A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is essentially a powerful expulsion of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona, or the sort of aura of plasma that surrounds our Sun. While they have an extremely cool name, and seem pretty neat, they could actually have a pretty significant impact on humanity.
Artist’s representation of a Coronal Mass Ejection, from The Washington Post
The Sun has an incredibly powerful magnetic field, which leaks out into our solar system. This leakage is normal, and is actually what drives solar wind, a “breeze” of plasma. However, the “solar weather” so to speak isn’t always regular. The Sun is a big burning ball of plasma, and as it mixes and churns, it also knots and twists its magnetic field. These knots can build up on the corona and eventually burst, vomiting plasma into the solar system, resulting in a solar storm. These storms come in a few forms, one of which is a Coronal Mass Ejection. The most powerful CME can take billions of tons of plasma away from the Sun, and hurtle it through space at incomprehensible speeds. When a CME this powerful arrives at Earth, it compresses our magnetic field through a violent shockwave, and transfers energy to the magnetosphere.
In the worst case scenario, the CME magnetic field merges with Earth’s, which is very bad. Eventually, this merging results in an explosion of energy towards our surface. While this isn’t very noticeable for us living beings, it’s very noticeable for all our technology. The energy from the CME induces currents in our power grids that can either shut them down or even destroy them. A CME could shut down all of our technology, just like an EMP from your favorite sci-fi/action movie. Similar to neutron stars, they are super cool and super dangerous. Thankfully, with the appropriate designs in place, we can counteract these induced currents and stay safe. So, as long as politicians are okay with funding these designs, we should all be safe…
If you’re interested in CMEs, I would recommend watching this video about them from Kurzgesagt on YouTube. They explain CMEs way better than I just did, and there’s lots of pretty animations.
NASA’s most recent Mars mission sent a new rover to the Red Planet – her name is Perseverance. The mission launched late last July and successfully landed just last month, utilizing a variation of the sky crane maneuver initially developed for the Curiosity mission (another blog post worth of material). Perseverance is now searching for signs of ancient life by collecting Martian rock and regolith. The rover will use its drill to collect samples of the Martian earth, then store them in sealed tubes for pickup by a future mission. This future mission will take the samples back to Earth, and allow scientists to physically interact with the dirt they study – a big step up from looking at pictures, which is what the scientists originally had to deal with.
Perseverance is searching for mircofossils because Curiosity proved that life COULD have lived on Mars. One of Curiosity’s samples of clay demonstrated a past environment of fresh water and a neutral pH level. At this point, scientists had already proven that Mars had been wet, not too salty, and warm for a long period of time. Additionally, the sample contained all the elements life needs to survive – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. The only thing to confirm a suitable environment for life was an energy source. After further analysis, the sample was also shown to contain chemical compounds that some microbes here on Earth use for energy. All this information together means that Mars could have supported microbial life. So now, Perseverance is searching for that very evidence. Maybe we’ll get some exciting news in the upcoming year!
I’m sure many people have seen companies offering an acre of land for sale on the moon (here’s an example). Many people, celebrities included, have bought into this and have purchased acres of land. However, how real is this claim to land on the moon?
There are certain parts of treaties that become confusing when counties start to explore the possibility of building settlements on other planets. Despite this however, the fact of the matter is that any person or company currently offering land on the moon is simply looking to make a few dollars.
Mercury is a terrestrial planet, though it is quite different in appearance than Earth. It’s grey rocky surface more resembles that of the moon, however unlike the moon Mercury has a liquid iron core and is much denser. Moreover, Mercury’s surface features paint an interesting story of past geological occurrences.
Mercury formed around 4.6 billion years ago and was thus present for the period of heavy fall of asteroids and comets which caused intense cratering on many planets. Mercury is home to many impact basins including the Carolis Basin which has an immense diameter of 810 miles.
Mercury’s surface also shows a past of volcanism as telescopes have discovered vents, lava flows and impact craters that have been filled in with lava. Mercury also has the possibility of ice. Data from the MESSENGER spacecraft has led many to believe that there is ice present in Mercury’s poles.
However, despite the many surface features, it appears that many of these events occurred far in the past, explaining the current moon-like appearance of Mercury.
