For the first time, astronomers have detected the vaporized remains of the crusts of long-dead Earth-like and Mars-like planets in the atmospheres of white dwarf stars. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/vaporized-earth-like-mars-like-crusts-white-dwarf-stars…
Tag: clue
What is the Milky Way?
When someone says “Milky Way,” do you think of the starry pathway across our sky, or of the great pinwheel-shaped galaxy in space? Both are correct! Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-the-milky-way-galaxy…
WHO Team Member to New York Times: What We Learned in China
Peter Daszak is part of the World Health Organization’s 14-member team investigating the origins of the coronavirus. This weekend on Twitter he described “explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China” to journalists — only to see team members “selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began.” Daszak was responding to a New York…
Hubble pins down weird exoplanet with far-flung orbit that behaves like the long-sought ‘Planet Nine’
A planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: A hypothesized, distant body in our solar system dubbed “Planet Nine.” Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hubble-pins-weird-exoplanet-far-flung.html…
Exxon Holds Back on Technology That Could Slow Climate Change
Carbon capture can make money for oil giants, and scientists say we need it. Is the industry willing to invest enough? From a report: Elk and pronghorn antelope migrate each fall through southern Wyoming, where the sparsely vegetated landscape slowly gives way to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Interrupting this serene vista is a dense web of steel pipes, tanks,…
Mysterious black spot in polar explorer’s diary offers gruesome clue to his fate
In 1907, explorer Jørgen Brønlund died during an expedition in Greenland. Scientists recently gleaned new details about Brønlund’s death from a mark in his diary. Source: https://www.livescience.com/greenland-explorer-diary-black-spot.html
How Many Alien Civilizations Are Out There? A New Galactic Survey Holds a Clue.
Here’s a good sign for alien hunters: More than 300 million worlds with similar conditions to Earth are scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. A new analysis [PDF] concludes that roughly half of the galaxy’s sunlike stars host rocky worlds in habitable zones where liquid water could pool or flow over the planets’ surfaces. From a report: “This is the science…
How did the Earth get its water? The answer might be found on Mercury
I don’t know if you’ve noticed by now, but the Earth is a little bit wet. How Earth got all its water is one of the major mysteries in the formation of the solar system, and a team of Japanese researchers have just uncovered a major clue. But not on Earth—the clue is on Mercury. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-11-earth-mercury.html…
Ancient microbial life used arsenic to thrive in a world without oxygen
Today, most life on Earth is supported by oxygen. But ancient microbial mats existed for a billion years before oxygen was present in the atmosphere. So what did life use instead? Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ancient-microbial-life-arsenic…
Blizzard Co-Founder Mike Morhaime Launches New Gaming Endeavor Dreamhaven
Mike Morhaime, the cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, has launched a new game company called Dreamhaven, and it has established two new game studios: Moonshot and Secret Door. VentureBeat reports: The Irvine, California-based company is a pretty good clue that Morhaime and his wife Amy Morhaime weren’t quite done with games when they left Activision Blizzard in 2018. Mike will be the…