8+ hour, 23+ min ago  (155+ words) The key might be a small, volcanic island in Antarctica. Known as Deception Island, it's a volcano that has covered some massive glaciers surrounding it with ash and dust from a series of eruptions in the 60s and 70s. The authors think…...

1+ day, 9+ hour ago  (227+ words) We've reported before on efforts to make bricks out of Martian regolith, but one thing we didn't mention in those reports is that most Martian regolith simulants don't include perchlorates, as they are a fire hazard. So all of those…...

3+ day, 12+ hour ago  (356+ words) When you look at a volcano, you're seeing the tip of a vastly more complicated system. The mountain itself is just the exit point for processes that have been happening deep underground, perhaps for millions of years. Magma doesn't simply…...

5+ day, 21+ hour ago  (1010+ words) Every so often (in geologic time) Earth's magnetic field does a flip. The north and south magnetic poles gradually trade places in a phenomenon called a geomagnetic reversal. Scientists long thought this happened every ten thousand years or so. However,…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago  (411+ words) HD 137010 b is a little closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, but the star is a K-dwarf, so it's smaller and less luminous. That means the planet receives about one-third of the heat and light that…...

3+ week, 1+ day ago  (482+ words) Lately we've been reporting about a series of studies on the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), NASA's flagship telescope mission for the 2040s. These studies have looked at the type of data they need to collect, and what the types of worlds…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago  (249+ words) Scientists have known that Mars has water for some years, documenting ice beneath the surface, moisture locked in soil, and vapour drifting through the thin atmosphere. The challenge facing future human missions isn't finding water on the Red Planet, it's…...

4+ week, 35+ min ago  (325+ words) This is rather challenging because of the nature of regolith, which can melt and vaporize from impacts and repeatedly rework deposited materials. Similarly, geological processes can separate metal from silicate, complicating efforts to reconstruct the types of material and the…...

4+ week, 2+ day ago  (458+ words) The research is titled "Electrical conductivities of (Mg,Fe)O at extreme pressures and implications for planetary magma oceans," and the lead author is Miki Nakajima, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University…...

4+ week, 2+ day ago  (348+ words) In school, most students are taught about the four phases of matter - solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. But, at extremely high pressures and temperatures, water can exist in a superionic phase that, while it looks like a solid, is actually…...