News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
A SpaceX rocket’s upper stage appears to have broken up safely over Mexico, five years after sending a satellite into space. Local reports on Twitter indicated that a part of the Falcon 9 that sent the Echostar 23 mission aloft in March 2017 met its demise Saturday (Feb. 6) after falling into the Earth’s atmosphere. … Read more
Uranus and Neptune are the most twin-like of all the planets in the Solar System. They are almost the same size and mass, have similar compositions and structures, even similar rotation rates. Which makes one glaring difference quite perplexing. Neptune is a fetching shade of azure, with visible swirling storms. Uranus is more of … Read more
Scientists have spotted the first evidence of an alien world with an atmosphere that’s layered like Earth’s — although perhaps a little too toasty for human tastes. The planet, dubbed WASP-189b, isn’t a new discovery. Scientists already knew that the world, which lies about 322 light-years from Earth, is a gas giant that orbits its … Read more
Exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, are found at distances very far from Earth. For example, the closest exoplanet to us, Proxima Centauri b, is 4.2 light-years away, or 265,000 times the distance between the Earth and the sun. To the naked eye, the planets in the solar system appear as bright spots. … Read more
Astronomers have just peered into the atmosphere of one of the most extreme exoplanets ever discovered. Although it’s absolutely not habitable (at least as we understand it), the exoplanet WASP-189b is the first in which scientists have been able to probe distinct atmospheric layers, each with their own chemical compositions and characteristics. “In the … Read more
Methane recently reached 1,900 parts per billion (ppb) of Earth’s atmosphere according to measurements taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US. This compares with about 700 ppb before the industrial revolution. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, but lasts around nine years in the air. Including the knock-on effects … Read more
A bomb cyclone is a large, intense midlatitude storm that has low pressure at its center, weather fronts and an array of associated weather, from blizzards to severe thunderstorms to heavy precipitation. It becomes a bomb when its central pressure decreases very quickly – by at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. Two famed … Read more
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption reached an explosive crescendo on Jan. 15, 2022. Its rapid release of energy powered an ocean tsunami that caused damage as far away as the U.S. West Coast, but it also generated pressure waves in the atmosphere that quickly spread around the world. The atmospheric wave pattern close to the eruption was quite complicated, but … Read more
Uranus is pale blue in colour while Neptune is a deeper shade of blue, and an atmospheric model can explain the difference Space 28 January 2022 By Will Gater Uranus (left) and Neptune (right) imaged by Voyager 2 NASA/JPL-Caltech Uranus and Neptune are different shades of blue, and we may finally know why. In visible-light … Read more
We might finally have an explanation for mysterious shadows of falling material in the atmosphere of the Sun, observed during solar flares. First spotted in 1999, these mysterious streaks of shadow – referred to as “downward-traveling dark voids” – were thought to be related to the magnetic field interactions that trigger solar eruptions. Now, solar … Read more