Why did Earth’s climate rapidly cool 12,800 years ago? New evidence suggests that a comet or asteroid collision is to blame, with support coming from the bottom of a South Carolina lake. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/asteroid-comet-younger-dryas-abrupt-cooling…
Tag: outer space
What’s the source of the ice at the moon’s south pole?
A new study from Brown University suggests that different deposits of south polar moon ice not only have different sources, but also vary greatly in age. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/different-sources-ice-moons-south-pole…
Today in science: Launch of Sputnik
Sputnik’s unassuming beep ushered in the Space Age. Hear it here. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/this-date-in-science-launch-of-sputnik-october-4-1957…
Going underground in Slovenia … to prepare for outer space
In Slovenia’s dramatically beautiful Karst region, six astronauts have been put through their paces for future missions—not in a flashy futuristic space centre but deep underground in the area’s network of cold, dark and muddy caves. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-underground-slovenia-outer-space.html…
Did an asteroid collision cause an ice age on Earth?
Could a collision between 2 asteroids millions of miles away cause an ice age on Earth, some 460 million years ago? A new study of earthly rocks and sediments – plus micrometeorites that fell in Antarctica – suggest it’s possible. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/did-an-asteroid-collision-cause-an-ice-age-on-earth…
A $30 Device Turns the Cold of Outer Space Into Renewable Energy
ted_pikul writes: A team of scientists have created a device that turns the cold of space into enough electricity to power an LED light. As described in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Joule, the device is based off of a thermoelectric generator that creates electricity from the difference in temperature between a “hot side” and a “cold side.”…
Scientists shed new light on mystery origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray hotspot
Among many particles arriving from outer space, there are ones with the extremely high energy that travel at nearly the speed of light, which is equivalent of a baseball thrown at a speed of 100 meters per second. New hypothesis for origin of those ultra-high-energy particles has been proposed, thus drawing particular attention from all over the world. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-08-scientists-mystery-ultra-high-energy-cosmic-ray.html…
NASA investigating first crime committed in space: report
US space agency NASA is investigating what may be the first crime committed in outer space, The New York Times reported Saturday. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-08-nasa-crime-committed-space.html…
Scientists Are Using the Cold of Outer Space To Rethink Air Conditioning
A California-based company called SkyCool Systems is in the early stages of manufacturing a cooling system that’s more energy efficient than anything humans have used for a century. It’s doing it using radiative cooling, a concept that was used in the Middle East and India hundreds of years ago. Quartz reports: To understand how radiative cooling works, forget for a moment…
DoubleTree Hotels Wants The ISS Astronauts To Bake Cookies
An anonymous reader quotes the Atlantic:
The sight of a cookie had never made me grimace until this one showed up in my email inbox. DoubleTree by Hilton, the hotel chain, was announcing that it would soon send a little oven and a batch of cookie dough to the International Space Station so that astronauts could, for the first time, bake chocolate-chip…