The recent solar eclipse plunged a swath of the U.S. into two minutes of gloom, but it’s nothing compared to the years-long night that almost wiped out life on Earth 66 million years ago.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Years-Long Darkness Doomed Survivors Of Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid
NASA’s mission to 16 Psyche, the solar system’s only known iron-nickel asteroid, will launch in the summer of 2022, one year earlier than originally planned.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
NASA’s Psyche Mission Will Launch a Year Early, Arrive at Target Four Years Sooner
After 4 billion years, the dwarf planet Ceres is still carrying a surprising amount of water weight — as much as 30 percent.
The finding, which was published in the Jan. 6 edition of the journal Science, is consistent with earlier models, and provides valuable clues to how Ceres formed.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Dwarf Planet Ceres Up To 30 Percent Water
Scientists studying dwarf planet Ceres have found that a 13,000-foot volcano there arose not from silicic magma, but from muddy, salty ice that rose to the ~160 K surface and quick-froze like Smucker’s® Magic Shell.
Finding such a dramatic cryovolcanic process this close to the sun – in the inner asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – is unusual, and bolsters the idea that Ceres might have originated in the outer solar system. It also lends credence to the notion that asteroids and comets might be more closely related than once thought.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
13,000-Foot Mountain On Dwarf Planet Ceres May Be An Ice Volcano
In the real world, disasters aren’t just a matter of scale – they’re a question of preparedness and of a society’s capacity to handle the fallout. Vaccines, rapid-response teams and early-warning systems can move the needle from calamity toward recovery, while poverty, corruption and ignorance slide it toward catastrophe. So, cue announcer: “In a world … where real disasters aren’t single events that arise from simple problems that are solvable in 93 minutes …”
