Juno's Flight
NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft is about to fly past Jupiter yet again to gather more data on the gas giant.
On Dec. 21, at 11:49:48 a.m. EST, Juno will pass just 3,140 miles (5,053 km) from Jupiter's cloud tops at 128,802 miles per hour. This will be the spacecraft’s 16th science pass of the planet, meaning that Juno's prime mission will be halfway complete.
With this 16th flyby, the Juno mission will have observed the entire planet, Jack Connerney,& ...read more
Absent serious action on climate change, we'll continue careening toward a climatic cliff. And modern civilization will be hard-pressed to survive the plunge.
This is the essential take-away from new research probing Earth's climatic past to yield insights into our future. The research finds that if our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue unabated, Earth's climate will warm by the year 2150 to levels not seen since the largely ice-free Eocene Epoc ...read more
Exercise is good for us in a lot of ways. It helps cut the pounds, increases cardiovascular health, adds muscle mass and can boost our mood. What it also does, though, is help keep our bones strong.
Studies have shown that regular exercise, especially involving weights, ups bone mass and maintains the health of our skeletal system. For us spring chickens, having strong bones might not sound all that critical, as our skeleton seems to get by just fine no matter what we do. But in the elder ...read more
Supernovae are the explosive end stages of massive stars. About 2.6 million years ago, one such supernova lit up Earth’s sky from about 150 light-years away. A few hundred years later, after the new star had long since faded from the sky, cosmic rays from the event finally reached Earth, slamming into our planet. Now, a group of researchers led by Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas believes this cosmic onslaught is linked to a mass extinction of ocean animals roaming Earth’s w ...read more
Monitoring the well-being of Antarctica’s delicate ecosystem just got a little bit easier thanks to a very unlikely source: penguin poop.
By analyzing over 40 years of Antarctic images gathered by seven satellites as part of the Landsat program, a NASA-funded team of researchers recently uncovered new details about the lives of Antarctica's Adélie penguins — a species that may help reveal past and future threats to one of the most unspoiled regions in the world ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine