Asteroid Redirect Test spacecraft struck the 160-m diameter asteroid at 01:15 CEST (00:15 BST) in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in humankind’s first test of the ‘kinetic […]
DART’s Impact with Asteroid Dimorphos (Official NASA Broadcast)
Countdown to impact as NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) attempts humanity’s first-ever test of planetary defense! The DART spacecraft will intentionally crash into asteroid Dimorphos at 4:14 p.m. PT on Monday, September 26, 2022 to see if kinetic force can change its orbit. Why? If this test is successful, the same technique could be […]
How global warming affects astronomical observations
September 22, 2022 – Astronomical observations from ground-based telescopes are sensitive to local atmospheric conditions. Anthropogenic climate change will negatively affect some of these conditions at observation sites around the globe, as a team of researchers led by the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS reports. The quality […]
Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go, Stanford study finds
The vast majority of electric vehicle owners charge their cars at home in the evening or overnight. We’re doing it wrong, according to a new Stanford study. In March, the research team published a paper on a model they created for charging demand that can be applied to an array of populations and other factors. In the new […]