As we get older, our chances of dying go up. To that, you might say, well, duh. But, when we hit around 80 years old or so, a funny thing seems to happen: Our odds of dying stop increasing and instead start leveling out. So you’ve got the same shot — about 50/50 — of croaking at, say, 110 (an age that would classify you as a so-called supercentenarian) as you would at 95.
It’s an odd phenomenon that’s left experts puzzled for years. Researchers have floated ma ...read more
New Horizons successfully "phoned home" at 10:28 a.m. EST, letting NASA scientists know all of its systems survived the flyby of Ultima Thule. The first real images will now slowly trickle in over the coming hours and days.
"We have a healthy spacecraft," Mission Operations Manager, "MOM," Alice Bowman announced to a crowd of cheering scientists Tuesday morning.
New Horizons, Phone Home
Not long after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, as 2018 gave way to 2019, NASA's New Horizon ...read more
A New Year's Flyby
A billion miles past Pluto, at 12:33 a.m. EST tonight on New Year’s Day, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will swoop in close to the most distant object humans will have ever visited. For just a moment, the craft will fly within 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of Ultima Thule, a primitive space rock from the Kuiper Belt far beyond Neptune.
This will be over three times closer than the craft flew to Pluto, according to New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.
If New ...read more
As most of America’s East Coast counts down toward midnight tonight, ushering in a shiny new year, a group of NASA scientists and their attendant press will instead be counting down to a more spectacular event: the most distant flyby of a planetary object in history.
After zipping past Pluto in 2015, snapping breathtaking photos and revolutionizing our understanding of the dwarf planet, the New Horizons probe has drifted farther and deeper into the solar system. Tonight, some billion mile ...read more
Novelists have "It was a dark and stormy night." For planetary scientists, the equivalent cliche is, "We expect to be surprised." The story of every new space mission seems to begin that way. No matter how intensely researchers study some solar-system object, no matter how they muster the best resources available on Earth, they are inevitably caught off-guard when they get to study it up close for the first time. And no matter how worn and familiar that cliche may sound, it also rings true e ...read more
It's that time, once again, to give out the Pliny. Since 2009, my readers have voted on what they think was the most significant volcanic event of the year. Sometimes the vote is very close and sometimes, well, you can guess what the outcome will be before the envelope is opened. Let's start off with some honorable mentions that garnered votes from some of you:
Sierra Negra: Back in June of 2018, Sierra Negra in the Galápagos erupted for the first time since 2005. Lava flows poured down ...read more
A New Year With New Horizons
This New Year's, you can go to a boring old bar like everyone else, or you can celebrate the dawning of another year by watching NASA's New Horizons spacecraft make history.
At 12:33 a.m. EST on January 1, the craft will fly within 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of 2014 MU69, more commonly known as Ultima Thule, an object far out beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. NASA will be broadcasting the event on NASA TV and providing updates through their social media ch ...read more
This past year brought all too many disasters, including rampaging wildfires, destructive volcanic eruptions, swirling tropical cyclones, and a host of other events that brought misery to millions of people worldwide.
Many were visualized by satellites looking down on Earth, and as 2018 draws to a close, I thought I'd feature one that I found to be particularly compelling. It's the image above showing California's Camp Fire, created by blogger and remote sensing expert Pierre Markuse. ...read more
