Do you remember the nine planets you may or may not have learned about in elementary school? Yes, Pluto is grandfathered in, or at least gets a special pass! And speaking of Pluto, in less than three weeks, thanks to New Horizons and its three billion mile journey, we as a species will have completed our first survey of all nine of those original, classic planets. Will the powers-that-be have the basic common sense to extend the mission to a Kuiper Belt Object beyond Pluto?
Despite temporary global destruction, these objects may have delivered critical water and other exotic ices to Earth, and it was right on the heels of that ultra-violent bombardment, about 3.7 billion years ago, when the signs of life first flow so delicately into the geologic record. How and why this happened is the fundamental question in biology, maybe in all of science. The opportunity to examine one or more of those ancient surviving sentinels for any answers is simply too good to pass up. We can do more than hope Congress will fully fund the mission beyond Pluto; we must insist, as the alternative, turning New Horizons off when it's right there, seems unthinkable.
- Move over bees, meet the hawkmoths!
- Add another potential consequence of climate change to the growing list:
Scientists have already documented entire meltwater lakes vanishing in a matter of hours atop the vast Greenland ice sheet, as huge crevasses open beneath them. And now, they’ve cast light on the mechanisms behind another dramatic geophysical effect brought on by the rumbling and melting of this mass of often mile-thick ice: earthquakes.
- The Yeti crab is a pretty cool cat, for an arthropod that lives near hot vents.
- It turns out that some cnidarians—that's critters like corrals and jellyfish for us civilians—might be tougher than we thought:
Some coral species are better at adapting to climate change than others, and they may be able to pass their hardy DNA onto the next generation, said a study Thursday.
Coral reefs are declining fast in many parts of the world due to pollution, warming seas, disease and storms. But the findings in the journal Science suggest these ocean floor animals may be more resilient than previously believed, and that targeted conservation efforts could help them bounce back.
- We leave you with a few of the dazzling entries in this year's International Earth & Sky Photo Contest: