Tag Archives: earth

New Views Show Old NASA Mars Landers

By Guest PostFebruary 9, 2012Scienceball aerospace, bonneville crater, canadian space agency, color image, denver, earth, hirise camera, liquid water, lockheed martin space systems, mars, mars reconnaissance orbiter, martian arctic winter, martian soil particles, martian surface, meteorite, microscope, NASA, Phoenix, spacecraft, telescopic camera, three petal lander, university of arizona

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing the three-petal lander of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit mission. Spirit drove off that lander platform in January 2004 and spent most of its six-year working life in a range of hills about two miles to the east.

Another recent image from HiRISE, taken on Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander and its surroundings on far-northern Mars after that spacecraft’s second Martian arctic winter. Phoenix exceeded its planned mission life in 2008, ending its work as solar energy waned during approach of its first Mars winter. (more…)

Global Extinction: Gradual Doom as Bad as Abrupt

By Guest PostFebruary 8, 2012Environment, Sciencebrooks ellwood, canadian arctic, carbon dioxide, charles henderson, coal deposit, dead zone, earth, ellesmere island, extinction, factor, fossil, geologic history, geology, global extinction, greenhouse, greenhouse gas, h richard lane, harry rowe, indian ocean, katherine freeman, marine life, mass extinction, national science foundation, ocean, permian period, permian triassic boundary, sedimentary rock, siberian traps, siberian volcanic activity, south china, steven bates, tethys, the great dying, thomas algeo, timothy lyons, united states, university of calgary, university of cincinnati, volcanic deposit, volcanic rock, volcanism in siberia, warming, west blind fiord

*In “The Great Dying” 250 million years ago, the end came slowly*

The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report.

It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events.

Thomas Algeo, a geologist at the University of Cincinnati, and 13 colleagues have produced a high-resolution look at the geology of a Permian-Triassic boundary section on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. (more…)

Ancient Domesticated Dog Skull Found in Siberian Cave

By Guest PostJanuary 22, 2012Scienceaccelerator mass spectrometer, altai mountains, atmospheric circulation, beam of carbon, belgium, best friend, carbon 12, carbon 13, carbon 14, carbon beam, carbon isotopes, cave, chihuahua, climate change, crowded, dog domestication, dog skull, domestication, earth, euro asia, glacial maximum, greg hodgins, half life, last glacial maximum, last ice age, lgm, man, mass spectrum, modern dogs, organic molecules, photosynthesis, plants, radioactive carbon, radiocarbon, radiocarbon age, razboinichya cave, rottweiler, Siberia, siberian mountain, teeth

*A 33,000-year-old dog skull unearthed in a Siberian mountain cave presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with an equally ancient find in a cave in Belgium, indicates that modern dogs may be descended from multiple ancestors.*

If you think a Chihuahua doesn’t have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.

An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event. (more…)

Scientists Prepare to Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Scienceabyss of space, albert einstein, alma, arizona, astrophysicists, atacama large millimeter array, atmosphere, black hole, black void, center of milky way, Chile, cosmic traffic jam, dan marrone, daniel stolte, dimitrios psaltis, earth, einstein, event horizon, event horizon telescope, extreme environment, field of gravity, game changer, general relativity, global array, hawaii, haystack observatory, maelstroms, mass, massachusetts institute of technology, mauna kea, mercury, Mexico, MIT, mt graham, nothingness, optical telescopes, plasma, radio telescopes, radio waves, shadow, sheperd doeleman, south pole, space and time, steward observatory, sun, supermassive black hole, theory of general relativity, tucson, ultra precise timing, universe, university of arizona, virtual telescope, water vapor, wavelengths

*The Event Horizon Telescope is an Earth-sized virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the test.*

Astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields across the world will convene in Tucson, Ariz. on Jan. 18 to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous.

