Reactions between water and volcanic rock may have fueled a microbial ecosystem on ancient Mars.
We know Jezero Crater is a lake bed — but new evidence hints that it was carved by magma as well.
The rover found that Jezero Crater’s floor is made up of volcanic rocks that have interacted with water.
It’s a big step forward in understanding exoplanets.
Humanity’s giant space telescope has captured evidence of carbon dioxide in a planet outside of the solar system for the first time. According to a Thursday press release.
The detection was made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and took the form of a small bump between 4.1 and 4.6 microns on the spectrum related to the exoplanet’s atmosphere. The evidence helps shine a light on how planets are formed.
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The Rhythm of Crust Production on Earth
Many rocks on Earth form from molten or semi-molten magma. This magma is derived either directly from the mantle—the predominantly solid but slowly flowing layer below the planet’s crust—or from recooking even older bits of pre-existing crust. As liquid magma cools, it eventually freezes into solid rock.
Through this cooling process of magma crystallization, mineral grains grow and can trap elements such as uranium that decay over time and produce a sort of stopwatch, recording their age. Not only that, but crystals can also trap other elements that track the composition of their parental magma, like how a surname might track a person’s family.
Aug. 24 (UPI) — A team of researchers have discovered an exoplanet about 100 light years away from Earth in the Draco constellation, and they say the world appears to be covered in a deep ocean.
The exoplanet — called TOI-1452b — is slightly larger than the Earth and is located in a “Goldilocks zone,” where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist. Therefore, astronomers think TOI-1452b could be covered in an ocean.
An exploration of the option of moving planets through gravitational migration and the idea of Earth getting ejected from the solar system and wander the galaxy as a rogue planet, perhaps to be captured by another star in the far future.
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A radical new idea for offshore wind turbines would replace tall unwieldy towers that had blades on top with lightweight, towerless machines whose blades resemble the loops of a whisk. Now new software can help optimize these unusual designs to help make them a reality, researchers say.
This new work comes as the U.S. government plans to boost offshore wind energy. In March, the White House announced a national goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of new offshore wind power by 2030. The federal government suggested this initiative could help power more than 10 million homes, support roughly 77,000 jobs, cut 78 million tonnes in carbon emissions, and spur US $12 billion in private investment per year. As part of this new plan, in June, the White House and eleven governors from along the East Coast launched a Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership to further develop the offshore wind supply chain, including manufacturing facilities and port capabilities.
One reason offshore wind is attractive is the high demand for electricity on the coasts. People often live far away from where onshore wind is the strongest, and there is not enough space in cities for enough solar panels to power them, says Ryan Coe, a mechanical engineer in Sandia National Laboratories’ water-power group in Albuquerque.
A new laser filling a technology gap between infrared and microwave lasers could help identify and locate water sources on the Moon.
“To see a world in a grain of sand,” the opening sentence of the poem by William Blake, is an oft-used phrase that also captures some…
NASA and Rice University in Houston will host multiple events in September to celebrate the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s historic speech at Rice Stadium, rallying the nation to land astronauts on the Moon before the end of the decade and bring the crew safely back to Earth.
