Tag: NASA

  • Earth’s “Deep Time” to Predict Future Effects of Climate Change

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    The Science Codex blog reports on a new study that highlights how information from past episodes of rapid change in the Earth’s history provide a valuable tool in predicting how climate change will affect our ecosystems: “Climate change and other human influences are altering Earth’s living systems in big ways, such as changes in growing seasons…

  • Sun’s Magnetic Field to Flip

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    The peak of the sun’s solar cycle, which runs about 11-years long, is about to hit. That means that the sun’s magnetic field is about to flip, completely reversing its field in about three to four months. This solar event only happens once during the 11-year cycle, and it signals what solar physicists call the…

  • NASA releases Saturn-Earth ‘photobomb’ pic

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    The US space agency has released a rare photo of the Earth and moon taken from the vantage point of the outer solar system, with Saturn’s rings in the shot. The color images were taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at a distance of nearly 1.4 billion kilometers away, NASA said. After calling on Earthlings to wave at Cassini for…

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    At least one government agency is serious about climate change.  In this month’s Mother Jones, Dana Liebelson and Chris Mooney write about a scientific study funded by the CIA to investigate whether humans could use geoengineering to alter Earth’s environment and stop climate change: The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will run the 21-month project, which is the…

  • Carbon Cycle Regulated by Tropical Ecosystems

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    RedOrbit reports on a new study by the National Academy of Sciences that links rising temperatures to the release of carbon dioxide from tropical ecosystems: Rising temperatures, influenced by natural events such as El Nino, have a corresponding increase in the release of carbon dioxide from tropical forest ecosystems, according to a new study out…

  • Martian Atmosphere Destroyed Billions of Years Ago

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    CNN’s Elizabeth Landau highlights new findings by NASA’s Mars rover Curiousity: Two new studies in the journal Science this week suggest that the Martian atmosphere hasn’t changed much in terms of chemical composition in the past 4 billion years. It’s much thinner than our planet’s atmosphere, and the mix of ingredients isn’t friendly to living…

  • Blue Planet HD 189733b Rains Glass

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    NASA’s ever-peering eye into the heavens, the Hubble Space Telescope, has found a distant planet whose blue hue could be the result of glass rain. The planet, HD 189733b, is located 63 light-years away, and it wasn’t until recently, when the planet passed behind its host star, that scientists were able to surmise that the…

  • Study of Bacteria in Space Yields Strange Results

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    Miriam Kramer reports on a study conducted in space that could be useful for long term space-flight missions and  may even have implications for bacterial research right here on earth. A team of scientists sent samples of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa into orbit aboard NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis to see how they grew in comparison…

  • Are we alone?

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    As previously posted, new observational techniques have allowed us to discover thousands of planets outside of our solar system.  In an article in the Oxford University Press, David Wilkinson, a christian theologian and astrophysicist, reveals the science behind their discovery and muses on what impact exra-terrestrial life might have on religion: First, a star should…

  • Voyager 1 in strange magnetic boundary zone at edge of solar system

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    By Irene Klotz, ioLscitech Cape Canaveral – Reports last summer that Nasa’s long-lived Voyager 1 space probe had finally left the solar system turned out to be a bit premature, scientists said on Thursday. Rather, the spacecraft, which was launched in 1977 for a five-year mission to study Jupiter and Saturn, has found itself in…