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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The Milky Way and its closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are on course for “ a head-on collision,” says astronomer Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute. But no need for precautions because the crash won’t happen for another 4 billion years. Researchers have long known that Andromeda, currently some 2.5 million light-years away, is moving toward […]
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A huge research ship costing £200 million has been commissioned, which will probe the oceans and climate of the arctic and Antarctic. They are the cruel seas where Britain’s greatest adventurers made their names. Now the territory of Scott and Shackleton, will be surveyed by a new generation of British explorers who will tackle the ‘final frontier’ of Earth’s […]
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Scientists in the US who have been checking on the health of the Arctic over the last year are worried by what they’ve learned: it’s warmer, has less ice, and some of its animals and fish are facing new stresses. And in a surprise finding , which they cannot yet explain, the scientists discovered that green vegetation over much of […]
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European researchers have once again warned that the thinning of the Antarctic ice shelf means that the flow of glaciers on the frozen continent could accelerate, with a consequent rise in sea levels. They examine, in two separate studies, the increasingly precarious state of some of the ice shelf. When the shelf, consisting of ice floating on the ocean, melts, […]
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The drylands of the world are getting greener, and researchers think it is thanks to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In a paradoxical discovery, even as landscapes become increasingly at risk of desertification, they may also look more luxuriant. Two scientists from Purdue University in Indiana, US, and a researcher in Saudi Arabia report in the journal […]
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Astrobiologists searching the heavens for extraterrestrial life have a simple motto: “Follow the water, ”says The Washington Post. Water is an essential ingredient in all earthly biochemistry, so scientists believe it’s logical to look for life first on planets and moons with liquid water.New data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft indicate that Enceladus, a tiny, ice-encrusted moon orbiting Saturn, may be […]
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Stanford scientists have found that chronically low levels of oxygen throughout the oceans hampered the recovery of life after the Permian-Triassic extinction, the most catastrophic die-off in our planet’s history. Also known as the “Great Dying,” global ecosystems collapsed as some 90 percent of species perished in this extinction event 250 million years ago. The new findings, published this week […]
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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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For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy […]
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