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15 December 2015
Big bad space wolf
Stanford University’s Miles Traer, once again, is cartooning from the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
Space Engineers
Stanford University’s Miles Traer, once again, is cartooning from the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
4 December 2015
Dinosaur-killing asteroid may have caused global algal bloom, marine extinction
The asteroid impact suspected of killing the dinosaurs may also have triggered a global algal bloom that contributed to a massive marine extinction more than 60 million years ago, according to a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid 10 kilometers (six miles) in diameter slammed into the Yucatan peninsula, creating a crater 180 kilometers (110 miles) across and 20 kilometers (12 miles) deep. The Chicxulub impact sent tiny spheres of material up into the atmosphere where they became super-heated. Approximately 1023 of these microscopic spherules were ejected and re-entered the atmosphere to create a global carpet of silica glass 3-millimeters (0.19-inches) thick, known geologically as the Cretaceous-Paleogene layer.
24 November 2015
Mariana: The Tectonic Neighborhood
This is the latest in a series of dispatches from scientists and education officers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor. This November, scientists aboard the research vessel Falkor will aim to shed light on the Mariana Back-arc, which is expected to be teeming with activity and life. Over the course of their 27 day mission at sea they will explore the back-arc spreading center to find new sites of hydrothermal activity and to better understand the physical, chemical, and geological forces that shape biodiversity in these unique ecosystems. Read more posts here, and track the Falkor’s progress here.
14 October 2015
New research shows impacts from comets or asteroids could have created Europa’s chaos terrain
What began as Williams College students requesting a new course on planets and moons nearly 12 years ago has now culminated in a new research paper showing that impactors, such as comets or asteroids, can penetrate the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Since 2004, undergraduate students led by Rónadh Cox, professor of geoscience, have studied the ice-covered surface of Europa, trying to understand the origins of its chaos terrain: areas that look like crustal breaches, with icebergs embedded in frozen slush.
18 September 2015
Titan’s “bucket brigade” brings liquid to moon’s north pole
Researchers think they have found a veritable bucket brigade that has been slowly but surely drenching the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan – the only world in the solar system, other than Earth, to have lakes, seas and rainy weather.
29 May 2015
A shrinking Mercury is contracting in unexpected ways
A global survey of the largest, most prominent fault scarps has revealed some unexpected wrinkles in the way Mercury has contracted.
12 March 2015
Researchers study methane-rich plumes from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has measured a curious abundance of methane spewing into the atmosphere of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. A team of American and French scientists published findings in Geophysical Research Letters suggesting two scenarios that could explain the methane abundance observed in the plumes.
15 January 2015
New studies give clues where alien life may flourish
Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars, but bigger and older than our home planet, stand out as prime candidates to harbor complex life, according to new research.
5 January 2015
Measuring the temperature of solar winds
The sun spews forth super-heated, charged particles, collectively called plasma, that fly out into the vacuum of space at speeds of 200 to 400 miles per second (300 to 700 kilometers per second). These waves of plasma make up the solar winds that spread across our solar system.
Traveling across freezing space should suck all the heat from the plasma by the time it nears Earth, but the solar waves detected near our planet are still hot. Scientists think something is happening within the plasma to generate heat.
Astrophysicist Anthony Case of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calculated the temperatures of the solar winds traveling at different supersonic speeds, or speeds greater than the speed of sound.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.