News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
NASA’s top-notch Red Planet geology rover is moving on to explore an ancient river delta now that its eighth rock sample is secured for future analysis. “Stashing my latest rock core sample (#8!) and finishing up at this location. I’m packing up and making my way to the dry river delta. Off we go,” the … Read more
A newly released image from a Mars satellite offers a glimpse into the complex past of the now dry and dusty world. From high above the surface of Mars, the orbiting High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) homes in on the Danielson Crater, just north of the Mars equator. This region is intensely interesting to space … Read more
Nearly 50 years after Apollo 17 astronauts collected rocks from the lunar surface, NASA is finally tapping their samples as it prepares for new missions to the moon. NASA set aside the Apollo 17 moon rock samples to preserve the precious samples collected in 1972 by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt (also a geologist) … Read more
An underground mountain-sized chunk of rock may be affecting paths of large earthquakes in southern Japan. The dense igneous rock, known as the Kumano pluton, is lurking about 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) below the surface beneath Japan’s Kii Peninsula. It sits in the crust of the continental Eurasian plate. Under this slab of continental crust, … Read more
The Cambrian Explosion – around 541 million years ago – was when life and organisms really got going on planet Earth. Now new research has revealed how that explosion of life has left behind traces deep within Earth’s mantle. For scientists, it shows the connected interplay between Earth’s surface and what lies beneath, as … Read more
Since its launch in 2020, a pioneering energy company called Quaise has attracted some serious attention for its audacious goal of diving further into Earth’s crust than anybody has dug before. Following the closure of first round venture capital funding, the MIT spin-off has now raised a total of US$63 million: a respectable start … Read more
NASA’s Perseverance rover now has seven Mars rock samples in its collection. The car-sized robot drilled into another Martian rock and socked away the resulting core, mission team members announced via Twitter today (March 8). It’s the seventh drilled sample that Perseverance has collected since touching down on the floor of the Red Planet’s Jezero … Read more
Early Earth is often described as ‘Hadean’ for good reason. Arising from the ashes of a collision that gave us our Moon, the primordial eon was characterized by hellish heat trapped beneath a thick blanket of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Strangely those conditions should have been inhospitable for far longer than they were. … Read more
An ancient sculpture carved by Paleolithic humans some 30,000 years ago is evidence that our ancestors were a restless bunch who roamed far and wide, new research has revealed. Scientists have peered closely at the famous Venus of Willendorf and determined that the stone from which it is carved likely originated from Northern Italy, … Read more
A crescent-shaped crater in Northeast China holds the record as the largest impact crater on Earth that formed in the last 100,000 years. Prior to 2020, the only other impact crater ever discovered in China was found in Xiuyan county of the coastal province of Liaoning, according to a statement from the NASA Earth Observatory. … Read more