earth mystery news

Fossil ‘balls’ are 1 billion years old and could be Earth’s oldest known multicellular life 0
- Earth Mysteries, From Around the Web
- May 7, 2021
The spherical fossils came from sediments that were formerly at the bottom of a lake.

By David Aragorn
NASA’s new fleet of satellites will offer insights into the wild cards of climate change 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 7, 2021
NASA is about to announce its next generation of Earth-observing satellites. As soon as this month, it will lay out preliminary plans for a multibillion-dollar set of missions that will launch later this decade. This “Earth system observatory,” as NASA calls it, will offer insights into two long-standing wild cards of climate change—clouds and aerosols—while providing new details about the temperatures and chemistry of the planet’s changing surface. The satellite fleets also mark a revival for NASA’s earth science, which has languished over the past decade compared with exploration of Mars and other planets.

By David Aragorn
Saturn has a fuzzy core, spread over more than half the planet’s diameter 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 7, 2021
A wave in one of the rings reveals the size and composition of the planet’s core

By David Aragorn
Lightning and subvisible discharges produce molecules that clean the atmosphere 0
- Earth Mysteries, From Around the Web
- May 7, 2021
Lightning bolts break apart nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and create reactive chemicals that affect greenhouse gases. Now, a team of atmospheric chemists and lightning scientists have found that lightning bolts and, surprisingly, subvisible discharges that cannot be seen by cameras or the naked eye produce extreme amounts of the hydroxyl radical — OH — and hydroperoxyl radical — HO2.

By David Aragorn
Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation 0
- From Around the Web, Science & Technology
- May 6, 2021
We must never doubt Elon Musk again

By David Aragorn
Antimatter Stars Could Be Lurking in Milky Way 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 6, 2021
Astronomers using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have identified 14 candidate antistars — stars made of antimatter — in our Milky Way Galaxy.

By David Aragorn
Physicists get close to taming the chaos of the ‘three-body problem’0
- From Around the Web, Science & Technology
- May 6, 2021
Physicists have spent centuries grappling with an inconvenient truth about nature: Faced with three stars on a collision course, astronomers could measure their locations and velocities in nanometers and milliseconds and it wouldn’t be enough to predict the stars’ fates.

By David Aragorn
A rare glimpse of a star before it went supernova defies expectations 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 6, 2021
The discovery hints at unusual scenarios for how stars can evolve before they explode

By David Aragorn
‘Rat-Sized’ Monster Moth Too Heavy to Fly Discovered at Australian School 0
- Earth Mysteries, From Around the Web
- May 6, 2021
From venomous snakes to giant lizards and hairy tarantulas, Australia is home to countless terrifying and unusual wild critters. But weirdest of them all might be this lesser-known insect: an enormous moth reportedly “the size of a rat.”

By David Aragorn
Astronomers chart invisible ocean of dark matter swirling outside the Milky Way 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 5, 2021
A mysterious wake of stars, stirred up by a small galaxy that is set to collide with the Milky Way, could be about to unlock the mysteries of dark matter.

By David Aragorn