Evolution
Summer Astrobiology Roundup #1: How Mars Lost Its Swagger
Young Mars, old Mars? (Original image: NASA) Summer on our northern hemisphere, and human life slows a little, for some.
Life, Unbounded
Discussion and news about planets, exoplanets, and astrobiology
The Sciences
In Defense Of Metaphors In Science Writing
(James Gillray) "Science is all metaphor" Timothy Leary We live in an elegant universe.The cosmos is like a string symphony.Genes are selfish.There is an endless battle between thermodynamics and gravity.Do you love these statements, or hate them?...
The Sciences
A Galactic Flyby Can Be Deadly, But Beautiful
326 million light years away a cosmic encounter destroys a galaxy but creates something lovely (NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage team, STScI/AURA, Wide Field Camera 3, visible light + near infrared image)...
The Sciences
Return To The Pale Blue Dot
The original pale blue dot - Earth from 3.7 billion miles away (NASA/JPL/Voyager) One of the most enduring and captivating images from our exploration of space in the late 20th century was Voyager 1's mosaic of our own solar system - a family portrait from 3.7 billion miles away...
The Sciences
Cosmic Cartography: Here Is Your (Local) Universe
Our local cosmic terrain (Credit: Helene Courtois) A new video tours the nearby universe and makes it charmingly familiar. When I was a graduate student I spent a lot of time studying maps of our universe...
The Sciences
Diary Of An Exhausted Scientist
I swore I'd never do this, indeed, I'm on record in these very pages as having disparaged the kind of thing I'm about to do.Oh well. All I can say is that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...
The Sciences
A Pink Stellar Nursery and a Telescopic Birthday
Glowing hydrogen and a stellar birthplace 6,500 light years away (ESO/VLT) Fifteen years ago the European Southern Observatory, a consortium of 15 member states, started scientific operations with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama desert...
Evolution
The Moon has it all: Explosions, Water, and Clues to the Grand Tack
Our high wilderness (Credit: T.A.Rector, I.P.Dell'Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF) It's only 240,000 miles away, yet this high wilderness still surprises and delights with clues about the origins of the solar system, Earth's own water, and it even supplies the occasional brilliant explosion...
Environment
Humans Bring On Many Changes, Most Are Far From Painless
From atmospheric changes, to timelapse imagery from Google Earth...our planetary presence is hard to miss. This past week has seen the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere reach a level of 400 parts-per-million, a value the planet hasn't seen since several million years ago...
The Sciences
To See Pieces Of Halley's Comet, Just Look Up!
Halley up close in 1986 (Giotto mission, ESA) It happens every year around now, and this year should peak on May 5th at approximately 9pm EDT (in the wee hours of May 6th if you're on GMT)...
Blog Index
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A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
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