Evidence from the fragments of a destroyed asteroid suggests that the shift in the positions of the giant planets in our solar system billions of years ago happened between 60–100 million years after the solar system's formation ...
Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the increase in carbon dioxide emissions has consistently warmed the Earth's climate. At the current warming rate, our planet might potentially be on track toward witnessing a ...
Even though exoplanet science has advanced significantly in the last decade or two, we're still in an unfortunate situation. Scientists can only make educated guesses about which exoplanets may be habitable. Even the closest ...
When we look out to the stars, it is typically not a yearning for the distant depths of outer space that drives us. When we are looking out there, we are truly looking back at ourselves. We try to understand our place in ...
We know that there are thousands of exoplanets out there, with many millions more waiting to be discovered. But the vast majority of exoplanets are simply uninhabitable. For the few that may be habitable, we can only determine ...
The water cycle looks simple in theory—but human impacts, climate change, and complicated geography mean that in practice, floods and droughts remain hard to predict. To model water on Earth, you need incredibly high-resolution ...
Evolution has produced a wondrously diverse variety of lifeforms here on Earth. It just so happens that talking primates with opposable thumbs rose to the top and are building a spacefaring civilization. And we're land-dwellers. ...
Discovering exoplanets is almost routine now. We've found over 5,500 exoplanets, and the next step is to study their atmospheres and look for biosignatures. The James Webb Space Telescope is leading the way in that effort. ...
Spruce, pine, fir and other trees tower across the frigid swaths of land that span North America, northern Europe and Russia in a great ring around the world. These boreal forests constitute the largest land ecosystem and ...
Trappist-1 is a fascinating exoplanetary system. Seven worlds orbiting a red dwarf star just 40 light-years away. All of the worlds are similar to Earth in mass and size, and three or four of them are potentially habitable. ...
