All articles tagged with #earth
New origins-conference simulations by Nader Haghighipour use thousands of randomized starting conditions to model terrestrial planet formation, showing Earth at 1 AU often emerges naturally, with Venus and Mars appearing in plausible configurations. The results, produced much faster than past runs, reinforce that Earth is not a fluke and that habitable planets may be common around Sun-like stars.
NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars recorded a nine-image sequence in which Earth, a one-pixel dot 314 million kilometres away, passes behind Phobos, marking the first observation of Earth disappearing behind another world from the surface of a different planet; the event is presented as an annotated composite rather than a continuous video, highlighting careful geometry and timing.
NASA released a visualization of the geoid—the imaginary sea level defined by gravity and Earth's rotation—showing Earth as a potato‑like shape caused by uneven mass distribution. The geoid is not the planet's physical surface; the display exaggerates height variations 10,000× to illustrate how gravity varies across the globe. Real differences reach about 85 meters above the reference near Iceland and 106 meters below it south of India, with a total range around 191 meters. The visualization combines more than a billion observations from 19 satellites over 15 years (e.g., GRACE and GOCE) and helps researchers study gravity changes for mapping, surveying, and navigation.
Earth and Venus are nearly the same size and gravity, but Venus may host a radar-bright highland coating of lead- and bismuth-sulfide compounds—metallic frost that is not yet confirmed. The mystery ties into how two similar worlds evolved such different climates and histories, and NASA’s DAVINCI and VERITAS missions will probe Venus’s atmosphere and surface to constrain its past water, atmospheric chemistry, and surface composition, while leaving the timing and exact path of their divergence unresolved.
A controversial thought experiment outlines a hyper-ambitious plan to keep Earth's habitability as the Sun expands: deploy a gigantic sunshade at the L1 point to block sunlight, power it with lasers from fusion reactors in Jupiter's atmosphere, use asteroid slingshots to move Earth outward, and even propose antimatter injections and future solar-system maneuvers to dodge Andromeda—claims it could extend life for 9.1 million billion years, but it is presented as speculative and not a practical blueprint.
Earth and Saturn orbit the Sun at different speeds, so Titan’s distance from Earth varies between about 1.2 and 1.65 billion kilometres. This causes one-way radio signals to take roughly an hour to 90 minutes, with exact timing depending on planetary alignment and Saturn's elliptical orbit; missions like Cassini–Huygens and the Dragonfly rotorcraft illustrate how communication timing is a moving target, not a fixed distance.
A 10,000-year orbital simulation finds Mercury is Earth’s nearest planet on average (about 1.04 AU) while Venus can make closer approaches, revealing that ‘nearest’ has three meanings: closest approach, instant proximity, and the smallest long-term average distance; the result explains why textbooks often cite Venus for closest approach even though Mercury is closer on average.
NASA’s Perseverance rover used the Mastcam-Z camera to produce a grainy composite showing Earth as a tiny bright dot passing behind Mars’ moon Phobos on July 2, 2026. It’s the first time Earth has been photographed from the surface of another planet while an astronomical object occluded it, achieved by stacking nine frames and processing to darken the background; the event also nods to earlier Earth-from-Mars shots by Spirit (2004) and Curiosity (2014).
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a rare occultation where Earth briefly disappears behind Mars’ moon Phobos. The composite image, taken on July 2, 2026, shows Earth as a bright dot crossing behind Phobos in the Martian sky, an alignment that requires precise timing since Phobos crosses the sky about three times a day.
NASA's high-precision geoid map reveals subtle gravity highs and lows across Earth; the potato-like visualization is a magnified representation and does not show the planet's actual shape. The geoid model improves GPS accuracy, sea-level monitoring, and understanding Earth's interior, built from GOCE and GRACE data over 15 years, with notable gravity highs near Iceland and lows south of India.
NASA released a gravity-based geoid visualization showing how the ocean surface would look under gravity alone (tidal and wind effects removed). Exaggerating gravity differences 10,000× highlights irregularities caused by dense interior regions, with the geoid peaking near Iceland (about 279 feet above the global average) and dipping south of India (about 348 feet below). Derived from over a billion measurements from the GOCE and GRACE satellites across ~15 years, the highly detailed geoid is not Earth’s physical shape but a tool to improve navigation, topographic surveys, and our understanding of the planet’s interior.
Scientists analyzing fragments from the New Jersey meteorite report preserved material from near the surface of a primitive asteroid, indicating salty fluids once altered the rock. By tracing its fall with camera footage and forensic study, researchers link the debris to the asteroid belt, offering clues about asteroid composition and how materials might have delivered life's building blocks to Earth.
New models of how aging stars interact with nearby planets suggest Earth could avoid being engulfed as the Sun swells into a red giant. The study finds that weaker tidal forces and mass loss from the Sun could allow Earth (and Mars) to migrate outward, while Mercury and Venus are still doomed to be swallowed. The outcome depends on uncertain mass-loss rates during the Sun’s final stages; with current data, Earth’s survival is possible but not guaranteed, and more observations of sun-like giants are needed, the team reports in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres uses 3D climate models to project Earth's vegetative biosphere over the next 2 billion years. It finds the last plant could linger about 1.84–1.87 billion years from now as the Sun brightens; under a strong CO2-weathering cycle, CO2 drops and plants die around 1.84 billion years, while in a weak-weathering scenario temperatures rise to about 65°C, pushing land plants to extinction about 1.87 billion years out. The researchers caution that evolution or human tech could extend plant survival beyond these limits, and the simulations do not account for future plant adaptation or geoengineering possibilities.} } }**Note: There is an extraneous closing tokens at the end due to formatting; correct JSON would end after the closing brace.** However, in this response, the essential fields are provided.** (If you’d like, I can present the strictly formatted JSON payload.)**}
A new study in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, using 29 climate models, suggests Earth’s vegetative biosphere could persist for about 1.8 billion years as the Sun brightens and oceans are lost, extending far beyond earlier estimates. The researchers account for varying CO2 levels and plant types (including CAM plants like succulents and orchids) and emphasize that this is a broad projection; evolutionary adaptations could further extend or shorten life’s persistence. The work refines understanding of biosphere longevity and has implications for studying habitability on other worlds.