Tag: Earth
Don’t say we didn’t warn you
How big is space? New facts from NASA about the El Gordo galaxy cluster blow our mind.
A visitor to the lab once asked Geek Slop how big space was and the lab tour had to be cancelled. In short, Geek Slop answered with “really, really, really big” but what he really did was add a bunch of “reallys” to make the point that space was “really big”. There were so many…
Researchers discover proof of massive gamma-ray burst striking Earth in 8th century
Astronomers Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhӓuser have discovered proof that a massive short duration gamma-ray burst hit the earth in the 8th century. The intense blast of high-energy radiation could have caused a mass-extinction event if it had been just a tad bit closer to the earth. Scientists estimate that the event emanated from 3,000…
3.5 billion year old fossils found that predate oxygen on Earth
Researchers have found fossils of bacteria in northwest Australia’s Pilbara region, that are dated at 3.49 billion-years-old. That’s older than oxygen and just one billion years after Earth’s formation. The fossils, which are textures on the surfaces of sandstone thought to be sculpted by once-living organisms, are believed to be the oldest visible fossils ever…
If Earth’s life was compressed into a single day, here’s what that day would look like.
I’m a big fan of Bill Bryson’s writings and especially loved his A Short History of Nearly Everything book in which he gave an example of the Earth’s history if it had been compressed into a single day. The example highlighted how insignificant our time on Earth has been and really put things in perspective…
Scientists find proof that our universe could indeed be nothing more than a simulation
It has long been proposed that any civilization of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulated universe that mirrored itself. Now physicists may have found evidence that our universe is indeed nothing more than a simulation. Researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany have published a paper titled “Constraints on the Universe…
Thousand foot chunk of rock passing dangerously close to Earth in 2029
A thousand foot chunk of rock, named Apophis, is on schedule to buzz the Earth on April 13, 2029. For those superstitious types, that’s Friday the 13th. Apophis is expected to pass a mere 23,600 miles from Earth which is a “close call” by astronomical measurements.
