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, […]
Category Archives: Earth Facts
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, […]
How Earth Could Die – 9 Horrible Ways
Now we’re living on a warm, hospitable planet. As Carl Sagan has said “That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” We, humans, are the unquestionable rulers of our little oasis in a hostile universe. But […]
This is how a solar eclipse seen from the Moon
This amazing photo of the 2019 Solar Eclipse from the Moon’s orbit was taken on July 2, 2019, by the Chinese lunar satellite DSLWP-B (Longjiang-2).
8 Things that make Life on Earth Possible
Earth, our blue planet is a tiny oasis in the vast, cold, and dark space. It is the only planet we know of that can support life. The fossil record tells us that life on Earth has lasted at least 3.5 billion years (the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old), with the oldest physical […]
Two neutron stars collided near the solar system 4.6 billion years ago
According to a new study published in the May 2, 2019 issue of Nature, 4.6 billion years ago, two neutron stars collided near the early Solar System (actually about 1000 light years from the gas cloud that eventually formed the Solar System). This violent collision has created heavy elements like silver, gold, platinum, cesium, and […]
Timelapse of the future: an amazing video
Melodysheep published an amazing video titled “Timelapse of the future: a journey to the end of time”. This experience takes us on a journey to the end of time, trillions of trillions of years into the future, to discover what the fate of our planet, our sun, and our universe may ultimately be. If this […]