The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, and Dan Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. (more…)

Some Earthquakes Expected Along Rio Grande Rift in Colorado And New Mexico, New Study Says

By Guest PostJanuary 15, 2012Environmentactive, anne sheehan, anthony lowry, colorado plateau, earth, earthquake hazards, earthquakes, fault bounded basins, fort collins, frederick blume, garden city, geologically alive, geologists, global positioning system, gps, magnitude, mark murray, Mexico, molten rock, nanostrain, new mexico tech, rates of deformation, rio grande rift, rise of magma, spreading motion, steven nerem, surface coloradom rocky mountains, unavco, university of colorado boulder, university of new mexico, western great plains

The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, but we will have some earthquakes,” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Anne Sheehan, also a fellow at CIRES. The study also involved collaborators from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University and the Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO. The Rio Grande Rift follows the path of the Rio Grande River from central Colorado roughly to El Paso before turning southeast toward the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)

English Literature Influenced Prize-Winning Paleontologist

By Guest PostJanuary 14, 2012Science21st century, age of reptiles, ancient plant structure, carbon cycle, carboniferous period, cocktail party, dinosaurs, earth, ecology, evolution, excalibur movie, fieldwork, fossil record, giant fungus, harvard university, history of life, ice age, jung eun lee, kevin boyce, knowledge, la brea tar pits, lloyd degrane, los angeles, macroevolution, mammal fossils, michael foote, million years ago, mural, pair of calipers, paleontology, plant fossils, prehistoric life, scanning electron microscope, school, soil moisture, terrestrial ecosystems, vascular plants

For a short time in grade school, Kevin Boyce lived within two blocks of the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, a place where ice age mammal fossils had been discovered. Above his bed hung a poster of the Yale Peabody Museum’s famous Age of Reptiles mural. But it wasn’t a boyhood fascination with prehistoric life that influenced his interest in paleontology, but rather the medieval literary world of Chaucer that Boyce discovered in college.

“I didn’t think twice about fossils between the ages of 7 and 20,” said Boyce, associate professor in geophysical sciences. Even during his undergraduate studies in literature and biology at the California Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, the deep history of life on Earth was far from his mind. (more…)

Star Explosion Leaves Behind a Rose

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2011Scienceancient supernova, bright star, cosmic cannonball, dense object, dust, earth, explosion, gas clouds, massive star, modern astronomers, NASA, neutron star, puppis a, red rose, shock waves, Space, supernova, universe, vela supernova, wide field infrared survey explorer, wise

About 3,700 years ago, people on Earth would have seen a brand-new bright star in the sky. It slowly dimmed out of sight and was eventually forgotten, until modern astronomers later found its remains, called Puppis A. In this new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), Puppis A looks less like the remains of a supernova explosion and more like a red rose.

Puppis A (pronounced PUP-pis) was formed when a massive star ended its life in a supernova, the most brilliant and powerful form of an explosion in the known universe. The expanding shock waves from that explosion are heating up the dust and gas clouds surrounding the supernova, causing them to glow and appear red in this infrared view. While much of the material from that original star was violently thrown out into space, some of it remained in an incredibly dense object called a neutron star. This particular neutron star (too faint to be seen in this image) is moving inexplicably fast: over 3 million miles per hour! Astronomers are perplexed over its absurd speed, and have nicknamed the object the “Cosmic Cannonball.” (more…)

Yale-led Team Finds CO2 Levels Plunged as Antarctica Froze

By Guest PostDecember 3, 2011Environmentalgae, atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels, climate transition, co2 and climate change, critical condition, cryosphere, earth, eocene epoch, eocene to oligocene, freezing of antarctica, fundamental link, geochemist, global climate change, global cooling, greenhouse gases, ice sheets, icing of antarctica, mark pagani, matthew huber, molecules, oligocene, polar ice caps, robert m deconto, sea level, temperatures, yale university, zhonghui liu

A Yale University-led research team has found evidence that carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere plunged prior to and during the initial icing of Antarctica, about 34 million years ago. The new findings provide further evidence of atmospheric carbon dioxide’s role as a major trigger of global climate change.

“CO2 is tracking global cooling at that time,” said Yale geochemist Mark Pagani, lead author of a paper published online Dec. 1 in the journal Science. “It’s important to demonstrate that there are obvious linkages between CO2 and climate change. It’s one more piece of evidence that CO2 is a primary lever on climate.” (more…)