The idea that the young Earth had a thicker atmosphere turns out to be wrong. New research from the University of Washington uses bubbles trapped in 2.7 billion-year-old rocks to show that air at that time exerted at most ...
Earth Sciences
May 9, 2016
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Astronomers have detected wildly changing temperatures on a super Earth – the first time any atmospheric variability has been observed on a rocky planet outside the solar system – and believe it could be due to huge amounts ...
Astronomy
May 5, 2015
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A spark from a lightning bolt, interstellar dust, or a subsea volcano could have triggered the very first life on Earth. But what happened next? Life can exist without oxygen, but without plentiful nitrogen to build genes ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 16, 2015
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A study by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto suggests that exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - are more likely to have liquid water and be more habitable than we thought.
Astronomy
Jan 15, 2015
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Today's atmosphere likely bears little trace of its primordial self: Geochemical evidence suggests that Earth's atmosphere may have been completely obliterated at least twice since its formation more than 4 billion years ...
Space Exploration
Dec 2, 2014
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(Phys.org) —The Sun may be playing a part in the generation of lightning strikes on Earth by temporarily 'bending' the Earth's magnetic field and allowing a shower of energetic particles to enter the upper atmosphere.
Earth Sciences
Nov 19, 2014
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Chemical fingerprints of the element nitrogen vary by extremes in materials from the molecules of life to the solar wind to interstellar dust. Ideas for how this great variety came about have included alien molecules shuttled ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 29, 2014
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San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane and a team of researchers presented today the definition of a "Venus Zone," the area around a star in which a planet is likely to exhibit the unlivable conditions found ...
Astronomy
Sep 10, 2014
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One of science's strongest dogmas is that complex life on Earth could only evolve when oxygen levels in the atmosphere rose to close to modern levels. But now studies of a small sea sponge fished out of a Danish fjord shows ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 17, 2014
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Researchers now have stronger evidence of granite on Mars and a new theory for how the granite – an igneous rock common on Earth—could have formed there, according to a new study. The findings suggest a much more geologically ...
Space Exploration
Nov 18, 2013
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