Kilauea, the world’s longest continuously erupting volcano, yielded extraordinary new data collected during an epic, explosive summer –an unprecedented opportunity to monitor an ongoing, accessible eruption that changed the science about how volcanoes behave.
China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover is due to touchdown on the far side of the moon around New Year, 2019 at the Von Kármán crater in Aitken Basin –the craggy and complex terrain of the lunar south pole region. The planet’s new space superpower will plant its flag. Will it also claim ownership?
We know more about the ancient lakes of Mars than we know about Antarctica’s subglacial environment, but in three weeks, a team of intrepid Antarctica scientists will drill 1,000 meters (3,200 feet) into the ice to find out what’s hidden for thousands of years buried in Mercer Subglacial Lake, formed about 10,000 years ago. The lake was first detected via NASA satellite, but never explored by humans. What they find could help to form better hypotheses about life on other planets, like on Mars or Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus.
Check out today’s eclectic coverage of TV programs broadcast and streamed on the (often “far side” and terrifying) state of affairs on our pale blue planet, signaling our existence to possible exo-civilizations.
Astronomers have long puzzled over a paradox of planet creation: once dusty bodies grow to about one centimeter in diameter the dynamics of a smooth protoplanetary disk would induce them to fall in on their host star, never acquiring the mass necessary to form potentially habitable planets like Mars, Venus, and Earth.
“We have the Local Bubble in the interstellar medium. We’re right on its edge,” says Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas. “It’s a giant region about 300 light years long. It’s basically very hot, very low-density gas — nearly all the gas clouds have been swept out of it. The best way to manufacture a bubble like that is a whole bunch of supernovae blows it bigger and bigger, and that seems to fit well with idea of a chain. When we do calculations, they’re based on the idea that one supernova that goes off, and its energy sweeps by Earth, and it’s over.
The “Planet Earth Report” connects you to the days’ headlines on the discoveries, people, and events changing our planet and the future of the human species.
“With these findings, Ceres has gained a pivotal role in assessing the origin, evolution and distribution of organic species across the inner solar system,” said Southwest Research Institute scientist Simone Marchi. “One has to wonder about how this world may have driven organic chemistry pathways, and how these processes may have affected the make-up of larger planets like the Earth.”