Editor’s note: On Feb. 18, NASA’s Mars 2020 mission arrived at the red planet and successfully landed the Perseverance Rover on the surface. Jim Bell is a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and has worked on a number of Mars missions. He is the primary investigator leading …
Author Archives: The Conversation
Ocean pollution is a clear danger to human health
Ocean pollution is widespread, worsening, and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended – until now. Our recent study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the impacts of ocean pollution on human health. Jacqueline McGlade, UCL and Philip Landrigan, Boston …
Continue reading “Ocean pollution is a clear danger to human health”
Earth has stayed habitable for billions of years – exactly how lucky did we get?
It took evolution 3 or 4 billion years to produce humans. If the climate had completely failed just once in that time then evolution would have come to a crashing halt and we would not be here now. So to understand how we came to exist on planet Earth, we’ll need to know how Earth …
Continue reading “Earth has stayed habitable for billions of years – exactly how lucky did we get?”
Why Crocodiles today look the same as they did 200 million years ago?
One of the most enduring tropes about crocodiles is to describe them as “living fossils”. They are cold, slow-moving, and scaly, so they look like how one might picture a dinosaur. Like many clichés, there is an element of truth to this comparison. The crocodiles from 200 million years ago look surprisingly like the ones …
Continue reading “Why Crocodiles today look the same as they did 200 million years ago?”
SETI: new signal excites alien hunters – here’s how we could find out if it’s real
The US$100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen Initiative, founded by Russian billionaire, technology and science investor Yuri Milner and his wife Julia, has identified a mysterious radio signal that seems to come from the nearest star to the Sun – Proxima Centauri. This has generated a flood of excitement in the press and among scientists themselves. The …
9 reasons why climate change is best tackled through small-scale solutions
Massive amounts of public money are being mobilised to kickstart economies out of COVID-induced recessions. Many countries are allocating parts of their stimulus packages towards ensuring the recovery is green. Charlie Wilson, University of East Anglia; Caroline Zimm, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and Simon De Stercke, Imperial College London
20 years of the International Space Station: What we’ve learned about living in space
November 2 marks 20 years since the first residents arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiting habitat has been continuously occupied ever since. Alice Gorman, Flinders University and Justin St. P. Walsh, Chapman University
How to reverse global wildlife declines by 2050
Species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate. Wildlife populations have fallen by more than two-thirds over the last 50 years, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund. The sharpest declines have occurred throughout the world’s rivers and lakes, where freshwater wildlife has plummeted by 84% since 1970 – about 4% per …
Continue reading “How to reverse global wildlife declines by 2050”
Fossil footprints: the fascinating story behind the longest known prehistoric journey
Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead – but you cannot stop now. Now add to this a slick mud surface and a range of hungry predators around you. That …
No, we are not heading into an ice age any time soon
This article is originally published on The Conversation with the title of “Climate explained: why we won’t be heading into an ice age any time soon” under a Creative Commons license. James Renwick, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington
