It's been suggested that asteroids delivered water to a bone-dry early Earth, but whether that would work in practice remained unanswered. Now scientists at Brown University have tested the theory using a high-powered cannon, and found that a surprising amount of water is transferred in the process.
Continue Reading
Scientists know of 16 types of ice. Most of these have only been created in the lab, but now, geoscientists have discovered a type known as Ice VII inside diamonds. This marks the first time the substance has been detected in nature, and it suggests that Earth’s mantle is home to pockets of water.
Continue Reading
Some scientists believe that human activity has triggered the dawn of a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene. On the path to being formally recognized, a new study has proposed a start date for the new epoch, and outlined where geological evidence could be found to support it.
Continue Reading
Microscopic fossils found in Australia decades ago appeared to show evidence of life dating back almost 3.5 billion years, but have since been contested. New analysis shows that the microfossils are indeed biological, and the find may have implications for the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.
Continue Reading
Occasionally asteroids will get caught in a gravitational dance with our planet for a few years, and last year astronomers discovered one of the most stable of these “quasi-satellites”. Now they’ve peered closer to get a better understanding of what it is and where it might have come from.
Continue Reading
On September 22, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully completed a gravity assist flyby with Earth, which has set the probe on a course to rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu next year. At its closest point, OSIRIS-REx flew within 10,711 miles of Earth's surface.
Continue Reading
In the history of life on Earth, there have been five mass extinction events. Now, an MIT professor has analyzed the changes that took place in the carbon cycle leading up to these events and found that the end of this century could mark the tipping point for a sixth mass extinction event.
Continue Reading
Thousands of exoplanets have been spotted by looking for “transits” as light from the host star dips when a planet passes in front of it. Now scientists have examined whether Earth could be detected by other civilizations using the same technique, and 68 known exoplanets are in prime positions.
Continue Reading
Last week, Earth was buzzed by asteroid 3122 Florence, the largest space rock NASA has seen come this close since it began tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs). NASA took the opportunity to study Florence close up, confirming its monster size and revealing that it has two tiny moons.
Continue Reading
One of the biggest biological mysteries is how life arose out of non-living molecules. To find out, a Georgia Tech team has recreated some of the conditions common to a pre-life Earth, and discovered that drying and rewetting the primordial soup lets key peptides form quickly and relatively easily.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning