Black Hole Back Doors?; Io’s Atmosphere; No New Stars in Galaxy Center
Do Black Holes Have Back Doors? Most people describe a black hole as a cosmic object with gravity so strong that it sucks in any kind of material that comes close to it. What happens to stuff that is pulled into a black hole? Some scientists think that matter that enters a black hole gets […]
Space Snow Spotted; Frankenstein Galaxy; Fewer Allergies for Thumb Suckers
Astronomers Spot Snow Circling New Star For the first time, astronomers have been able to get a glimpse of a water “snowline” in a protoplanetary disk, which is the material surrounding a new star that may later form into planets. This water “snowline” marks the point within these left overs of star formation where the temperature […]
Watching Climate Change in Action at South Pole
The Global Monitoring Division (GMD) specializes in making long-term, continuous measurements of trace gases in the atmosphere which affect the Earth’s climate. GMD operates six baseline observatories that stretch from the Arctic Circle to the South Pole. These facilities act as the backbone of our data collection efforts. Many of the data sets from our […]
New Report Predicts Possible Dip in Global CO2 Emissions
An international collaboration of scientists, in a new report, predicts the percentage of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels may actually dip slightly in 2015 compared to 2014 levels. “In 2014, global CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels grew by just 0.6 percent,” said the report’s lead author Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth […]
Study: Ancient Forests Fueled Early Climate Change
A pair of scientists from the United Kingdom have found a fossilized tropical forest complete with tree stumps of one of Earth’s first forests in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located between Norway and the North Pole. They also say that primitive forests such as the one they found may be one of the reasons for […]
Close Call for ISS; Threat to Polar Bears; Binary System Cannibal
ISS Crewmembers Back to Work after Close Call with Space Junk Fear that a floating piece of space junk could impact the ISS sent astronauts the station’s crew scrambling onto a docked Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft on Friday (07/17). Luckily, the debris passed the station harmlessly, and the crew was back at work. Houston’s Mission Control […]
Report – Record High Amount of CO2 will be Released in 2014
A new report by the Global Carbon Project, an international science/environmental group, shows that the emission of carbon dioxide, one of the world’s top greenhouse gases – which scientists say leads to global warming – will not only rise once again in 2014, but will set a record high of 40 billion metric tons. As […]
Rising Levels of Human-Caused Water Vapor in Troposphere will Intensify Climate Change Projections
When it comes to greenhouse gases that contribute most to global warming, most people think of substances such as carbon dioxide, methane or even hydrofluorocarbons. But did you know that, for a while now, scientists have considered the vapor of the most important ingredient in sustaining life on Earth – water – as one of […]
Science Scanner: Bacteria Go Dormant Until Antibiotics Wear Off, Spacecraft Dives by Saturn’s Ring, and Antartica’s Disappearing Penguins
NASA Launches Mission to Study Atmospheric C02 NASA’s successfully launched its Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base Wednesday morning. OCO-2’s mission, which is expected to last at least two years, will study atmospheric carbon dioxide, which scientists say is not only an important element of Earth’s carbon-cycle, but also the primary […]
Earth’s Natural Climate Control Keeps Planet Livable
A new hypothesis explains why Earth has remained habitable despite natural events that have robbed other planets in our solar system of their ability to host and sustain life. As the character Goldilocks exclaimed in the classic fairytale, The Story of the Three Bears, Earth is the one planet in our solar system that’s “just […]