Alexandra E. Petri wrote an interesting article about a humpback whale, published in The New York Times on December 12, 2024. She describes a male humpback whale that traveled three oceans, during the years 2013 to 2022. This whale has now broken the record for the longest documented distance yet traveled by a humpback. The … Read more
Scientists are calling for the cataloging of human artifacts left on Mars — from spacecraft and landers to rovers, probes, and other debris — to document humanity’s earliest steps in interplanetary exploration. “Our main argument is that Homo sapiens are currently undergoing a dispersal, which first started out of Africa, reached other continents, and has … Read more
Currently, 5,788 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,326 star systems, while thousands more candidates await confirmation. So far, the vast majority of these planets have been gas giants (3,826) or Super-Earths (1,735), while only 210 have been “Earth-like” – meaning rocky planets similar in size and mass to Earth. What’s more, the majority of these … Read more
WISE, NEOWISE’s predecessor mission, imaged the entire sky in the mid-infrared range. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/UCLA The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on re-entering the atmosphere after over a decade. On a clear night, the … Read more