Lifeboat Foundation

A once-tiny spot on the sun’s surface grew over the weekend to the size of Earth, potentially threatening our planet with radio blackout-causing solar flares and plasma eruptions that could trigger aurora displays.

The sun has been lively in the past few weeks, treating skywatchers at high latitudes and astronauts onboard the International Space Station to beautiful aurora displays. There may be more of those storms to come, as the sunspot AR3085 keeps growing and rotating toward Earth.

After a tantalizing year-and-a-half wait since the Mars Perseverance Rover touched down on our nearest planetary neighbor, new data is arriving—and bringing with it a few surprises.

The rover, which is about the size of car and carries seven scientific instruments, has been probing Mars’ 30-mile-wide Jezero crater, once the site of a lake and an ideal spot to search for evidence of ancient life and information about the planet’s geological and climatic past.

In a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, a research team led by UCLA and the University of Oslo reveals that rock layers beneath the crater’s floor, observed by the rover’s ground-penetrating radar instrument, are unexpectedly inclined. The slopes, thicknesses and shapes of the inclined sections suggest they were either formed by slowly cooling lava or deposited as sediments in the former lake.

Reactions between water and volcanic rock may have fueled a microbial ecosystem on ancient Mars.

We know Jezero Crater is a lake bed — but new evidence hints that it was carved by magma as well.

The rover found that Jezero Crater’s floor is made up of volcanic rocks that have interacted with water.

It’s a big step forward in understanding exoplanets.

Humanity’s giant space telescope has captured evidence of carbon dioxide in a planet outside of the solar system for the first time. According to a Thursday press release.

The detection was made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and took the form of a small bump between 4.1 and 4.6 microns on the spectrum related to the exoplanet’s atmosphere. The evidence helps shine a light on how planets are formed.

Continue reading “NASA’s Webb Detects Carbon Dioxide in Exoplanet Atmosphere” »

The Rhythm of Crust Production on Earth

Many rocks on Earth form from molten or semi-molten magma. This magma is derived either directly from the mantle—the predominantly solid but slowly flowing layer below the planet’s crust—or from recooking even older bits of pre-existing crust. As liquid magma cools, it eventually freezes into solid rock.

Through this cooling process of magma crystallization, mineral grains grow and can trap elements such as uranium that decay over time and produce a sort of stopwatch, recording their age. Not only that, but crystals can also trap other elements that track the composition of their parental magma, like how a surname might track a person’s family.

Aug. 24 (UPI) — A team of researchers have discovered an exoplanet about 100 light years away from Earth in the Draco constellation, and they say the world appears to be covered in a deep ocean.

The exoplanet — called TOI-1452b — is slightly larger than the Earth and is located in a “Goldilocks zone,” where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist. Therefore, astronomers think TOI-1452b could be covered in an ocean.

Continue reading “Scientists say TOI-1452b, exoplanet 100 light years from Earth, may be covered with deep ocean” »

An exploration of the option of moving planets through gravitational migration and the idea of Earth getting ejected from the solar system and wander the galaxy as a rogue planet, perhaps to be captured by another star in the far future.

My new clips and live channel:

Continue reading “Moving Worlds and Earth as a Rogue Planet” »

A radical new idea for offshore wind turbines would replace tall unwieldy towers that had blades on top with lightweight, towerless machines whose blades resemble the loops of a whisk. Now new software can help optimize these unusual designs to help make them a reality, researchers say.

This new work comes as the U.S. government plans to boost offshore wind energy. In March, the White House announced a national goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of new offshore wind power by 2030. The federal government suggested this initiative could help power more than 10 million homes, support roughly 77,000 jobs, cut 78 million tonnes in carbon emissions, and spur US $12 billion in private investment per year. As part of this new plan, in June, the White House and eleven governors from along the East Coast launched a Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership to further develop the offshore wind supply chain, including manufacturing facilities and port capabilities.

One reason offshore wind is attractive is the high demand for electricity on the coasts. People often live far away from where onshore wind is the strongest, and there is not enough space in cities for enough solar panels to power them, says Ryan Coe, a mechanical engineer in Sandia National Laboratories’ water-power group in Albuquerque.