In an interview with USA Today, NASA Scientist Jim Green talked about the high possibility that humans can and will occupy Mars. He went as far as to say that he sees the first human being sent to Mars by 2040. However, before sending a human to Mars, NASA needs to figure out a few things. First off, a spacecraft big enough to house a human has never landed on Mars, which is tricky due the Mars’ rocky terrain. Secondly, no spacecraft has had a return route to Earth from Mars, which would be necessary for someone to come back since Mars is not habitable just yet! Life on Mars would also be very different, requiring constant wear of a spacesuit due to extreme temperatures and no oxygen. If humans ever do make it Mars, they will need to build up a civilization with a food source and homes braced for dust storms and the temperatures! Read the USA Today article here.
Even though the vast majority of the scientific community is in agreement about the reality and seriousness of climate change, there are still many people, especially in the United States, who believe climate change is a hoax. In this post, I want to address some of the most common arguments climate change deniers use, so you and I can be more effective and more convincing science communicators in our everyday lives.
1. “The climate has changed lots of times over Earth’s history. How can we know that humans are what’s causing the climate to change this time?”
As we can see from the graph above, the carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere, and therefore Earth’s climate, have been changing for thousands and thousands of years! What’s most alarming about how our climate is changing today is not that it’s changing at all but rather the rate at which our climate is changing. In Earth’s history, it could be a hundred thousand years from peak to peak in carbon dioxide levels, but on the far right side of the graph we can see atmospheric carbon dioxide skyrocketing to unprecedented levels over the course of only a couple of centuries! This is definitely not a part of Earth’s natural climate-changing processes, and since the major increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have occurred as human civilization has rapidly expanded, we can conclude that the recent uptick in atmospheric carbon dioxide must be due to human activity.
2. “Even if atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, how can we be sure that it’s causing the climate to change?”
The greenhouse effect is a key concept in connecting increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide with overall increases in average global temperature. Just like a greenhouse used to grow plants, the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is able to trap the Sun’s heat that is reflected off the Earth’s surface, thus keeping that heat within our atmosphere. All of this trapped heat makes the Earth warmer overall. Carbon dioxide and other gases like methane are great at trapping heat, and the increased presence of these gases in our atmosphere is causing an enhanced greenhouse effect that is making our planet warmer than it should be!
3. “So what? Climate change won’t affect me or anyone I know. Plus, life on Earth can just adapt to these changes!”
First, climate change is already affecting you and the people in your life. First, the burning of fossil fuels doesn’t just increase the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere — it also can have serious negative health effects on humans. Air pollution, which goes hand-in-hand with climate change, can lead to respiratory disease, such as asthma.
Moreover, rising sea levels (a result of a warmer climate melting glaciers and other large ice sources on land resulting in a greater volume of water in our oceans) have already seen significant effects on people’s homes, especially on the world’s coasts. The sea level has already risen 7 to 8 inches since 1900, with 3 of those inches occurring just since 1993, causing increased flooding and home loss.
Lastly, increasing in weather variability due to a changing climate has had serious effects on residential areas, but it also can negatively impact farming and even the nutritional composition of fruits and vegetables. Inclement weather and seasonal weather variability hinder crops, and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is actually changing the composition of our produce, making them less nutritious!
There are many more examples over than these three of how climate change is already affected so many people. We’re already seeing the effects of climate change on our society, and it will only get worse unless we take serious action. Climate change is also happening too rapidly for plant and animal life to properly adapt to the changes, which has already had serious consequences for Earth’s ecosystems.
It’s important that we do our part to educate our friends and family about climate change. It’s hard to make the necessary changes to stop climate change from worsening when so many people don’t even believe in climate change in the first place. Let me know how you plan on using the information from this blog post to keep your loved ones informed about the serious reality of climate change in the comments!
The terrestrial worlds are known to be Mercury, Venus, Earth, the moon, and Mars. While they all have some similarities to one another, like rocky surfaces and much smaller sizes than relative to the remaining planets in the solar system, they also have many differences. Venus and Earth are alike in ways that the other terrestrial planets are not, like their size, surface features, and molten core. The moon and Mercury also share striking similarities between their sizes, surface features, and non-molten core. Mars on the other hand, is sort of in the middle of the pack. Its size is larger than the moon and Mercury’s, but smaller than Earth and Venus. Mars used to have a molten core, but no longer does, giving it certain features that resemble the moon and Mercury and others that resemble Earth and Venus. For instance, Mars has stream beds which mean it must have had running water at one point in its lifetime like Earth does now, but it is also cratered in some areas which means that there is no longer any active volcanic-like activity on it like the moon and Mercury are now. All in all, the combination of these surface features allows Mars to stand out and be unique when compared to the rest of the terrestrial worlds.
