atmosphere

Two Solar Flares Just Erupted on The Sun, Bringing Coronal Mass Ejections

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After a series of eruptions on the Sun, Earth may be in for auroras over the next few days. A sunspot called AR2929 has emitted two solar flares, accompanied by coronal mass ejections. Although neither was directed at Earth, the ejections that are currently blasting through space may deliver glancing blows to our planet’s atmosphere that … Read more

The Tonga Volcanic Eruption Was So Powerful It Sent Ripples Out Into Space

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The ongoing volcanic eruption in Tonga began in December 2021, but it wasn’t until 5:15 pm local time on January 15, 2022, that the powerful explosion occurred. It generated an enormous cloud of ash, earthquakes, and tsunamis that reached as far as the distant coastlines of Peru on the other side of the Pacific.   … Read more

Tonga Volcano Eruption Created Puzzling Ripples in Earth’s Atmosphere

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Scientists are racing to understand a puzzling series of massive ripples in Earth’s atmosphere triggered by the eruption of the Tongan volcano at the weekend. Satellite data shows that the event — which some fear might have devastated the Pacific-island nation — provoked an unusual pattern of atmospheric gravity waves. Previous volcanic eruptions have not … Read more

Dimming The Sun Is a Dangerous Gamble And Should Be Banned, Scientists Warn

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Planetary-scale engineering schemes designed to cool Earth’s surface and lessen the impact of global heating are potentially dangerous and should be blocked by governments, more than 60 policy experts and scientists said on Monday.   Even if injecting billions of sulphur particles into the middle atmosphere – the most hotly debated plan for so-called solar radiation … Read more

Tonga volcano: Massive eruption was a once-in-a-millennium event

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The underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption has already triggered a tsunami, a sonic boom and thousands of lightning bolts, and could now lead to acid rain Earth 17 January 2022 By Alice Klein Satellite photo of the eruption CIRA/NOAA/Handout via REUTERS The massive explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga on Saturday was its … Read more

Astronomers Detect Water Vapor in The Atmosphere of a ‘Super Neptune’ Exoplanet

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New Year’s Day comes around once every 47.5 hours on the roughly Neptune-sized exoplanet TOI 674b, which makes it something of a rare creature.  In spite of years of hunting, surprisingly few middle-sized gas giants have ever been seen with orbits shorter than a few days in length, creating what astronomers refer to as a … Read more

We May Have Seriously Underestimated How Hostile Conditions on Early Earth Were

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Scientists have been doing some great work when it comes to peering back through billions of years to figure out what ancient Earth would have looked like, and a new study reveals that the earliest conditions on our planet were probably even more hostile than originally imagined.   In particular, researchers now think that we’ve … Read more

It’s Not Actually Size That Determines How Deadly a Meteor Is

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We have a lot to thank meteorites for. Had they not instigated several mass extinction events, including wiping out non-avian dinosaurs, we probably wouldn’t be here today. But some things still don’t add up about the massive scale of decimation they can cause.   “For decades scientists have puzzled over why some meteorites cause mass … Read more

Gigantic Eruption From ‘Dragon’ Star Is a Dire Warning About The Sun

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In the search for “potentially-habitable” extrasolar planets, one of the main things scientists look at is stellar activity. Whereas stars like our own, a G-type (G2V) yellow dwarf, are considered stable over time, other classes are variable and prone to flare-ups – particularly M-type red dwarf stars.   Even if a star has multiple planets … Read more