by Irina K. Romanovskaya Technologies and microorganisms could assist with restoring planetary environments and terraforming planets. Credit: NASA To safeguard Earth’s biosphere, scientists have turned toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the hope that it may help to protect biodiversity. Yet this hope has been challenged by AI’s appetite for water and energy rooted in AI’s…
Category: Planets
New low-density exoplanet discovered with TESS
TESS 2 min cadence PDCSAP light curves for TOI-1420. Transit events are visible roughly every 7 days. Credit: Yoshida et al., 2023. Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new exoplanet orbiting a distant star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-1420 b, has an exceptionally low density….
Study sheds new light on strange lava worlds
Solidus melt curves for the three magma compositions: Anhydrous (purple), Hydrous (teal), Carbonated (magenta). We include the pressure–temperature profile of a planet at a surface temperature, Tsurf = 2000 K and 1 Earth mass (orange). These are compared to the melt curves within the work of Dorn & Lichtenberg (2021), who use a piecewise solidus…
Study pinpoints which areas of New York City are sinking, rising
The land beneath the New York City area, including the borough of Queens, pictured here, is moving by fractions of inches each year. The motions are a legacy of the ice age and also due to human land usage. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Parts of the New York City metropolitan area are sinking and rising at different…
Scientists discover a new way to test for life on Mars
Schematic representation of the end-to-end procedure. (a) ISO-5 clean room maintenance: Before any experimental setup, the working table, inside wall panels and equipment were sprayed with 70% isopropyl alcohol and Chemgene HLD4L. The space was thoroughly wiped using sterile cleanroom wipes. (b) Graphical representation of the DNA extraction and analysis procedure, from 500 mg of MMS-2…
New simulations shed light on origins of Saturn's rings and icy moons
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A new series of supercomputer simulations has offered an answer to the mystery of the origins of Saturn’s rings—one that involves a massive collision in the recent history of the 4.5 billion-year-old solar system. According to new research published in The Astrophysical Journal involving NASA and Durham and Glasgow universities, Saturn’s…
NASA readies for dramatic return of asteroid sample to Earth
A replica of the Osiris-Rex capsule is seen on June 27, 2023 in Littleton, Colorado; the historic NASA mission is set to return a first asteroid sample to Earth. The climactic end of a seven-year voyage comes Sunday when a NASA capsule is due to land in the Utah desert, carrying to Earth the largest…
NASA's first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft
Recovery team members carry a capsule containing NASA’s first asteroid samples to a temporary clean room at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah on Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023. The Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the capsule following a seven-year journey to asteroid Bennu and back. Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space…
Sand dunes reveal atmospheric wind patterns on Mars
Barchan dune field maps on Mars produced by machine learning, with inferred dune migration and wind directions. Credit: Geophysical Research Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2022GL102610 Mars is one of the most explored components of the solar system, yet there are always more discoveries to unveil on Earth’s planetary neighbor. On Earth we are able to take…
Using a gyroscope to measure variations in Earth's rotation
Instrumental design and observed sensitivity of the ring laser gyroscope G. a, The 4 × 4 m2 high-quality-factor ring laser cavity and the experimental layout is illustrated in a simplified block diagram. Four super mirrors rigidly fixed to a temperature-stable Zerodur base provide the necessary sensor stability. b, Photograph with the pressure-stabilizing vessel lifted up. c, Long-term ring…