Category: High-Adventure Science
“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 […]
Scientists may soon find out. Orbiting objects exert a gravitational pull on each other. This gravitational pull is what gives objects their weights; it’s the reason that you weigh 83% less on Earth’s moon than on Earth, without losing any of your mass. Scientists are currently using measurements of objects’ gravitational pulls to find new […]
Burning plant material in the Amazon rain forest can be good for the planet? Yes–provided it’s done in the right way. A scientist at Cornell University has discovered that the ancient practice of burning biomass underground, starved of oxygen. The process produces “terra preta” (also known as “black gold” and biochar)–a carbon-rich soil that helps […]