Topic: Pamela Gay
Closer Look: Remote sensing our Planet Earth

Closer Look: Remote sensing our Planet Earth

We live on a geologically active rocky world that is uniquely shaped by a combination of water-driven weather and complex life. Currently, we are the only world we know of capable of supporting humans without requiring advanced technologies and mitigation against radiation and the certain death of environmental toxins. Understanding our world is a basic need if we want to preserve and protect life, but in many ways, the politics of humans makes studying our world weirdly difficult. Earlier this week, I got a notification from NASA that one of their funding programs had to be canceled because...

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Stars are Messy Cannibals

Stars are Messy Cannibals

This image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, shows the beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg. The nebula is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a pair of stars called HD 148937. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team....

The Dying Sun will Take Out the Earth

The Dying Sun will Take Out the Earth

Clumps of debris from a disrupted planetesimal are irregularly spaced on a long and eccentric orbit around the white dwarf. Individual clouds of rubble intermittently pass in front of the white dwarf, blocking some of its light. Because of the various sizes of the...

Watching Atoms Escape Venus

Watching Atoms Escape Venus

This image was processed from archived Mariner 10 data by JPL engineer Kevin M. Gill. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Atmospheres are what make a planet good or evil for life. One of the questions I get asked most often is, “Can we terraform Venus to be like Earth?” Sure!...

Catch the (Alien) Rainbow

Catch the (Alien) Rainbow

Each glory is unique, depending on the composition of the planet’s atmosphere and the colors of the light from the star that illuminates it. WASP-76 (the «Sun» of WASP-76b) is a yellow and white main sequence star like our Sun, but different stars create glories with...

Dear Future Self: Let’s Talk Climate Change

Dear Future Self: Let’s Talk Climate Change

Credit: NOAA Recent research published in Science Advances and led by Madalina Vlascenu finds that when it comes to climate change, we can’t scare people straight. Stories of gloom and doom focused on the fate of our world don’t inspire people to change their ways and...