Coming up on New Year’s Eve, earthlings tend to celebrate milestones of the year passed, as well as look expectantly toward the future. Here, Planetsave brings you some of the best space coverage of 2014 in various media. The overall winner has to be the six-minute ultra-high definition timelapse video, with custom soundtrack, compiled by
Years ago, countries of the world committed to lock in a new international climate agreement at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change conference in Paris, informally called COP 21. It’s coming up fast, considering that for the past 50 years, scientists have been expressing their sense of an impending showdown between the people of earth and
Remember the difference between weather and climate? We know what happens when the weather changes—it’s obvious. Climate is another story. Read on. When it rains, you put on a raincoat or take your umbrella when you go out. It snows: time for high boots, a heavier coat, scarf, and warm gloves. And sunny days, well,
Would you like to chase satellites, print out custom sky charts whenever you wish, and locate real-time iridium flares without a telescope or binoculars? Heavens Above has just the features you’re looking for. It’s dedicated to helping people observe and track, with only the naked eye, satellites orbiting Earth. Chris Peat, a physicist and space-industry
“Deep. Dangerous. Determined.” And now we all have a chance to go along. Today DEEPSEA CHALLENGE 3D opens—-the film in which James Cameron dives to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest known part of Earth’s oceans. “I’ve seen some pretty astonishing things in the depths,” says James Cameron of his dives to the
The closest full moon of 2014 occurs this week, on Sunday, August 10, at 2:11 p.m. EDT. It’s the fourth and biggest of 2014’s five rogue Supermoon events. We’ll be able to see the Moon reach its perigree, when it draws closer to the Earth than at any other time during 2014. As we noted
PlanetSave would be remiss if we didn’t say something today to recognize that 45 years ago humans first set foot on another celestial body. Launched on an expendable multistage liquid-fueled Saturn V rocket on July 16th, 1969, Apollo 11 crew left Earth for the first human mission to land on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot
OCO-2 is only a little thing, about 6 ft long, 3 ft in diameter, and less than half a ton in weight (NASA/JPL-Caltech, artist’s conception). It will be harder to deny the existence of climate change now that NASA has successfully launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2. A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air
Mercury, innermost planet of our Solar system (zodiac-astrology-horoscopes.com) Sunday night, May 25, you may want to take a look at the planet Mercury. It’s the best night all year for viewing our feisty little sunmost neighbor from Earth’s northern hemisphere. On this date, Mercury will reach its elongation—the farthest point it travels to the east
Yup. Hope you all are enjoying this Monday…. Thanks to I F*cking Love Science on Facebook for this one!
Tonight’s the first annular solar eclipse of 2014 (April 28-29), but almost nobody will be able to see it. The ring of fire will be visible only from the uninhabited region of Wilkes Land in Antarctica, the southern edge of Indonesia, and the South Indian Ocean. Australians will experience a partial solar eclipse, as may
Artist’s conception of Kepler-186f in its solar system (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech) It’s a bit less possible now that we’re alone in the universe. The $600-million Kepler Space Telescope, launched five years ago to identify planets, has spotted more than 3,800 and confirmed 966 of them. The last one, fifth planet of a star in the
On his blog “I see a change,” Nigerian Youth Development Expert Olumide Idowu presents the elements of sustainable development (source: olumideidowu.blog.com). Not all online courses provide all they promise you, but here’s one that should answer all your questions about environmentally sustainable, socially inclusive economic development. It will also challenge you to find out more.
This cartoon is in the current issue of Yes! Magazine. It’s a great issue about STUFF. Annie Leonard is the cover girl and Woody gets a little press for his tree-free paper company Step Forward Paper. I have 2 cartoons in this issue. I’ll share the other one next week…it may be my new favorite.
Understanding the geologic history of Earth will no doubt be a decades, if not centuries long process, as we gather more and more data and expand our knowledge. New research published in the April 25 issue of the journal Nature has contributed an interesting new data point, however, shining a light on the processes involved in
New research results from a team led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University have shown that magma forms much deeper than geologists had previously thought. The scientists put minute samples of peridotite – a rock derived from Earth’s mantle – under very high pressures in a laboratory and found that the rock can and does liquify
In an attempt to determine the density of our planet’s core, scientists have attempted to simulate Earth’s formation, and found that Earth’s core contains the largest reservoir of carbon on the planet. Or should we say in the planet … I’m sorry. I’ll shut up now.
New research by scientists has found that biodiversity on Earth actually increases as the planet warms. However, importantly, this growth is observed in the evolution of new species over millions of years and is most often accompanied by the extinction of other species.
The present trend of accelerated warming is not likely to boost global biodiversity, rather, it is set to destroy it.
If you look at the Caribbean islands from above you’ll see that they arc, and new research by geophysicists at the University of Southern California have found that over the past 50 million years the Caribbean islands have been pushed east by the steady movement of the Earth’s viscous mantle against the more stationary Southern
Planet Earth’s oceans, forests, and other assorted ecosystems are continuing to soak up approximately half the carbon dioxide we humans pump into the atmosphere every day, even as those emissions continue to increase, once again belying the very little knowledge we currently have of our planet. “Globally, these carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ have roughly kept pace
“We scientists are not content just to talk about vaporizing the Earth,” says Bruce Fegley, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, tongue firmly in cheek. “We want to understand exactly what it would be like if it happened.” Now, there’s scientific curiosity, which is all well and good, but
NASA has released one of the most amazing photos of planet Earth you’re likely to see. Measuring in at 8000 pixels by 8000 pixels at it’s original size, we’re given the chance to see Earth in stunning beauty and clarity. From NASA; A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard
Could this be the reason? h/t Climate Progress
In what life was probably like prior to the coming of the year 2000, every man and his dog is coming up with a theory for how the Earth will end come 2012. After already curbing fears that a giant “killer solar flare” will wipe out planet Earth next year, NASA has again weighed in, this time explaining that a supervolcano will not have a supereruption during 2012.
