Category: Earth Science Education
A new study from the University of Colorado suggests that 66% of Earth’s permafrost could disappear by the year 2200. And this could be really bad for Earth’s temperature. If the temperature increases, the permafrost melts. Simple enough, right? But it’s slightly more complicated. Trapped in the permafrost is lots and lots of carbon–in the […]
A new study from the University of Washington suggests that Earth’s temperature will keep increasing, even if all greenhouse gas emissions were stopped right now. Why? Because greenhouse gases will last longer in the atmosphere than particulate matter (aerosols) that reflect the sun’s light. So, the solar radiation coming in will increase and the heat […]
“Within the next 6 to 12 months, I suspect we’ll be able to detect and verify and announce planets that at least have the size of our own Earth.” –Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, University of California Berkeley “This changes our understanding of our role in the universe. We, in some sense, are not alone in terms […]
It seems counter-intuitive, but it seems that warmer summers actually slow the flow of Greenland’s ice sheets. A new study, published yesterday in Nature, explains how increased melting in warmer years causes the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to change, slowing the glacier’s flow towards the ocean. Normally, the melt-water finds its way […]
Warm millennium, that is. And Southern Hemisphere, that is. New research suggests that Earth will continue to warm into the year 3000, even if human-caused carbon dioxide emissions stop right now. According to their models, scientists predict that the Northern Hemisphere will fare much better, with the warming trend reversing within the millennium. This is […]
NASA scientists have deduced that the newly-discovered planet Kepler-10b is 4.6 times more massive than Earth with an average density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter, about the same density as bronze. How did they learn this from a telescope that detects light changes? (See earlier post about Kepler-10b’s discovery.) It turns out that knowing […]
On January 10, 2011, NASA confirmed that the Kepler space telescope had found its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Kepler-10b is really small, the smallest planet yet discovered outside of our solar system, at 1.4 times the size of Earth. The discovery of Kepler-10b was made possible by some major advances in technology: the ability […]
Use a VERY long sampling straw? Nope. Use a spectrometer? Yup. (Explore how this works in our “Is there life outside of Earth?” investigation.) Scientists at NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency collaborated to send the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn to get closer looks at the planet, its rings, and its […]
Scientists have used indirect measurements of movement to infer the presence of waves for a very long time. For example, how can you tell when it’s windy without going outside? You look to see the movements of the trees or flags or other flexible structures. Now, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are using lasers […]
Where has all the groundwater gone, long time passing? (My apologies to Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson.) It’s gone into the sea. Scientists in the Netherlands have made the shocking discovery that much of the water pumped out of the ground evaporates and ends up in the oceans. Amazingly, this raises the sea level by […]