Earth
If You’re Trying to Prevent an Asteroid Impact, the Technical and Political Challenges are Staggering
While preparing for the threat of an asteroid strike might seem like a hypothetical exercise, it's really not. The Solar…
Earth’s Past and Future Habitability Depends on Our Protection from Space Weather
A bewildering number of factors and variables led up to the planet we occupy today, where life finds a way…
Earth is Hiding Another Planet Deep Inside
Earth's early history is marked by massive collisions with other objects, including planetesimals. One of the defining events in our…
Devastating Clouds of Dust Helped End the Reign of the Dinosaurs
When a giant meteor crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, the impact pulverized cubic kilometers of rock and blasted…
Venus Might Have Had Plate Tectonics Just Like Earth
Even though Venus is very similar to Earth in many ways, it's a hell-world with a runaway greenhouse effect. It…
In 250 Million Years, a Single Supercontinent will Form, Wiping Out Nearly all Mammals
A recent study published in Nature Geoscience uses supercomputer climate models to examine how a supercontinent, dubbed Pangea Ultima (also…
How Do Lava Worlds Become Earth-Like, Living Planets?
Earth was once entirely molten. Planetary scientists call this phase in a planet's evolution a magma ocean, and Earth may…
Gaia is Now Finding Planets. Could it Find Another Earth?
The ESA launched Gaia in 2013 with one overarching goal: to map more than one billion stars in the Milky…
Engineers Want to Make Methanol by Pulling Carbon Right Out of the Air
Methanol is one of our most extensively used raw materials. It's used as a solvent, a pesticide, and in combination…
Mini-Subs Could One Day Ply the Seas Under Europa’s Ice
The most promising places to look for life in the Solar System are in the ocean moons Europa and Enceladus.…