Ancient symbols carved into stone at Göbekli Tepe (an archaeological site in Turkey) tell the story of a big comet impact more than 13,000 years ago, scientists think. The devastating impact triggered a mini ice-age which drove many mammals weighing more than 40 kg to extinction.
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Earth Between the Rings of Saturn
A beautiful image published by NASA, taken by the unmanned Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, shows the Earth between the rings of Saturn. The image is taken on April 12, 2017.
“Consider again that dot [Earth]. That’s here. 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. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Lights of Human Activity (Earth from Space at Night)
The first new global map of Earth from space at night since 2012 has been released by the NASA scientists. The nighttime look of our planet is dubbed the “Black Marble”. But why?
On December 7, 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon took a photo of Earth from the space, at a distance about 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles). This image, with the official NASA designation AS17-148-22727, became known as “The Blue Marble”.
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How Earth Could Die – 8 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 all things must pass. The life on Earth, even the planet itself, won’t last forever. What’s more, the humans may go extinct before our planet (and probably before the life on it) dies out.
Here some possible (and horrible) ways how planet Earth could die.
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Jeff’s Earth – Amazing HD Video from ISS
On his most recent trip the International Space Station (Expedition 48),recently-retired NASA astronaut Jeff Williams has recorded a great HD video of Earth using an Ultra High Definition video camera.
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7 Earth-Sized Planets Found Orbiting Nearby Star – 3 of them are in the Habitable Zone
On February 22, 2017, NASA has announced that seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope around TRAPPIST-1, a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star located 39 light-years (12 parsecs; 370 petametres) away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. The good news is: three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone. The new discovery may be a great breakthrough in search for extraterrestrial life.
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What would the Earth be like if humans never existed
Around 4 millions year ago, the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees diverged, genetic evidence suggests. What, if Chimpanzee–human last common ancestor(1) would suddenly die before giving birth to any babies? What would the Earth be like if humans never existed?
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Water found on an exoplanet
Scientists spotted water in the atmosphere of 51 Pegasi b, one of the first exoplanets ever been discovered. It is around 50 light years away – so we can call it a “nearby” exoplanet – and it is in the constellation of Pegasus.
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How the darkness and the cold killed the (non-avian) dinosaurs
Now we have a computer simulation of how the afterward effects of famous Chicxulub asteroid (estimated to be 10 km/6.2 mi) wide) killed the non-avian dinosaurs (and also a wide range of other species). On January 13, 2017, an article titled “Baby, it’s cold outside: Climate model simulations of the effects of the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous”, published by the Climate scientists of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), revealed a detailed model of what happened to the atmosphere and the climate after the Chicxulub impact.
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Leaving Solar System at the Speed Of Light
Our Solar system is big, and vast, despite it is really small compared to our galaxy, not to mention the complete universe. To put this into a perspective, you can think yourself as a photon emitted by the Sun. It takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth after a photon has been emitted from the Sun’s surface. And it takes 5 hours to get out to Pluto from the Earth. The edge of the Solar System is far beyond the orbit of Pluto.
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