Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 05, 2021
Among the four rocky planets in our solar system, you could say that Earth's "magnetic" personality is the envy of her interplanetary neighbors. Unlike Mercury, Venus, and Mars, Earth is surrounded by an immense magnetic field called the magnetosphere. Generated by powerful, dynamic forces at the center of our world, our magnetosphere shields us from erosion of our atmosphere by the solar

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 05, 2021
This week, NASA's airborne Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission begins its final survey of glaciers that flow from Greenland into the ocean. OMG is completing a six-year mission that is helping to answer how fast sea level is going to rise in the next five, 10, or 50 years. Greenland's melting glaciers currently contribute more fresh water to sea level rise than any other source does. Th

Paris (AFP) Aug 1, 2021
A shortage of semiconductors has sent shockwaves through the global economy, squeezing supplies of everything from cars to headphones. The dearth of chips has exposed the modern world's reliance on these miniscule components, the basic building blocks of computers which allow electronic devices to process data. Why is the shortage happening, and what can be done about it? - How is the

Austin TX (SPX) Aug 03, 2021
Today, being "birdbrained" means forgetting where you left your keys or wallet. But 66 million years ago, it may have meant the difference between life and death - and may help explain why birds are the only dinosaurs left on Earth. Research on a newly discovered bird fossil led by The University of Texas at Austin found that a unique brain shape may be why the ancestors of living birds su

Bremen, Germany (SPX) Aug 03, 2021
Virtually all oxygen on Earth was and is produced by photosynthesis, which was invented by tiny organisms, the cyanobacteria, when our planet was still a rather uninhabitable place. Cyanobacteria evolved more than 2.4 billion years ago, but Earth only slowly transformed to the oxygen-rich planet we know today. "We do not fully understand why it took so long and what factors controlled Eart

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 03, 2021
When Hurricane Irma hit southern Florida in September of 2017, the storm buffeted coastal mangrove forests with winds over 116 mph - strong enough to rip off leaves, break branches, and snap tree trunks in half. Of the mangrove forest damaged by Hurricane Irma, about 83% recovered after the first year. But the rest didn't, leaving scientists wondering why some trees didn't bounce back. Usi

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 03, 2021
It's the weekend, and freshly caught fish sizzles on the grill. The view: an unforgettable beach and the cobalt blues of the Pacific Ocean in the backdrop. This is not paradise. It's a typical Sunday for many people in Palau, an archipelago nation in Micronesia. "We would go to the Rock Islands, spend a couple of nights there, and we would go fishing," recalled Fabio Siksei, a fisher

Cleveland OH (SPX) Aug 05, 2021
A lot of power means a lot of heat. NASA's future missions to explore the Moon and Mars will require enormous amounts of electrical power and hardware to support astronauts and drive new technologies. This increase in power, however, also increases the amount of heat generated-and then that heat needs to be removed so all the spacecraft systems can function. To remove heat efficiently and

Huntsville AL (SPX) Aug 05, 2021
NASA researchers successfully launched a sophisticated X-ray solar imager on a brief but potentially illuminating suborbital flight via sounding rocket to gather new insight regarding how and why the Sun's corona grows so much hotter than the actual surface of Earth's parent star. Developers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, call the mission "MaGIXS" - short fo

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 05, 2021
Sitting more than five times the distance from the Sun as Earth, Jupiter is not expected to be particularly warm. Based on the amount of sunlight received, the average temperature in the planet's upper atmosphere should be about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit or a chilly minus 73 Celsius. Instead, the measured value soars to around 800 degrees Fahrenheit or 426 Celsius. The source of this extra he