Dr Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution and Dr Michael Rampino of New York University offer new support linking the age of these craters with recurring mass extinctions of life, including the demise of the dinosaurs. Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers. Specifically, they show a cyclical pattern over the studied period, with both impacts and extinction events taking place every 26 million years. This cycle has been linked...

In many ways stars are like living beings. They’re born, they live, they die and they even have a heartbeat. Using a novel technique, astronomers have detected thousands of stellar “pulses” in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Their measurements offer a new way of determining a galaxy’s age. We tend to think of stars as stable and unchanging. However, late in life stars like the Sun undergo a significant transformation. They become very bright and swell up to an enormous size, swallowing any planets ...

Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, is slowly falling toward the planet, but rather than smash into the surface, it likely will be shredded and the pieces strewn about the planet in a ring like the rings encircling Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Mars could gain a ring in 10-20 million years when its moon Phobos is torn to shreds by Mars gravity. Though inevitable, the demise of Phobos is not imminent. It will probably happen in 20 to 40 million years, leaving a ring that will persist for anywhere ...

Pluto may have two ice volcanoes that spew water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, and methane onto the dwarf planet's surface, NASA announced today. The potential volcanoes were spied near Pluto's South Pole, in images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its July flyby. NASA scientists used the photos to measure the mountains, they are several miles high and tens of miles wide, with large holes in their summits. "On Earth that generally means one thing a volcano," said Oliver White, New Horizo...

Researchers have developed a process to remove contaminants from oil sands wastewater using only sunlight and nanoparticles that is more effective and inexpensive than conventional treatment methods. Frank Gu, a professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo and Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology Engineering, is the senior researcher on the team that was the first to find that photocatalysis , a chemical reaction that involves the absorption of light by nanoparticles ...

MIT has developed a new and more efficient way to desalinate water. The process, called shock electrodialysis, filters water through a material made of small glass particles, according to an MIT News report. When an electric current is introduced to the system, the water divides into areas of high or low salt concentration. Once the current reaches a certain point, a shockwave is produced that divides the streams and allows the salty and fresh waters to be separated by a physical barrier. The pr...

The discovery of two exoplanet "companions" provides insight into the hot Jupiter solar system, discovered from data collected by the K2 mission. Out of the some 300 hot Jupiters that have been spotted over the past two decades, these new objects are the first close-in planets to be discovered. Discovery of two close-in planet companions sheds new light on planet formation. For the past 20 years, astronomers peered into the night sky, puzzled about a type of planet called hot Jupiters. As they a...

Scientists have just made a breakthrough in understanding how clouds interact with the surrounding air by studying clouds in unprecedented detail. Raymond Shaw, a professor of physics at Michigan Tech, looks at the smallest part of clouds, droplets. To understand groups of droplets, Shaw and the NCAR team flew airplanes through fluffy, cottonball cumulus clouds in Wyoming and Colorado. Aboard the plane, the team took detailed 3-D images with an instrument called the Holographic Detector for Clou...