Ice in a planetary cauldron

With temperatures in excess of 800 F, Mercury is one of the last places in the solar system you’d expect to find ice. But when NASA’s Messenger spacecraft transmitted its first optical images of the closest planets to the sun, that’s exactly what scientists discovered. Mercury sits about 36 million miles from the sun, which is roughly 57 million miles […]

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Relics of the big bang

Astronomers have discovered two clouds of gas some 12 billion light-years away that appear to preserve the primordial conditions of the universe in the minutes after the big bang. The clouds contain just hydrogen and its isotope deuterium, making them “the first examples to fit precisely” into what scientists think the early universe was like, University of California astronomer Jason […]

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You Can Get an Antarctica World Passport

Antarctica World Passport

You might not be a resident of Antarctica, but “no biggie”, say artists Lucy and George Orta. They’re giving out Antarctica passports, anyway. You can apply for an Antarctica passport online through the Antarctica World Passport program. In 1959 the Antarctic Treaty stipulated that the southernmost continent “shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become […]

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