Planetary defense researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) continue to validate their ability to accurately simulate how they might deflect an Earth-bound asteroid in a study that will be published in ...
Space Exploration
Mar 27, 2020
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Cornell astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet's evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth's own geologic epochs.
Astronomy
Mar 26, 2020
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Two researchers, one with the Planetary Science Institute, the other Imperial College, have created a simulation that they believe shows how dust could have spread so evenly over the whole Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid ...
East Antarctica's Denman Glacier has retreated 5 kilometers, nearly 3 miles, in the past 22 years, and researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are concerned that the shape ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 23, 2020
13
291
A major advance in revealing the unknown plant diversity on planet Earth is made with a new monograph, published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PhytoKeys. The global-wide study, conducted by researchers at the ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 17, 2020
0
9
Space research is an expensive business. Once a space-based instrument is proposed, researchers want to get as much value as possible from it. The proposed satellite quickly grows in instruments and capabilities. Expensive, ...
Space Exploration
Mar 13, 2020
0
81
When large earthquakes occur, seismologists are well aware that subsequent, smaller tremors are likely to take place afterwards in the surrounding geographical region. So far, however, few studies have explored how the similarity ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 12, 2020
0
8
Ancient rocks from Greenland have shown that the elements necessary for the evolution of life did not come to Earth until very late in the planet's formation—much later than previously thought.
Earth Sciences
Mar 12, 2020
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1011
Scientists at The University of New Mexico have found that the Earth and Moon have distinct oxygen compositions and are not identical in oxygen as previously thought according to a new study released today in Nature Geoscience.
Space Exploration
Mar 10, 2020
23
662
Massive. Enormous. Huge. Gigantic. And whatever other words you find in the thesaurus all do the job when it comes to describing Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket. Especially its nosecone.
Space Exploration
Mar 10, 2020
1
39
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in terms of diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World, the Blue Planet, and Terra.
Home to millions of species, including humans, Earth is the only place in the universe where life is known to exist. The planet formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within a billion years. Since then, Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful radiation, permitting life on land. The physical properties of the Earth, as well as its geological history and orbit, allowed life to persist during this period. The world is expected to continue supporting life for another 1.5 billion years, after which the rising luminosity of the Sun will eliminate the biosphere.
Earth's outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that gradually migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered with salt-water oceans, the remainder consisting of continents and islands; liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known to exist on any other planet's surface. Earth's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.
Earth interacts with other objects in outer space, including the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once for every roughly 366.26 times it rotates about its axis. This length of time is a sidereal year, which is equal to 365.26 solar days. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt and gradually slows the planet's rotation. Between approximately 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the surface environment.
Both the mineral resources of the planet, as well as the products of the biosphere, contribute resources that are used to support a global human population. The inhabitants are grouped into about 200 independent sovereign states, which interact through diplomacy, travel, trade and military action. Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including personification as a deity, a belief in a flat Earth or in Earth being the center of the universe, and a modern perspective of the world as an integrated environment that requires stewardship.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
