After years of debate, the International Chronostratigraphic Chart has officially been revised. What does that mean, exactly? Our current point in Earth’s geological timeline has been updated so that we’re now living in the Meghalayan age, which kicked off 4,200 years ago with a catastrophic two-century drought that destroyed several civilizations.
New research using a decade of data from ESA’s Mars Express has found clear signs of the complex Martian atmosphere acting as a single, interconnected system, with processes occurring at low and mid levels significantly affecting those seen higher up.
Understanding the Martian atmosphere is a key topic in planetary science, from its current status to its past history. Mars’ atmosphere continuously leaks out to space, and is a crucial factor in the planet’s past, present, and future habitability – or lack of it. The planet has lost the majority of its once much denser and wetter atmosphere, causing it to evolve into the dry, arid world we see today.
However, the tenuous atmosphere Mars has retained remains complex, and scientists are working to understand if and how the processes within it are connected over space and time.
A sample of ancient oxygen, teased out of a 1.4 billion-year-old evaporative lake deposit in Ontario, provides fresh evidence of what the Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere were like during the interval leading up to the emergence of animal life.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, represent the oldest measurement of atmospheric oxygen isotopes by nearly a billion years. The results support previous research suggesting that oxygen levels in the air during this time in Earth history were a tiny fraction of what they are today due to a much less productive biosphere.
“It has been suggested for many decades now that the composition of the atmosphere has significantly varied through time,” says Peter Crockford, who led the study as a Ph.D. student at McGill University. “We provide unambiguous evidence that it was indeed much different 1.4 billion years ago.”
“Will machines replace humans?” This question is on the mind of anyone with a job to lose. Daniel Susskind confronts this question and three misconceptions we have about our automated future, suggesting we ask something else: How will we distribute wealth in a world when there will be less — or even no — work?
New research measuring the importance of religion in 109 countries spanning the entire 20th century has reignited an age-old debate around the link between secularisation and economic growth. The study, published in Science Advances, has shown that a decline in religion influences a country’s future…
Update July 18th, 11:35AM ET: Blue Origin pulled off another successful test launch today, landing both the New Shepard rocket and capsule after flight. The company ignited the capsule’s emergency motor after it had separated from the rocket, pushing the spacecraft up to a top altitude of around 74 miles — a new record for Blue Origin. The firing also caused the capsule to sustain up to 10 Gs during the test, but Blue Origin host Ariane Cornell said “that is well within what humans can take, especially for such a short spurt of time.”
This morning, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin will attempt the ninth test flight of its sub-orbital rocket, the New Shepard — a reusable vehicle designed to take tourists to the edge of space and back. And for this launch, the company will be testing out the vehicle’s escape motor once again. That’s the system that could help save the lives of future passengers if something were to go wrong during the climb through Earth’s atmosphere.
Like most vertical rockets, the New Shepard is designed to take off upright from a launchpad at Blue Origin’s facilities in West Texas. Perched on top of the vehicle is a capsule for crew members, which the rocket carries skyward during flight. Once the New Shepard reaches an altitude of around 62 miles — what’s often considered the edge of space — the capsule and rocket separate. If passengers were on board, that’s when they would experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Then, both the capsule and rocket fall back to Earth. Parachutes deploy to gently land the capsule, while the rocket reignites its engine to land upright on the ground.
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The mysterious, massively funded mixed-reality company still won’t divulge exactly when the device will be available, but it’s more specific than its previous statement that it would be out sometime this year.
The announcement: While much of the world was paying attention to the World Cup on Wednesday, Magic Leap’s Alan Noon said during a live stream on Twitch that the Magic Leap One, a developer-geared headset, will ship this season. Summer ends September 22, so the company has roughly 10 weeks to meet that deadline.
Also: AT&T said Wednesday that it will be the sole wireless carrier for the headset, bringing it to AT&T stores in cities including San Francisco, Boston, and Los Angeles.
