Mars is certainly cold. With temperatures that can plunge to more than negative 100 degrees Celsius, it's bloody frigid!
But as cold as it might get, does it snow on Mars?
This wasn't the first thing that came to mind when I photographed the scene above near Boulder, Colorado with my iPhone. But when I got home and started investigating the beautiful phenomenon I had documented, I eventually came around to that rather un-obvious question. How I came to it — ...read more
2018 was quite a year across the geosciences ... which is hardly shocking considering we live on the most geologically active planet in the solar system. Some of the events were tragic, because when it comes to headlines, that is what gets the most attention. Others were warnings of things that could be headed our way and others were, thankfully, downright exciting and uplifting. Here's my quick takes on some of the big geoscience events from the year that was:
Lower East Rift Zone Erupti ...read more
Mary Ellen Hannibal, Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction, New York, NY: The Experiment, 2016. 432 pp. $29.95 hardcover, $17.95 paperback.
Mary Ellen Hannibal’s Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction is a beautiful collection that explores a wide range of stories. From the intimate moments of an individual’s life to the larger narratives of communities, Citizen Scientist tells stories th ...read more
Jupiter is king of the planets. It's huge, it's bright in our night skies, and even four of its comparatively tiny moons are bright enough to see with the most basic of telescopes. We've sent nine probes either into orbit or on a close flyby of the planet. And yet, as recently as this past year, we discovered not one, but twelve new moons around Jupiter, bringing the total to 79. How haven't we exhausted this particular moon mine yet?
The Easy Targets First
The answer is that most of Jupit ...read more
Space Plants
Will future astronauts be able to snack on fresh space-grown produce? New research is advancing the study of plant growth in space, which may one day support humans living and growing their own food in space or on the surface of Mars.
Researchers at the University of Florida Space Plants Lab are analyzing tissue taken from plants that have spent their entire lives growing in the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station. It's revealing that plants can ind ...read more
Two astronomers have devised a method that lets them “see” dark matter with the light from rogue stars. The pair has shown how images of faint starlight taken with the Hubble Space Telescope can be used to map dark matter’s distribution in galaxy clusters. The novel technique could ultimately help explore the nature of dark matter.
Dark matter remains one of the great mysteries of modern science. A theoretical form of matter, dark matter is thought to make up about 8 ...read more
Food. It's probably on your mind quite a bit this holiday season, whether you're anticipating festive meals or dreading the pounds you might pack on during a bout of epicurean overindulgence.
Though tips on managing our cravings for all things sweet and fatty abound, it's also worth remembering that the odds are stacked against us when it comes to resisting the call of another slice of pie.
Our brains respond to food, and even the sight or thought of it, with a heady rush of chemicals ...read more
In Indonesia, they call it "Anak Krakatoa, meaning "child of Krakatoa."
It's a volcano that rose from the sea in the 1920s decades after one of the most deadly volcanic cataclysms in recorded history killed tens of thousands of people and all but obliterated the island of Krakatoa, east of Java.
Now, Anak Krakatau has itself brought great misery to Indonesia, with an eruption that apparently triggered an underwater landslide, which in turn sent a tsunami raci ...read more
Some two billion years ago, the first photosynthetic algae evolved the ability to respond to light—the brilliant Sun by day, the spectral Moon by night. Around 700 million years ago, primitive eye-pits appeared; then, during the Cambrian era, arthropod-like creatures gazed at the sky through true eyes, sensing the lunar rising and setting with their arthropod-like comprehension. So it continued, into the succeeding chapters of life featuring mammals, primates, hominins, and Homo sapiens, t ...read more
"Earthrise" was taken 50 years ago this Christmas, and it’s one of the most — if not the most — iconic images of the 20th century. It’s the image that gave us the idea that we went to the Moon and discovered the Earth. But there are so many other firsts that Apollo 8 brought us, so I thought we ought to take a minute to look at some of the less celebrated but still absolutely incredible images from Apollo 8.
But First, Who Took That Iconic Apollo 8 Earthri ...read more
