Tag: Earth

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. In May 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea, a dune-filled region of the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. On close inspection, the rocks turned out to be from outer space: lumps of rubble billions of years old, left over from the dawn of the solar system. They were all pieces of a meteorite known as Erg Chech 002, which is the oldest volcanic rock…

Using advanced computer simulations, scientists have shown how easily a runaway greenhouse effect can rapidly transform a habitable planet into a hellish world inhospitable to life.  Not only does this research have implications for our understanding of extrasolar planets, or “exoplanets,” but it also offers insight into the human-driven climate crisis on Earth. The team of astronomers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and CNRS laboratories of Paris and Bordeaux saw that after initial stages of a planet’s climate transformation, the planet’s atmosphere, structure and cloud coverage get significantly altered,…

When you’re standing on Earth’s surface, it’s easy to forget that our planet is hurtling around the sun at more than 67,000 mph (107,800 km/h). And it’s even easier to forget that there are seven other planets also making their way around our home star at similar breakneck speeds, or that all eight have been ceaselessly circling the solar system for billions of years.  But what might really blow your mind is finding out how many trips around the sun each planet has under its belt. This may seem like…

An ancient underwater volcano riding a sinking tectonic plate off the coast of Japan may have unleashed several unexplained major earthquakes — by grinding against another tectonic plate above it, a new study finds. The extinct underwater volcano, known as Daiichi-Kashima seamount, sits on the Pacific tectonic plate roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) off Japan’s east coast. There, three tectonic plates intersect — with the Pacific plate to the east and the Philippine plate to the south both slipping beneath the Okhotsk plate to the north. The seamount sits on…