Probably. Let’s get to that later.
I don’t watch a heap of news, so I was surprised to hear that people are expecting 2012 to end thanks to a massive solar flare as a result of the oncoming solar maximum. Thankfully, even as I heard about it, I was reliably informed by scientists from NASA that such an event is a ‘physical impossibility’.
There’s no denying it — reports of massive earthquakes have been rocking the news lately. All this recent seismic activity has caused many to wonder: has the earth always been this shaky? Or is human activity causing some of these earthquakes? While some earthquakes are due to the shifting of tectonic plates above the earth’s
Many believe that the meteorite strike that caused the Chicxulub crater in Mexico was what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, and researchers from Princeton University have simulated the event in the hopes of better understanding the levels of death and destruction that would result from such a massive impact
‘Global warming is real’ says a new study released by researchers from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group, which finds ‘reliable evidence’ of a global increase in the average land temperature of approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s.
One of the common arguments to dismiss those supporting the idea that the climate is warming as a result of manmade carbon dioxide emissions is that global warming is a natural thing; that it has always varied and that sometimes temperatures rise and that this is a perfectly natural occurrence. However in a new study it has been shown that a simultaneous warming of both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres has never happened in the past 20,000 years.
Huge percentages of forests are destroyed each year as a result of hurricanes, insect outbreaks and wildfire, but scientists are only just beginning to get a handle on what this does to the overall carbon intake of a forest.
For many of us, we’re never going to see an aurora. We simply live too far away from the poles. We might be able to make do with photos people have taken from the ground, but even that doesn’t match up with the video and image below, which show the aurora australis over Antarctica on September 11, 2005.
A new study from a team of French researchers from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (CNRS/IPGP/Université Paris Diderot) working on conjunction with scientists from Brazil and the United States has challenged the belief that Earth was completely covered in ice 635 million years ago, creating what is now colloquially known as the Snowball Earth hypothesis.
A new study has found that the Northeast Pacific was not an important reservoir for the carbon that is believed to be responsible for the end of the last Ice Age, throwing scientists back to the proverbial drawing board as they digest this shift in their theories.
Many of us will never see an aurora with our own eyes, so we resort to videos and images on the internet. One of the most amazing I’ve ever seen is this series of still images collated into a timelapse video taken from the International Space Station on September 17.
The 2000s were Earth’s warmest decade in record keeping, but it wasn’t until 2010 that a single year broke past the mark for warmest year on record, previously set in 1998. In other words, the warming trend had flattened out for a little bit. Why was this?
According to researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, Earth’s deep oceans at times absorb enough heat to flatten the rate of global warming. In fact, they can do so and affect the global warming for up to a decade at a time.
HIPPO – HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations – is the name of an unprecedented three-year series of research flights from the Arctic to Antarctica which has provided scientists with a first of its kind portrait of greenhouse gases and particles in the atmosphere.
I think that there is probably nothing as beautiful as a full disc image of Earth, though I would like it if I could find one that didn’t focus on the Americas. Either way, this most recent image was taken on August 24, 2011, by the NASA/NOAA GOES-13 satellite.
A growing body of scientific evidence has led researchers to believe that in a warmer climate there will be no “tipping point” beyond which the Arctic sea ice cannot recover if temperatures start to decrease. Added to this is new research out of the University of Washington which suggests that even if the planet warmed enough to melt all polar sea ice, it could still recover if the temperatures cooled again.
NASA released this utterly breathtaking image of Earth as seen from space on October 17, 2000. You can clearly see North and South America thanks to the combined efforts two satellites.
Planet Earth suffered its seventh warmest July since record keeping began back in 1880, and July’s Arctic sea ice extent was the smallest on record since records began in 1979.
Much focus has been given to the increasing climate change taking place at the poles, both the Arctic and Antarctica. However new research out of The Pennsylvania State University shows that such climate change-induced warming could very well end up affecting the poles geography and geology in different ways.
A new study has found that the worst case scenarios calculated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which were released in 2007 may not realistically calculate the actual worst case scenarios facing planet Earth and her inhabitants.
Planet Earth suffered one of the warmest years on record, according to the 2010 State of the Climate Report which was published today.
Google Earth has always been a fantastic tool, and it has not become even more useful, as Google – in collaboration with Columbia University – has added more ocean seafloor to Google Earth than has ever been available before. As a result, you can now explore half the ocean area that has ever been mapped – an area larger than the size of North America – from the comfort of your own home.
According to Stanford University scientists, the tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to undergo an irreversible temperature shift during summers over the next 20 to 60 years if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed immediately.
The moon contains a lot more water than scientists had originally predicted. This, according to new research that took its data from the “orange soil” that astronaut Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 brought home to Earth.
Valles Caldera is the remains of a collapsed magma chamber which spans some 22 kilometres (14 miles) in New Mexico, and is featured below in the image taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on Landsat 7 satellite on May 22, 2002.
The mass extinction of marine life during the Late Cretaceous Period offers a present day warning of what we could experience in the future, if we’re willing to listen.
