We all at some time or another think about life-changing catastrophes, but have you given much thought to Earth’s life-changing events? Most people have never heard of these catastrophes. 4 catastrophes that have happened to Earth 1. The Giant Impact Scientists think the Moon formed shortly after Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. A new ...
Today we’re going to talk about the dark side of the Moon. Dark side of the Moon I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when you look up at the full Moon, the pattern on the Moon is always the same, no matter if it’s spring, summer, autumn, or winter. That’s because the Moon orbits Earth ...
The Moon’s surface is covered by numerous craters that date back to the impacts of asteroids. Age determinations on lunar rocks formed during these impacts show a surprising clustering at ages of about 3.9 billion years before present, or about 500 million years after the Moon was formed. These observations have led to the theory ...
The Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival) is upon us. The moon in traditional Chinese culture is seen as a symbol of family reunion. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, families reunite and celebrate by sitting outside, under the full moon, with a table filled with tea, fruit, incense, mooncakes, and candles as ...
Small impact craters on Jupiter’s moon Europa could eventually offer scientists a glimpse of possible habitability below the body’s frozen surface, a new paper on which Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Rebecca Ghent is an author. Europa has a global ocean covered by an icy surface that is covered with small impacts from the past ...
On Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, powerful eruptions may spew into space, raising questions among hopeful astrobiologists on Earth: What would blast out from miles-high plumes? Could they contain signs of extraterrestrial life? And where in Europa would they originate? A new explanation now points to a source closer to the frozen surface than might be ...
An international team of planetary scientists, led by astronomers at AOP, have found an asteroid trailing behind Mars with a composition very similar to the Moon’s. The asteroid could be an ancient piece of debris, dating back to the gigantic impacts that formed the Moon and the other rocky planets in our solar system like ...
A growing body of research suggests the planet Venus may have had an Earth-like environment billions of years ago, with water and a thin atmosphere. Yet testing such theories is difficult without geological samples to examine. The solution, according to Yale astronomers Samuel Cabot and Gregory Laughlin, may be closer than anyone realized. Cabot and ...
To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon. That’s according to a study published in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, an assistant researcher at the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). Iron ...
Life on Earth would not be possible without the Moon; it keeps our planet’s axis of rotation stable, which controls seasons and regulates our climate. However, there has been considerable debate over how the Moon was formed by studying the Moon’s craters. The popular hypothesis contends that the Moon was formed by a Mars-sized body ...