(Inside Science) -- In 60 years, the climate of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will feel kind of like a contemporary Jonesboro, Arkansas, with higher temperatures and more winter precipitation, according to a new study. That's assuming fossil fuel emissions continue to rise; if instead we succeed in curbing emissions, Pittsburgh will instead become more like Madison, Indiana.
Pittsburgh is one of 540 cities in the U.S. and Canada for which scientists have found doppelgangers of their climate f ...read more
On January 24, 2004, the Opportunity rover sent back its first signal from the Red Planet. That marked the start of a 90-day planned mission for the six-wheeled, golf cart-sized rover. Fifteen years later, the rover’s mission has finally ended, NASA announced today.
Its longevity and discoveries are a testament to Opportunity’s design and construction. The rover ultimately sent back more than 200,000 raw images and traveled a total of 28 miles (45 kilometers), farther than a standar ...read more
The Opportunity rover, like its twin Spirit, was designed for an original mission of just three months. When engineers lost contact on June 10 of last year, it had been exploring for fourteen years. And today, mission scientists finally declared an official end to the mission. Here are just a few of Opportunity's many successes during its long Red Planet expedition.
Heat Shield Rock
Opportunity discovered the first meteorite on Mars, sitting near its own heat shield. While a few mete ...read more
Hailing from East Africa, the newly described giant, plant-eating dinosaur Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia lived around 100-110 million years ago, during the middle of the Cretaceous. The animal, a member of the titanosaur lineage, is helping paleontologists understand how, where and when the mightiest of land animals evolved.
Sauropodomorphs are some of the most common and geographically diversely dinosaurs in the fossil record, and their shape — small head, long neck, big torso, ele ...read more
After some 15 prolific years on the Martian surface, NASA's Mars Opportunity rover has gone silent. And after an all out effort to re-establish contact, the space agency says it's given up hopes of ever hearing back from the rover. We talked to the NASA engineers and scientists whose lives have been touched by the Opportunity rover about their experiences and what the craft meant to them. For some researchers, the mission has encompassed their entire career. For others, ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine