Lifeboat Foundation

Once upon a time, the only world known to have an ocean of water was Earth. Now, planetary scientists think there are many ocean worlds – albeit with their oceans covered by deep layers of ice, rather than hanging out on the surface like ours.

Top on the list is Jupiter’s moon Europa, believed to have a 100-kilometre-deep ocean beneath perhaps 10–30 km of ice. But Saturn’s moons Enceladus, Titan, and Dione are also thought to have oceans, as is Pluto.

And those may just be the tip of the iceberg. Other moons in the outer solar system are also believed or suspected to have frozen-over oceans. Still more aren’t well studied enough for scientists to be sure, but could be capable of hosting water.

The vehicles we’ll see on the roads in a decade’s time will be radically different from what we have at present. Design language will change a lot, as hinted by the concepts and prototypes put together by big names and budding automotive designers.

The focus definitely will be on personal mobility in the most sustainable manner possible. Compact vehicles that will trade off the greatest of luxuries for a more sensible method of commuting will be the norm. This boomerang-shaped two-seater vehicle with multiple use-case scenarios is different from what we’ve seen so far. Even in the automotive landscape dominated by some really bizarre vehicle concepts.

Designer: Artem Smirnov

An analysis of the 200 largest fossil fuel companies suggests that just 10 shareholders could influence the fate of nearly half of the world’s remaining fossil fuels.

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An analysis of the 200 largest fossil fuel companies suggests that just 10 shareholders could influence the fate of nearly half of the world’s remaining fossil fuels.

Thu, Aug 11 at 6 PM CDT.

Join our 60min Seminar with Sara Seager, PhD to learn about design, engineering, and upcoming mission of high altitude balloon to sample cloud particles from Venetian atmosphere!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/multiplanet-seminar-venus-cloud…3644460177

You’ve likely heard the story by now: As the Sun grows old, it will swell up into a red giant. And as it expands, it will certainly swallow Mercury and Venus — and potentially Earth and even Mars — along the way.

This process, called planetary engulfment, is likely common across the galaxy, as aging stars eat up their own planets (and even companion stars or brown dwarfs). But astronomers still don’t understand exactly what happens to an unlucky planet that suddenly finds itself inside its parent star. Now, complex models called hydrodynamical simulations are shedding some light on the phenomenon, showing that factors such as a planet’s mass and the age of its star when it’s engulfed can have profound effects on what happens as the world is overtaken.

The biggest geomagnetic storm in recorded history happened more than 150 years ago. Now, we’re entering yet another period of solar maximum.

It was just another September night in 1,859 when Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson witnessed a remarkable event. The British astronomers weren’t together, but both happened to be peering at the Sun through telescopes at the precise moment that a massive ejection spewed from the fiery star. Within a few days, others on Earth noticed colorful aurora streaking across the skies and telegraph lines — the advanced technology of the day in Europe and North America — erupting in sparks.

The solar flare came to be known as the Carrington Event, named after one of the two astronomers who first described it. Despite occurring more than 150 years ago, it still stands as the strongest known geomagnetic storm (though we lack measurements to say precisely how big it was).

Continue reading “Are We Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm?” »

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken a picture of one of the strangest galaxies in the universe. The details of the Cartwheel galaxy are obscured by dust, which has made studying it difficult, but the new images from JWST peer through to reveal this weird galaxy in more detail than ever before.

The Cartwheel galaxy is about 500 million light years away and measures about 150,000 light years across. Researchers believe that it was most likely a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way before one of its companion galaxies blasted through it like a bullet through a target, sending waves of stars and gas rippling out from the galaxy’s centre and creating the nested ring shapes that we see today.

Continue reading “JWST has released a striking new image of the strange Cartwheel galaxy” »

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Transfusing young mice with blood from older rodents quickly triggers ageing, suggesting that cellular ageing isn’t just a case of wear and tear.

There is a longstanding hypothesis that surgically connecting an old mouse with a young rodent causes a transfer of blood that de-ages the older animal. While this benefits the older mouse, the effects on the young donor rodent were less clear.

Continue reading “Transfusing blood from an old mouse to a younger mouse causes ageing” »