Here’s to a great transition for you at this end + beginning of old / new trips around the sun … “party fact” of note: TODAY, January 2, 2024 (as I write this), we’re actually at our CLOSEST to the sun for the whole year . . . in fact, more than 3 million! miles closer than • Read More »
Halloween, the BOO! (Blue) Moon, the Sun & those Bright Dots in the Sky . . . Halloween is one of four “cross-quarter days” of the year: approximately mid-way between an equinox and a solstice. (Imagine the solstices as 12 and 6 — December and June — on a clock face. Then the equinoxes are • Read More »
Astrophysicist Martin Gaskell discusses—at virtually the same time as its publication to the word—what has been called the “greatest astronomical discovery of all time.” The conversation ranges from science to intriguing notes on spirituality. Dr. Gaskell is a professor of astronomy at the University of California Santa Cruz. Dr. Gaskell shares fascinating insights about Black • Read More »
Nuclear Winter, first described by Drs. Brian Toon, Rich Turco, Tom Ackerman, James Pollack, and Carl Sagan (“TTAPS”) equates the plume of smoke from a comet impact that covered Earth causing the great extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago with the global winter that could extinct most life on Earth in the event of • Read More »
Chris McKay, NASA Mars Researcher, and Friederike Otto, University of Oxford climate modeller Science is the focus of this week’s Planet Watch. Senior NASA scientist Chris McKay, in the Planetary Systems Branch of NASA Ames, is an expert on the evolution of the solar system and the origins of life. Chris is also involved in • Read More »
An interview with NASA scientist Carol Stoker, an expert on Mars, the Red Planet. Carol Stoker is a staff planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. Her most recent work is focused on developing instruments and robotic systems for space exploration and testing them in terrestrial analog environments. She has led field experiments in the Antarctic, • Read More »
An interview with NASA scientist Carol Stoker, an expert on Mars, the Red Planet. Carol Stoker is a staff planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. Her most recent work is focused on developing instruments and robotic systems for space exploration and testing them in terrestrial analog environments. She has led field experiments in the Antarctic, • Read More »