Scientists create new idea on how to hack a warming planet: drying the upper atmosphere
Government scientists have cooked up a new concept for how to potentially cool an overheating Earth: Fiddle with the upper atmosphere to make it a bit drier.
Government scientists have cooked up a new concept for how to potentially cool an overheating Earth: Fiddle with the upper atmosphere to make it a bit drier.
Earth Sciences
Feb 29, 2024
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It's a scenario made famous by the 1998 film "Armageddon": an asteroid is spotted on a collision course with Earth, and experts scramble to plan a space mission to rendezvous with the asteroid and mitigate the danger. It's ...
Planetary Sciences
Feb 8, 2024
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Crew members on the International Space Station have a lot of company—millions of bacteria and other microbes. The human body contains 10 times more microbes than human cells, and bacteria and fungi grow in and on just ...
Space Exploration
Jan 19, 2024
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Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. ...
Astronomy
Jan 10, 2024
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Titan's "magic islands" are likely floating chunks of porous, frozen organic solids, a new study finds, pivoting from previous work suggesting they were gas bubbles. The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Planetary Sciences
Jan 5, 2024
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Just as snow crystals form in the upper atmosphere, then fall to lower, warmer elevations and melt, scientists believe a phenomenon called iron snow happens in the molten iron cores of some planetary bodies. Cooling near ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 3, 2024
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Recently, a research group led by Prof. Xie Pinhua from Hefei lnstitutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), revealed the source and transport mechanisms behind an episode of ozone pollution observed ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 13, 2023
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Stargazers will have a chance to enjoy one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year later this week, as the Geminids reach their peak.
Space Exploration
Dec 12, 2023
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NASA's Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) has recently captured initial images of the mesosphere from its perch on the International Space Station. AWE was installed on the Space Station on Nov. 18, and initial commands were ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 11, 2023
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The shimmering green, red and purple curtains of the northern and southern lights—the auroras—may be the best-known phenomena lighting up the nighttime sky, but the most mysterious are the mauve and white streaks called ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 9, 2023
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The Earth's atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by the Earth's gravity. It has a mass of about five quadrillion metric tons. Dry air contains roughly (by volume) 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1%. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention (greenhouse effect), and reducing temperature extremes between day and night.
There is no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. It slowly becomes thinner and fades into space. An altitude of 120 km (75 mi) marks the boundary where atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry. The Kármán line, at 100 km (62 mi), is also frequently regarded as the boundary between atmosphere and outer space. Three quarters of the atmosphere's mass is within 11 km (6.8 mi; 36,000 ft) of the surface.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA