Topic: Pamela Gay
Closer Look: Earth Exceeded 1.5℃ Temperature Increase

Closer Look: Earth Exceeded 1.5℃ Temperature Increase

NOAA climate data The numbers are in. 2024 was the hottest year on record, and global average temperatures were up 1.5℃ compared to pre-industrial levels. This increase is what scientists have been saying we must avoid if at all possible, and now that we’re here, we’re seeing our world change in ways that make forecasting the weather exceedingly more difficult, and make keeping us all alive somehow even more difficult than predicting the weather… As a reminder, a change in the average means that some places could have gone down 10 degrees while others went up 20 degrees. We have had...

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Closer Look: Satellites versus Science

Closer Look: Satellites versus Science

Bluewalker 3 over Kitt Peak In this week’s closer look, we go where I haven’t really wanted to go before: we are going to look at the impacts of the growing number of satellites, like star links, on our ability to safely live and do astronomy. This closer look is...

Eta Carina gives up 260year Secret to Chandra

Eta Carina gives up 260year Secret to Chandra

Credit: X-ray: NASA/SAO/GSFC/M. Corcoran et al.; Image Processing: L. Frattare, J. Major, N. Wolk (SAO/CXC) Astronomers kind of live to see weird weird objects. While likely always visible to humans, this southern hemisphere star transformed from kind of meh to the...

Pulsar releases highest measured Gamma rays

Pulsar releases highest measured Gamma rays

 Credit: Science Communication Lab for DESY Ultimately, our universe is far more diverse in its reality than humans tend to be in our theorizing. Over and over, we have found remarkable things just by turning a new instrument skyward. From the discovery of cold...

New Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient

New Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient

Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani To me it feels like our biggest unknowns are often part of the high-energy universe - those processes and objects rise to the highest temperatures and give off the bluest of light.  As an example, back in 2018, researchers...

Extra Light from Dark Matter in Pulsars… maybe?

Extra Light from Dark Matter in Pulsars… maybe?

credit: NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al., HST/ASU/J. Hester et al. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the universe is an improv artist that likes to say “Yes, and”. I really wouldn’t be surprised if the effects we see are due to both a stuff we’ll collectively...

Get Ready for Spooky Season

Get Ready for Spooky Season

credit NASA Around our parent collaboration, CosmoQuest, Halloween is, hands-down, the most beloved season of the year. Costumes are worn. Yards are decorated. We are here for all the strangers that knock on our door - the weirdos, the witches, and the oh-so-many...

The State of Climate Change

The State of Climate Change

Extreme Weather. Credit: NOAA As human beings, we have infinite capacity for empathy. We also have the capacity to be blind to what is going on in the world around us. This dichotomy is why some people see the Sarah MacLachlan ASPCA ads and donate, others click to...