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Category: space – Page 3

Global greening causes significant soil moisture loss, study finds

A new study has uncovered a surprising and concerning paradox: although Earth’s vegetation cover has expanded dramatically over the past four decades, this widespread “greening” trend is often associated with a decline in soil moisture, particularly in water-scarce regions. The study is published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Led by Prof. Chen Yaning from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the researchers employed a multifaceted approach, integrating multi-source satellite observations, reanalysis datasets, and outputs from 12 Earth system models. This comprehensive analysis, spanning the years from 1982 to 2100, enabled researchers to quantitatively assess the causal relationship between vegetation dynamics and .

Their findings reveal that while an impressive 65.82% of the global vegetated areas have experienced greening, nearly half of these areas simultaneously witnessed significant soil drying—a “greening-drying” pattern. This detrimental trend is most pronounced in vulnerable regions like Central Africa, Central Asia, eastern Australia, and mid-to-high latitude Europe.

Asteroid Bennu Is A “Frankenstein’s Monster” Of Material From The Inner Solar System, Outer, And Beyond

Ryugu is another asteroid for which we have a sample, collected by the Hayabusa-2 mission. Despite their differences, Ryugu and Bennu also share similarities, and Ryugu, too, had plenty of organic materials, simply not as much of them.

Bennu’s parent body seems to have formed from a really different set of materials from across the Solar System, and it might have formed further away from the Sun, too.

“We’re looking at unique snapshot of the outer solar system at the birth of our Sun,” said Professor Sara Russell, planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum, and co-author on the paper. “Some of these grains have survived billions of years of solar system evolution almost untouched and can tell us more about the environment in which planets were born.”

Twice a day, Mars may briefly host water that could support life

Frost-covered regions present the best candidates for the future habitability of Mars and further astrobiological exploration, research into brines shows. Mars, once thought too cold and dry for liquid water, may briefly host salty brines twice a day during certain seasons. These fleeting bursts wouldn’t be enough to sustain humans, but they could have supported hardy life in Mars’ past—and may guide future missions searching for signs of it.

Due to extreme temperatures and the dryness of Mars, it’s thought to be impossible for liquid water to form on the planet’s surface, a critical precondition for habitability. The only hope of finding liquid water appears to be in the form of brines, which are liquids with high concentrations of salts that can freeze at much lower temperatures. But the question of whether brines can even form on Mars has yet to be answered.

Vincent Chevrier, an associate research professor at the University of Arkansas’ Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, has been studying that question for 20 years and now thinks he knows the answer: ‘yes they can.’

“They Bend All Limits”: Astronomers Confirm Quipu’s 1.3-Billion-Light-Year Width as Universe’s Largest Known Structure Ever Detected

IN A NUTSHELL 🌌 The Quipu superstructure is the largest known entity in the universe, spanning over 1.3 billion light-years. 🔭 Astronomers use X-ray galaxy clusters to map and analyze these massive cosmic formations. 📊 The size of superstructures like Quipu can distort critical cosmological measurements, affecting our understanding of the universe’s expansion. ⏳ Despite

Dusty structure explains near vanishing of faraway star

Stars die and vanish from sight all the time, but astronomers were puzzled when one that had been stable for more than a decade almost disappeared for eight months.

Between late 2024 and early 2025, one star in our galaxy, dubbed ASASSN-24fw, dimmed in brightness by about 97%, before brightening again. Since then, scientists have been swapping theories about what was behind this rare, exciting event.

Now, an international team led by scientists at The Ohio State University may have come up with an answer to the mystery. In a new study recently published in The Open Journal of Astrophysics, astronomers suggest that because the color of the star’s light remained unchanged during its dimming, the event wasn’t caused by the star evolving in some way, but by a large cloud of dust and gas around the star that occluded Earth’s view of it.

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