This image shows a combination of stream beds and craters on Mars’ surface, showing how it is similar to Mercury and the moon in one way, and Earth and Venus in another.
Image of most powerful supernova explosion ever recorded (SOURCE)
Within the past year, astronomers have made an incredible discovery about 4.5 million light years away from us. A supernova, but not just any supernova, the most powerful supernova recorded in history ever spotted by astronomers. This explosion is so powerful that astronomers did not even know that it was possible to have such a powerful supernova in our galaxy. The energy that was released from this supernova equated to about, “10 times more energy than the sun will emit during its entire lifetime,” truly putting into context the nature of such an explosion. According to astronomers researching this supernova, in order to create such a massive explosion the star must have shed a shell of material that made up about half of its mass before actually blowing up. This would mean that the explosion smashed through the shell, “like a wrecking ball,” at a speed of almost 4600 km/s which in turn would create a massive blast of radiation. Not only is this interesting that this supernova was the most massive one we have ever observed, but questions surrounding this explosion point to the fact that when modeling supernovas in the past we have never seen a star lose half of its mass about a decade before the actual explosion. This leads many astronomers to wonder what would have caused something like this to happen, and can potentially lead to us learning more about supermassive stars that may have existed in the early beginnings of our universe. Did you know that this discovery was made? Comment your reactions down below!
It is fascinating to think about the Sun. As we all know, it is our solar system’s star. The Sun’s energy, in the form of heat and light, is absolutely essential to all life on Earth. Plants need the Sun in order to go through photosynthesis and live, animals need the Sun for its food sources, the Sun radiates heat to Earth’s surface, and Earth would be completely dark without the Sun, among other things.
The Sun is a main sequence (specifically, yellow dwarf) star that is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. Its energy is generated by the process of nuclear fusion where hydrogen nuclei become helium. The surface temperature of the Sun is 5500o C. It is crazy to consider just how massive the Sun actually is. The Sun accounts for over 99.8% of the solar system’s mass. The Sun is not even particularly big for a star (red giants, the largest known stars, are much bigger). Yet, within the solar system it is absolutely massive (no pun intended). The Sun’s diameter is around 110 times the diameter of Earth, meaning roughly one million Earths could fit inside of the Sun.
A really interesting thing to observe on the Sun is sunspots. Sunspots are darker areas on the Sun that are cooler than the surrounding area (that is why they appear darker). Sunspots are around 1,727o C cooler than the rest of the Sun. Even still, a hypothetical single sunspot alone in the night sky would shine 10 times brighter than the Moon at its brightest. Sunspots are usually observed near the equator and are almost never found at latitudes greater than 70 degrees. Sunspots last anywhere from a few days to a few months. Sunspots indicate intense magnetic activity, so they usually are seen with other phenomena on the Sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Sunspots seem small compared to the massive Sun, but sunspots have been observed as big as Jupiter.
Because the Sun is so fascinating, I have some fun facts to share! The Sun is almost a perfect sphere — in fact, it is the closest thing to a perfect square observed in nature. The Sun also rotates from West to East, which is the opposite direction from Earth. Lastly, the Sun will one day be almost Earth’s size because it will collapse after it undergoes its red giant phase and becomes a white dwarf. It will have a similar volume to Earth’s volume because its mass will be retained. Don’t worry, though. The Sun won’t collapse for a long time, and humans won’t be around because of other reasons anyway.
Ever wonder what exactly a wormhole is? The concept behind a wormhole basically is a way to shortcut your way to a distance extremely far away. I tend to think of it as having two dots on a piece of paper, and then folding that paper in half to have the point laying on top of one another. Instead of traveling all the way across the paper, you can just go “down” and be right at the location that you wanted to be at. The possibility of a wormhole is feasible (they are consistent with Einstein’s theory), but there is no evidence to this date that they actually exist. If wormholes were to exist, they would greatly influence space exploration, as they could potentially allow us to go to galaxies and locations billions of light years away. Below is a photo of the concept of a wormhole.
