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methane

SPACE: Did Mars Rover Curiosity Just Detect an Alien Belch?

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Curiosity Rover - NASA

A group of scientists may have just pinpointed the location on Mars of a mysterious source of methane, a gas most often produced by microbes — and NASA’s Curiosity rover could be right on top of it. Methane blips have pinged on Curiosity’s detection systems six times since the rover landed in Mars’ Gale crater in 2012, but scientists weren’t able to find a source for them. Now, with a new analysis, researchers may have traced the methane burps to their origin. To calculate the unknown methane source, researchers at the California Institute of Technology modeled the methane gas particles by … Read more

SPACE: Signs of Possible Life on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus?

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Enceladus - Pixabay

The methane wafting from Enceladus may be a sign that life teems in the Saturn moon’s subsurface sea, a new study reports. In 2005, NASA’s Cassini Saturn orbiter discovered geysers blasting particles of water ice into space from “tiger stripe” fractures near Enceladus’ south pole. That material, which forms a plume that feeds Saturn’s E ring (the planet’s second-outermost ring), is thought to come from a huge ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath the moon’s icy shell. And there’s more than just water ice in the plume. During numerous close flybys of the 313-mile-wide (504 kilometers) Enceladus, Cassini spotted … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: Greenland Melting; July Heat; Fracking

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climate change - pixabay

Here are some of the latest climate change stories to keep you up-to-date: Greenland Loses 11 Billion Tons of Ice – In One DayAfter months of record temperatures, scientists say Greenland’s ice sheet experienced its biggest melt of the summer on Thursday, losing 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean — equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools. Greenland’s ice sheet usually melts during the summer, but the melt season typically begins around the end of May; this year it began at the start. It has been melting “persistently” over the past four months, which have recorded all time … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Danger of “Fire Ice”

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methane ice - deposit photos

There’s a giant trove of frozen methane, or “fire ice,” locked beneath our ocean’s surface. If released, it could trigger tsunamis, landslides and release huge amounts of carbon into our already-warming atmosphere. But we have almost no idea how much there is or where to find it. That’s in part because frozen methane on our planet takes many more forms than we previously thought, and we are only now beginning to recognize some of them, Ann Cook, an associate professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University said during a presentation yesterday (June 25) here at … Read more