KESQ - In the wake of Friday's magnitude 4.2 earthquake at the convergence of the San Andreas and San Jacinto fault zones, there are concerns that could have been a foreshock for a much bigger quake. Some geophysicists are warning about the possibility of a major seismic event along the San Andreas Fault, which runs...
THE ATLANTIC - Earth’s fate rests on a coin flip. In 5 billion years, our sun will balloon into a red giant star. Whether Earth survives is an “open question,” Melinda Soares-Furtado, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says. Sure, Earth could be swallowed by the sun and destroyed. But in some...
QUANTA MAGAZINE - Earth’s fate rests on a coin flip. In 5 billion years, our sun will balloon into a red giant star. Whether Earth survives is an “open question,” said Melinda Soares-Furtado, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sure, Earth could be swallowed by the sun and destroyed. But in some scenarios...
EOS - The folks next door can have a big impact on the livability of a neighborhood. If they’re loud, pushy, and obnoxious, they can force you out of even the most comfortable of homes. That truism applies to planets as well as people. The wrong kind of neighbor can kick an Earth-like planet out...
NATURE - Budget pressures at NASA, specifically arising from the increasing costs of several planetary science mission programmes, have rendered the Venus orbiter VERITAS as collateral damage. Currently on subsistence funding, mission scientists worry about the impact of ongoing delays on Venus exploration. Perpetually shrouded by dense, toxic clouds and sizzling with temperatures hot enough...
POPULAR SCIENCE - Geologists have discovered 10 new species of trilobite in a relatively unstudied area of Thailand. These extinct sea creatures were hidden for 490 million years and are helping scientists create a new map of the animal life during the late Cambrian period. They are described in a monograph that was published in...
NEWSWEEK - Researchers have uncovered the fossils of numerous extinct sea creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago—and they could help solve an ancient geographical puzzle, according to a recently published study. The fossils represent various types of a strange class of prehistoric marine animals known as trilobites. A team of scientists collected...
IFL SCIENCE - The humble trilobite may be long-extinct, but even as fossils, there’s much they can teach us about the history of our planet. In fact, ancient arthropods – including 10 newly discovered species – that lived nearly half a billion years ago could provide the missing pieces to the puzzle of where Thailand...
SPACE.COM - Like huge playground bullies, planets like Jupiter can be "agents of chaos" around other stars, a pair of new studies suggest. Gas giant planets that are the size of Jupiter or larger create havoc in young planetary systems, often shoving smaller, Earth-sized planets way out of their original, circular orbits, according to the...
FORBES - Massive planets like Jupiter—now at its brightest and best in the night sky—can prevent Earth-sized planets from becoming Earth-like by upsetting their orbits and destroying climates. In other star systems, gas giants can play a much more destructive role. As an example, the authors studied HD 141399, a star system also with four...