Lockheed Martin’s Mars Base Camp is part of a vision to bring astronauts to the Red Planet. But to enjoy living there longterm, many scientists have long dreamed of altering the planet’s atmosphere. (Credit: Lockheed Martin)
Mars might not have the right ingredients to terraform into our planetary home away from home – even with the recent discovery of liquid water buried near its south pole.
Research published Monday in Nature Astronomy ...read more
Being a generalist specialist, a unique niche, is the hallmark of our species, say researchers — and the reason Homo sapiens (left) are still around but other hominins, including Neanderthals (right), are not. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Some animals are jacks of all trades, some masters of one. Homo sapiens, argues a provocative new commentary, are an evolutionary success story because our ancestors pulled off a unique feat: being masterly jacks of all trades. But ...read more
Kīlauea’s summit seen on a July 28, 2018 overflight, showing the deep new crater. USGS/HVO.
The eruption at KÃlauea has almost reached 3 months and in a sense, this eruption was a two-for-the-price of one. Most of the attention has been on the lava flows on the lower East Rift zone and rightly so. Those lava flows are the largest eruption in historic times at the Hawaiian volcano and have destroyed hundreds of homes, along with permanently altering par ...read more
I spent these last few days meeting and discussing and learning more and more about ICO ventures at the Beyond Blogs Summit in South Korea and the Blockchain Partners Summit 2018 which
had a very interesting tagline : A New Paradigm, A New Future. The Irony is that after interviewing more than 20 ICO founders and their teams, i was somewhat disappointed that they did not know their numbers and when their business model will break even and or how they will go to market and achieve projected reve ...read more
The smoke has drifted far, all the way to Colorado, Texas and beyond
Wildfire smoke enshrouds large portions of California and Oregon, as seen by NASA’s Aqua satellite on Sunday, July 29, 2018. (Source: NASA Worldview)
Since I began this blog in 2013, I’ve seen a lot of satellite imagery of wildfires burning in the American West. Yet despite that experience, I have to admit that when I first saw this image, acquired by NASA’s Aqua sa ...read more
Search for the Rusty Patched bee, track flood impacts, or use your surfboard as a water quality sensor.
Planning a trip to the beach, a park, or a campsite? Here are six ways to contribute to real science while enjoying the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.
Cheers!
The SciStarter Team
Collect water samples at beaches, bays and ponds to monitor water quality and ensure that beaches are safe for recreation. Whether you’re in Maui or Puerto Rico, there is likel ...read more
Uranus and Neptune, the seventh and eighth planets, are largely a mystery — but that could change within the next two decades.
A study submitted to Arxiv by Amy Simon and Mark Hoffstadter, NASA veterans and experts on those planets, and Alan Stern, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, outlines a cost-effective plan to explore those planets — and maybe even visit a few new places on the way out.
The paper, the end result of a working group ...read more
A satellite was watching as the blaze expanded by half the size of San Francisco and began its deadly rampage into a California city
An animation of satellite images shows a giant cloud erupting from California’s Carr Fire late in the afternoon of July 26, 2018. (Note: If the animation does not load after you click on the screenshot, make sure to hit ‘play’ in the upper left corner of the animation website. If there is a delay, try refresh ...read more
Do you live in Mexico, the United States, or Canada? Then starting tomorrow, you can join in the second International Monarch Monitoring Blitz. From July 28 to August 5, it’s time for #MissionMonarch.
By joining in on the Blitz, you help identify the monarch butterfly’s breeding sites, a task essential to its survival. You can do this by monitoring milkweed and monarch eggs, as well as by taking note of caterpillars, pupae and adults.
Though monarch butter ...read more
A section of the Gorgan Wall in the hills. (Credit: Arman Ershadi)
Golestan Province in Northern Iran is a unique landscape. Sandwiched between the temperate forests of the Alborz Mountains and the Caspian Sea, a narrow corridor connects Persia with the desert steppes of Central Asia. The passage measures 120 miles across from sea to mountain, and it’s made of fertile rolling plains rising to windswept hills. The ancient name for this place was Gorgan (گ&Os ...read more
