Topic: Earth Science
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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Ancient Crater Found Hiding in Australia

Ancient Crater Found Hiding in Australia

I want to bring you a story that looks to rewrite a bit of our world's history. Researchers studying the geology of an Australian feature called the North Pole Dome, despite being located in Western Australia, found evidence that the feature is associated with a 3.5...

Ordering Enough Water for Early Planet Earth

Ordering Enough Water for Early Planet Earth

artist's depiction of planets colliding. While major asteroid and comet impacts have often been devastating for life on Earth, life on Earth wouldn’t be here without impacts that occurred early in our world’s history.  As the story goes, Due to our planet’s...

Modern Melt

Modern Melt

Our Earth is currently working its way toward being the exact opposite of a snowball Earth as we see glaciers and ice caps receding across the planet. This is fundamentally changing our landscape and how we as humans interact with that landscape.  These changes...

Between Fire and Ice is Slush

Between Fire and Ice is Slush

Snowball Earth. Credit: NASA Our planet has been driven to environmental extremes at many times in its history, and many plants and animals - including humans - have demonstrated they can survive less than ideal conditions. The last major ice age hit its peak 20 to 26...

Dinosaurs Thrived After Ice

Dinosaurs Thrived After Ice

Archaeopteryx Credit: Peter Montgomery Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic object in our solar system today, but our planet gave Io a run for its money more than 200 million years ago. At that point in our planet's history, our world was dominated by the Triassic...

Dino Prints Match Continents

Dino Prints Match Continents

One of the reasons we study the Moon is to help us understand the history of our own planet Earth. The shifting continents and weather patterns of Earth join forces to erase our world’s history. Occasionally, however, our planet reveals its past through the rocks...