Desireé Cotto-Figueroa, an Associate Professor from the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao (UPRH) Department of Physics and Electronics has just tweeted amazing footage of a meteor over Puerto Rico, saying “Meteor just observed in #PuertoRico. Everyone who saw it please report it here.”
Category Archives: Earth Facts
The oldest material on Earth has been found in a meteorite and it is way older than the Solar System!
Scientists have found the oldest material on Earth in a 7 billion-year-old meteorite – a space rock that is way older than the Earth and even older than our solar system! For comparison, the age of Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years, with an error range of about 50 million years. The Sun is about […]
Investigating Overpopulation: The Causes and Effects
A full 20 years into the 21st century, the threat of overpopulation continues to make headlines across the globe. A recent United Nations study determined that the global population, currently sitting at 7.7 billion, will increase to about 9.7 billion by 2050. That equals a 28% population increase, or approximately 82 million additional people every […]
Scale and composition of Earth’s surface
In collaboration with Dr. Christine Houser (@seismodoc), a specially appointed assistant Professor of solid Earth geophysics at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Japan, NASA Goddard Planetary Scientist Dr. James O’Donoghue (@physicsJ) created another amazing animation titled “Scale & Composition of Earth’s surface: Major constituents of the crust, water, and atmosphere” and published on his YouTube […]
How fast you’re spinning?
The Earth rotates at a speed of 460 m/s, which is approximately 1650 km/h (about 1025 mph) at the equator. But, if you’re not living on the equator, you’re spinning slower. Here’s how to calculate your spinning speed.
Earth’s atmosphere is leaking and NASA is sending rockets to understand how
Earth’s atmosphere is leaking: around 90 tonnes of material escapes and streams out into space from our planet’s upper atmosphere every single day. To understand this escape, NASA launches rockets into space. The space agency also sends scientists to a tiny Arctic town named Ny-Ålesund (English: New Alesund) on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, […]
Forget the Anthropocene: we’ve entered the synthetic age
One fact about our time is becoming increasingly well-known. No matter how far you travel, no matter in which direction you point, there is nowhere on Earth that remains free from the traces of human activity. The chemical and biological signatures of our species are everywhere. Transported around the globe by fierce atmospheric winds, relentless […]
NASA’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) about Van Allen Probes
On October 18, 2019, NASA held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. Scientists from the space agency answered questions about Van Allen Probes, two robotic spacecraft that were used to study the Van Allen radiation belts that surround planet Earth.
Watch: ancient distance and apparent size of the Moon
Today, on average, the Moon is 384,400 km (238,000 miles) away from the Earth. But that was not always the case. Our satellite was much closer in the past. Now, Dr. James O’Donoghue (@physicsJ on Twitter) created the animation below showing how close was the Moon to the Earth and how was its apparent size […]
Is Anthropocene a joke? A good read
According to some scientists, the world entered a completely new geological era called “Anthropocene”. And the reason is humans because we changed the world so much. Now, a very good and detailed article written by the American science writer Peter Brannen and published on The Atlantic argues that so-called Anthropocene is not a new era, […]
