People always wonder how the moon was made. The birth of the planets 4.5 billion years ago was extremely violent. They grew to full size by absorbing rival planet embryos in a series of titanic collisions—one of which probably gave Earth its moon (below). The moon’s large size, low density, and other features suggest that it emerged from an explosion […]
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When the earth was totally covered in ice it is believed that a thief called Snowball Earth took away the crust. Geo scientists believe that when the earth was covered in ice the glaciers while traveling eroded the layer of earth that is now missing. Researchers suggest that about a 3 mile layer of earth was destroyed by these glaciers. […]
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Winter in Antarctica, it is dark all of the time. In the Antarctic summer, (between January and March, when there is plenty of daylight—twenty-four hours a day! In September, the Sun rises, and then doesn’t set again until March. Why does Antarctica have six whole months of darkness in the winter and six whole months of lightness in the summer? […]
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“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” – Chief Seattle
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It’s a little bit less certain that the inner planets— Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—will still be around to die that way. “There is a one percent chance the inner solar system will go dramatically unstable during the next five billion years,” says Laughlin. The problem is a weird long-distance connection between Jupiter and Mercury. When Jupiter’s closest approach to […]
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Astronomers have discovered the largest rocky planet yet, and its existence has profound implications for our understanding of the early universe and the potential for extraterrestrial life. Kepler-10c, which was spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, has a diameter of roughly 18,000 miles—more than twice that of Earth —prompting scientists to create a new class of planets, dubbed “mega-Earths.”The body’s […]
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Earth got off relatively easy last week after being hit by the biggest blast of solar radiation since 2005—but we may not be so lucky next time. Last week’s coronal mass ejection, in which a solar flare whipped an arc of magnetic particles toward Earth at 4 million mph, led some airlines to reroute flights away from the poles, where […]
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NASA scientists have discovered evidence that a large freshwater lake existed on Mars billion of years ago, further strengthening the case that Earth’s neighbor once harbored life.The lake was part of a network of waterways that could have lasted thousands or even millions of years—possibly long enough for simple organisms to take hold there.Those conclusions come from an analysis of […]
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“It has happened,” said Philip Bump. For the first time in human history, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels hit a daily average of 400 parts per million (ppm) last week. “There is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any point since 3 million years ago.” Back then, global temperatures were about 7 degrees higher, the Arctic was ice-free, […]
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