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earth

SPACE: Did A Neutron Star Collision Shower Early Earth With Elements Crucial for Life?

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neutron star collision - NASA

Two astronomers think they’ve pinpointed the ancient stellar collision that gave our solar system its cache of precious gold and platinum — some of it, anyway. In a new study published May 1 in the journal Nature, the duo analyzed the remnants of radioactive isotopes, or versions of molecules with different numbers of neutrons, in a very old meteorite. Then, they compared those values with isotope ratios produced by a computer simulation of neutron star mergers — cataclysmic stellar collisions that can cause ripples in the fabric of space-time. The researchers found that a single neutron star collision, starting about … Read more

SPACE: Earth Kisses the Moon

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The wispy outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere extends much deeper into space than scientists realized — deep enough that the moon orbits through it. Earth’s geocorona is a sparse, little-understood collection of hydrogen atoms loosely bound by gravity to our planet. This atmospheric region is so thin that on Earth we’d call it a vacuum. But it’s important enough, and powerful enough, to mess with ultraviolet telescopes due to its habit of scattering solar radiation. And researchers, looking at old data from the 1990s, now know that it extends up to 400,000 miles (630,000 kilometers) above the planet’s surface. That’s … Read more

SCIENCE: When Earth Was a Snowball

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It’s difficult to imagine now, but at certain points in Earth’s history, ice covered the entire planet. This frozen Earth, nicknamed snowball Earth, was a setting “so severe, that the Earth’s entire surface, from pole to pole, including the oceans, completely froze over,” said Melissa Hage, an environmental scientist and assistant professor at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia. In 1840, Louis Agassiz, a Swiss natural scientist, was among the first to acknowledge and provide evidence that Earth had gone through ice ages, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Joseph Kirschvink, an American geologist, later coined … Read more

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Destroying the Earth (In Three Easy Steps)

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destroy the earth - pixabay

Mad scientists through the ages have dreamed of holding the world hostage by threatening to destroy the whole thing, demanding riches, power and fame, and respect from their peers. But if you’re going to play this game yourself, you’d better do it right — and doing it right means doing your homework. Destroying our planet is no easy task. Sure, you could bomb us back to the stone age, introduce a plague to wipe out all complex life or whip up some sort of nanomachine to completely eliminate the entire biosphere. But in all those cases, the rock we stand … Read more

FOR WRITERS: Countries of the Future

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future Earth - pixabay

FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer J. Scott Coatsworth: Let’s fast-forward 100 years – do we still have mostly the same countries? Who’s allied with who? And which country is the dominant player, or is there one? Go! Writers: This is a writer chat – you are welcome to share your own book/link, as long as it fits the chat, but please do so as part of a discussion about the topic. Join the chat

SCIENCE: Using Lasers to Guide Aliens to Earth – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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Earth Laser - MIT News

We could build a laser that could send signals to extraterrestrial intelligence. Not we as in the staff of Live Science. (That’s probably beyond our skill set.) But we as in humanity. A new paper published yesterday (Nov. 5) in The Astrophysical Journal has found that humanity could feasibly build an infrared laser hot and bright enough that — if we shined it directly at nearby exoplanets — alien astronomers should be able to detect it using sky-watching technology not too much more advanced than our own. (Presuming they’re out there, of course.) [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why We … Read more

SCIENCE: Scientists Blast a Fake Asteroid Into A Fake Earth (And It’s Really Cool)

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asteroid cannon

Scientists at Brown University wanted to find out. So, they did what any one of us would do and built an indoor asteroid cannon — with a lot of help from NASA. The resulting study, published April 25 in the journal Science Advances, may sound ridiculous (or ridiculously awesome), but it aims to answer some of the most persistent questions in the science of planet formation. How did initially bone-dry planets get their water in the earliest days of the solar system? Why were traces of water discovered in the mantle of Earth’s parched moon or near the massive Tycho … Read more

SCIENCE: What If the Earth Started Spinning Backward

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earth - pixabay

For billions of years, Earth has rotated in the same direction as the sun — but what if that direction were reversed? Deserts would cover North America, arid sand dunes would replace expanses of the Amazon rainforest in South America, and lush, green landscapes would flourish from central Africa to the Middle East, according to a computer simulation presented earlier this month at the annual European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2018 in Austria. In the simulation, not only did deserts vanish from some continents and appear in others, but freezing winters plagued western Europe. Cyanobacteria, a group of bacteria that … Read more

SPACE: Rich Guys and Corporations Want to Build Earth Surveillance Satellites

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Earth - NASA

A bunch of very big corporations and rich men are hoping to start watching the whole Earth at all times with video cameras in outer space. EarthNow LLC, a company that counts among its investors Bill Gates, Airbus, SoftBank and the “colorful” tech tycoon Greg Wyler, announced plans Wednesday (April 18) to “deploy a large constellation of advanced imaging satellites that will deliver real-time, continuous video of almost anywhere on Earth.” The goal, the company said, is to offer customers the ability to watch events unfold on the planet in real time. EarthNow’s website lists the far-ranging events the satellite … Read more

SCIENCE: Was There Intelligent Life Here Before?

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When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth

Reptilian menaces called Silurians evolved on Earth before humankind — at least in the “Doctor Who” rendition of the universe. But science fiction aside, how would we know if some advanced civilization existed on our home planet millions of years before brainy humans showed up? This is a serious question, and serious scientists are speculating about what traces these potential predecessors might have left behind. And they’re calling this possibility the Silurian hypothesis. When it comes to the hunt for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that might exist across the cosmos, one must reckon with the knowledge that the universe is about … Read more